The contingent of Washington fans that traveled across the country got out of their seats located in section 126 at Xfinity Center — directly behind the Huskies bench — to give their team a standing ovation Monday. The Washington band repeatedly screamed “Sweet Sixteen.”
The rest of the Xfinity Center remained silent, dumbfounded at what had transpired on the Terrapins women’s basketball team’s home floor. Some fans couldn’t bear to watch the final moments of the No. 2-seed Terps’ 74-65 loss to No. 7-seed Washington in the Round of 32, leaving the stands before the final buzzer sounded.
Coming off back-to-back Final Fours, the Terps failed to advance to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 2011. Their season, and the careers of four seniors, is over.
“Tough night for us and this stings a lot,” coach Brenda Frese said. “I thought obviously the better team won tonight.”
Frese called Monday’s shooting performance “very uncharacteristic.” The nation’s fourth-highest scoring offense (83.7 points per game) wound up with just 65 points. The Terps shot 37.3 percent from the field after shooting 50 percent on the year, their third-worst mark of the season.
The Huskies zone stifled the Terps offense throughout the game. It forced Frese’s team to settle for a season-high 28 three-point attempts and limited a frontcourt featuring centers Malina Howard and Brionna Jones to 20 points in the paint. The Huskies also held a 33-29 rebounding advantage over the Terps, which outrebounded its opponents by 15.6 per game this season, the best mark in the country.
“We just weren’t ourselves completely offensively,” Howard said. “Towards the end we started to a little bit, but I think…they played their hearts out and they did everything they could.”
At times, it looked like the Terps attack was back to its dominating ways.
There was the 8-0 run to start the second quarter, one that guard Kristen Confroy capped with a wide-open three to tie the game at 19. Frese pumped her fist in excitement on the sideline, while guard Brene Moseley, looked out at the Terps faithful and flailed her arms at midcourt to pump up the crowd as Huskies coach Mike Neighbors called a timeout.
After making four of their first 17 shots in the first quarter, the Terps looked re-energized. They turned an eight-point first quarter deficit to a five-point lead by intermission.
But the Terps scored just eight points in the third quarter, one less than Huskies guard Kelsey Plum scored in the frame. The nation’s third leading scorer at 26.3 points per game torched the Terps for 32, making 13 of her 14 fouls shots. And her third quarter performance helped her team get out to a seven-point advantage.
“At times, we let her get going with the and-1’s and a couple points in transition,” Confroy said. “We did a pretty good job of containing her, obviously a lot of her points came from the free-throw line, [but] could have been more disciplined.”
Still, the Terps had life with 3:16 left after guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough, who had a team-high 17 points, hit her second straight three. It cut the Terps’ deficit to five.
That was as close as they could get. On the next possession, Walker-Kimbrough missed a jumper. And less than a minute later, Walker-Kimbrough could only look on as Huskies forward Talia Walton drilled a long ball of her own with 1:25 to play.
Washington hit its free throws down the stretch to seal the major upset.
In the postgame press conference. Walker-Kimbrough kept her head down. Confroy and Howard looked like they had recently had tears streaming down their face. Even one Frese’s two sons, who sat on her mother’s lap as she spoke about how much this team had accomplished this season, looked on in sadness.
It was a premature ending for a team with Final Four aspirations.
