LOUISVILLE, Ky. — During Brenda Frese’s two-minute, 17-second opening statement of her news conference at the KFC Yum! Center yesterday morning, she spent more than a minute talking about Louisville coach Jeff Walz.
The Terrapins women’s basketball coach cracked a smile as she recalled having Walz as an assistant for her first five seasons with the Terps, which included the program’s only national championship in 2006. Frese, who was 35 years old when they won the national title, knew Walz would also have a quick rise to success, taking note of his intensity.
Walz spoke fondly of his experience with Frese in Louisville’s news conference later in the day. But Walz has had his own success since leaving the Terps in 2007. He’s built a consistently competitive program and led the Cardinals to two NCAA championship appearances.
So Frese isn’t surprised that she’s facing Walz on the national stage in the No. 4-seed Terps’ Elite Eight matchup against No. 3-seed Louisville tonight, marking the third meeting in six seasons between the two coaches. But with a trip to the Final Four in Nashville, Tenn., at stake, Frese and the Terps are more focused on continuing their postseason run.
“I think the biggest thing when you look at what Jeff and I have done, we’ve taken our programs to this status. … Inevitably, our paths were going to cross,” Frese said. “But the reality is only one team gets to move on to Nashville.”
Louisville has appeared in the NCAA tournament in six of Walz’s seven seasons with the team, and the Cardinals earned the most wins in program history in his second year at the helm, when they advanced to the national title game.
He helped improve the Terps, too, serving on the staff as they transformed from a middling ACC team to national champions in four seasons.
“Knowing the history of Maryland basketball and when they won, you know who was there, who was a part of it, and he was one of the major parts of that team,” guard Katie Rutan said. “Just hearing from coach Frese the history they had together, he’s a great coach, and when he was at Maryland, he made his mark.”
During the Cardinals’ first run to the national championship game in 2009, Walz met his former team for the first time in the Elite Eight. Former forward Angel McCoughtry, a Baltimore native, scored 21 points and grabbed 13 rebounds to help Louisville to a 77-60 win over the Terps and its first Final Four appearance.
Walz watched as the Cardinals knocked out Kristi Toliver and Marissa Coleman, players he coached during the Terps’ national championship season.
In 2012, the Terps beat Louisville, 72-68, in the round of 32 to advance to the Sweet 16. The Cardinals held then-sophomore forward Alyssa Thomas to six points in that matchup, but Walz expects containing the three-time ACC Player of the Year tonight will be a much more daunting task.
“I’m hoping she misses the bus, which would be great,” Walz said. “She’s not a kid that you’re not going to shut down. It’s just not going to happen.”
Guard Shoni Schimmel, who has 17.1 points per game entering the matchup, leads a Cardinals offense with three players averaging more than 10 points per game. Schimmel scored 22 points the last time she faced the Terps, and she will be a key factor for Louisville tonight.
With both coaches leading successful programs, they haven’t talked much since they stopped working together. Their postseason meetings have accounted for their few encounters in recent years, but Frese still took a few moments to acknowledge the success Walz has had with Louisville.
For the rest of the news conference, however, she talked about the various matchups and key factors for tonight’s game. Though the two were together during the Terps’ most successful season, Frese knows her current players and staff are what will continue the Terps’ success while Walz stands in front of the opposite bench.
“I’m very proud of everything that Jeff has accomplished,” Frese said. “But this game belongs to the players. Every step of the way that we’ve gone, it’s been about the players taking the game plan and the scout and executing it, and I really think it’s going to come down to that.”
