The Terrapin women’s basketball regular season won’t start until tomorrow night, but the first indication that this might be a different kind of season for coach Brenda Frese happened nearly a month ago.
Frese kicked off her preseason schedule with a clear goal for day one: install two basic plays on offense. She could only get through the first set.
“I realized there was no way I could go to the second one,” said Frese, whose Terps kick off their 29-game schedule tomorrow at Comcast Center against North Carolina Central. “It really kind of jolted me early in the sense of just how much slower you are going to have to go.”
Against the Eagles, it probably shouldn’t matter that graduated stars Kristi Toliver and Marissa Coleman won’t be suited up. Both teams return only one senior, but the comparisons stop there.
North Carolina Central is in only its third season at the Division I level, where the Eagles have won a total of 16 games. The Terps, meanwhile, won nearly double that amount — 31, to be exact — last season alone.
North Carolina Central’s 6-foot-2 freshman center Destiny Tolliver checks in as the team’s tallest player and is one of only two Eagles taller than six feet. Six of the Terps’ 10 players meet that qualification, and two are 6-foot-6 or taller.
Even the lone seniors on each team couldn’t be more dissimilar. The Eagles’ Latoya Bennett splits time in the paint at the center position, where she used her undersized 5-foot-9 frame to average 4.2 points per game last season.
Lori Bjork, the Terps’ starting shooting guard, is two inches taller than Bennett and set the school record for career 3-pointers at Illinois in three seasons.
Certainly, there are question marks for this inexperienced Terp team. They likely just won’t be too obvious tomorrow.
shaffer@umdbk.com
