Playing three games in six days isn’t typical during the regular season, but that’s what the Terrapins women’s basketball team endured this week.
It started with a nationally televised game Monday night against No. 1 UConn, one in which the Terps battled throughout before suffering a 10-point defeat at Madison Square Garden. Coach Frese’s team then picked up its first true road win of the season by defeating Illinois three days later to open the conference slate.
The stretch concluded Saturday at the Xfinity Center against No. 9 Ohio State, but Frese could see the effects these past couple of games had on her players. She pointed to the Terps’ 20 turnovers and their 53.8 free-throw percentage. Her team entered the contest shooting 75.2 percent at the charity strike.
The Terps stayed with their top-10 counterpart throughout the contest, but the atypical miscues caught up to them down the stretch as Buckeyes guard Kelsey Mitchell, the nation’s second leading scorer entering the contest, continued to make plays for her team and finished with 28 points.
For the No. 6 Terps, the result was an 80-71 loss, the first-ever defeat as a member of their new conference and their first against a Big Ten foe since 2007. And though Frese admitted fatigue played a factor, the veteran coach said her teams’ tired legs was not an excuse for its result.
“It definitely looked like you saw the effects and the impact of three games in six days,” Frese said. “There was a lot of uncharacteristic plays of us with fatigue today, which is the mental side of the game for us as a team that we’ve got to improve on.”
Guard Brene Moseley led the team with 20 points off the bench, and it was her 10 points in the second quarter that helped the Terps (12-2, 1-1 Big Ten) get out to a three-point lead over the Buckeyes (10-3, 2-0) entering intermission.
But in a game that featured two of the top five scoring offenses in the country, the Terps’ two most consistent players put together abnormal performances.
After center Brionna Jones scored 24 points on 12-for-14 shooting against the top-ranked Huskies, the preseason All-Big Ten honoree was a nonfactor on the offensive end against the Buckeyes frontcourt. She scored the Terps’ first points of each half but finished with 10 points.
Frese said Jones was fatigued after her past two games but also credited Ohio State’s ability to be physical with the junior and make her work for the 28 minutes she was on the floor.
“They were able to get into her head early,” Frese said. “As a team, that’s an area where you got to have other people step up and kind of help — she carries the load for us so many times — to do other things.”
While guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough, the team’s leading scorer entering the contest, scored seven points in the first quarter, she finished with 16 points and shot just 6-for-17. She made four steals but contributed a team-high seven turnovers as well.
“I don’t think I came out ready to play and so I’ll take this loss for my team,” Walker-Kimbrough said. “I have to come out better and play a lot better.”
Four giveaways over the first two minutes of the second half allowed the Buckeyes to go on a 9-0 run, prompting Frese to call a 30-second timeout with her team in a four-point hole. And the break appeared to help, as guard Kristen Confroy and Walker-Kimbrough drilled 3-pointers in the next two possessions, the second of which helped the Terps regain the lead.
They couldn’t keep that momentum, though, as Ohio State outscored the Terps, 24-17 in the third quarter and took a 61-57 lead into the final 10 minutes.
And the Buckeyes kept attacking with Mitchell, who finished with seven points in the fourth quarter. The Terps, meanwhile, were hitting the front rim with their jumpers, missed five of their final attempts from the foul stripe and watched as the Buckeyes celebrated a victory on the Xfinity floor.
“We have to understand every game is going to be a battle in conference play,” Frese said. “It doesn’t matter how many games you’ve played. If it’s a back to back — if it’s within 48 hours — you have to turn around and be ready to play.”
