Jaclyn Borowski/The Diamondback

For so long this season, a young Terrapin women’s basketball team’s stumbles and miscues had wracked the nerves and tested the patience of coach Brenda Frese.

But in the fading moments of last night’s season-ending 77-64 loss to Providence in the third round of the WNIT, it all became too much for the often-unflappable Frese.

Down seven points with fewer than three minutes left in their season, the Terps (21-13) shuffled aimlessly about the perimeter, bleeding the shot clock down to 13 seconds as the fans inside Comcast Center grew restless and their coaches clamored for something productive.

Frese couldn’t take it any longer. She signaled for a timeout, and the normally placid coach stomped her feet in frustration as the Terps circled around her sullenly.

Any instruction she might have proffered was too late for this game, this season. But for a team that never could truly find its way during its five-month-long campaign, the truth the Terps needed to hear about their growing pains was painfully obvious to all.

“Things that had been hurting us a lot throughout the course of the season reared its ugly head for us tonight,” Frese said. “When you talk about turnovers, free-throw shooting, just being able to get stops on the defensive end — all are areas that hopefully are going to motivate us this offseason to be able to improve on.”

And though there likely won’t be a drop-off for next season’s team as pronounced as the Marissa Coleman and Kristi Toliver-less Terps felt this time around, yesterday’s result made it clear there will be an extensive to-do list heading into the offseason.

After an early lead against the Friars (19-14), the Terps trailed for the final 35 minutes of the game. They inched close to the lead early in the second half after a Dara Taylor three-pointer made it 44-43.

But Providence scored the next nine points, and the Terps never again came within striking distance.

“We went on our run, but then we didn’t stop them from their run,” said Taylor, who had six of the team’s 23 turnovers. “We went on our run and then they’d come down and score.

We wouldn’t box out. They’d get an open shot. We’d have a lapse on defense. Our runs got canceled out.”

The significance of their struggles seemed to be lost on the players themselves.

The Friars, who are enjoying their first winning season in almost two decades, played up every snagged rebound and solid screen to the small troupe of gray-clad fans behind their bench. When the final buzzer sounded, they rushed to the cheerleading and dance teams who had traveled with them to begin a frenzied celebration. The teary-eyed Terps, including departing seniors Lori Bjork (13 points) and Emery Wallace, could only look on and watch in silence.

“It matters to teams to come in here and beat Maryland,” said Frese, whose Terps dropped a sixth game at home for the first time since her first season as coach. “I think that’s a lesson we’ve got to understand.”

In a season full of tough lessons for the Terps, whose uncharacteristically early exit from the ACC Tournament likely cost them their seventh straight NCAA Tournament appearance, yesterday’s might have been the least palatable. Today, they’ll begin an offseason few expected would come in this way, with a loss in the third round of the WNIT.

“Nobody wants to feel like this,” Taylor said. “Nobody on this team wants to feel like this ever again.”

shaffer@umdbk.com