With a shade over six minutes to go until halftime in Wednesday night’s game with Penn State, Terrapins women’s basketball guard Kristen Confroy went up to defend a layup.
Instead of altering the shot or blocking the attempt, Confroy fouled guard Brianna Banks, who scored the basket and went to the foul line. She hit the free throw moments later, completely erasing the nine-point advantage the Terps held entering the second quarter.
While center Brionna Jones made two foul shots to put her team up 21-10 with 26 seconds remaining in the opening period, the Terps went scoreless for more than four minutes. Penn State scored 11 points over that stretch, and coach Brenda Frese’s squad was suddenly in a tight bout with a middling Big Ten foe.
But the Nittany Lions weren’t prepared for the Terps’ dominant response.
Starting with forward Brianna Fraser’s foul shots at the six-minute mark of the second quarter, the Terps used a barrage of layups and jumpers to go on a 16-0 run and blow open the game. And after entering the break up 39-24, the Terps never looked back in an 89-53 win over the Nittany Lions at the Bryce Jordan Center.
“Defensively, we were able to do a lot of great things,” Frese said. “And I thought when we were challenged — when the game was tied when they came at us in the first half — we went on that … run that was able to be able to help us kind of pull away early.”
Guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough followed her 22-point performance in the Terps’ win against Wisconsin on Jan. 20 with 25 points on 8-for-11 shooting. Her fifth make from behind the arc in the third quarter brought her within one point of tying her career high, which she achieved in her 26-point performance Nov. 18 against High Point, but she couldn’t achieve that feat.
She didn’t play the final eight minutes of Wednesday’s contest, but the Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, native excelled against her home-state school.
“In high school, this is where the state championships were played, and I never made it to the state championship,” Walker-Kimbrough said. “So I kind of like to think this is like my state championship every time I come to play.”
The other half of the scoring duo was Jones, who added 17 points and was the only other Terp to score in double figures.
Walker-Kimbrough and Jones, who were two of 20 players to make the Wooden Award midseason list, combined for eight points during the Terps’ 16-point outburst. Guard Lindsey Spann broke the drought for Penn State (8-12, 3-6 Big Ten) with a long ball, but Jones added a layup right before intermission to give the Terps (18-2, 7-1) a 15-point advantage.
“That’s where you get your inside/outside play when you have Shatori and Bri clicking on all cylinders,” Frese said. “And then everyone else can kind of play off the two of them.”
Jones’ teammates kept feeding the 6-foot-3 junior, especially in the opening minutes of the third quarter when she scored the Terps’ first six points on three layups.
And while multiple Penn State players switched off guarding Jones, none of them could stop her from consistently scoring inside. Frese credited the backcourt for getting the ball to Jones, who finished 7 of 14 from the field in 19 minutes. The veteran coach also noted the Havre de Grace native has expanded her game as the season has gone along.
“You see in terms of her low post presence, what she brings to us,” Frese said. “But she’s been able to expand to the high post. Running the floor tonight, I thought she was exceptional in terms of the plays she was able to make.”
Penn State got out on the break early though Frese said, which was part of the reason it was able to build an 11-0 run. In an otherwise disappointing season, the Nittany Lions were staying right with a top-five squad.
Yet in the following minutes, the Terps had an even better answer en route to their seventh Big Ten win.
“We were able to just lock in on both ends of the floor,” Frese said.
