The Terrapins women’s basketball team had seen this before. Before their NCAA Tournament first-round matchup Saturday, the Terps team huddled together in the film room to scout No. 15-seed Iona.
That’s when they first saw guard Philecia Gilmore and how dangerous she could be.
“In some of the transition clips, whenever they’d do kick ahead threes, she was the one that was spotting up and hitting them,” guard Chloe Pavlech said.
Twenty-three seconds into Saturday’s game, Gilmore pulled up on the left wing and nailed the contest’s first basket. She hit another 3-pointer less than a minute later, and another with 4:38 left in the first quarter.
At halftime, Gilmore had scored 12 of the Gaels’ 27 points. She finished with a game-high 21 points, but the No. 2-seed Terps held her teammates to 14-for-46 shooting (30.4 percent) in the 74-58 win over Iona.
“We know that she could shoot some threes and everything. We just had to do a better job of pushing up on her, not letting her get the open threes that we let her get,” center Malina Howard said. “I think that definitely throughout the game we started to improve on that.”
Early in the fourth quarter, the Gaels cut their deficit to seven when Gilmore, who entered the game shooting 33 percent from behind the arc, drained her seventh 3-pointer.
It proved to be her last.
She hoisted one from behind the arc on the next possession, but it didn’t fall. By the time the game was over, she had missed two more from long range as the Terps keyed in on her along the perimeter. Coach Brenda Frese’s team took advantage, using a flurry of baskets from guard Brene Moseley and Howard to seal the win.
Howard said the Terps would need to improve on “staying true” to their scout as they navigate through the tournament.
During her hot shooting stretch in the first quarter, Gilmore’s demeanor hardly wavered. While her teammates cheered her on, she maintained focus on the task at hand: Knocking off the Terps.
“I was excited,” Gilmore said. “but I really just wanted to win the game.”
