The red team was down by five points with less than a minute to play when guard Marissa Coleman drilled a 3-pointer and absorbed a foul to cut the deficit to one after a successful free throw.
Associate head coach Jeff Walz, who set up this simulated game situation at practice last week, naturally began to criticize the player who fouled Coleman.
“I think I’d have to bench you Sean!” Walz yelled.
The culprit, senior psychology major Sean McGrew, is one of six practice-squad players for this year’s Terrapin women’s basketball team. He doesn’t get a scholarship or anything tangible with the exception of some basketball equipment, but he takes this type of abuse on a daily basis all in hopes of helping the Terps improve.
Ask any player or coach on the team and they’ll tell you how important the male practice players are. But earlier this year, the NCAA stepped in and is now trying to enforce a ban on male practice players, resulting in an outrage in the women’s basketball community.
“[The practice-squad players are] extremely important,” guard Kristi Toliver said. “They’re very physical with us, which makes the games much easier, playing against girls after you get beat up by a bunch of guys. Guys just naturally are more competitive than girls are, so it makes us want to get after it even more when they run their mouths.”
They might not be playing 40 minutes in game situations, but the practice squad members play at an extremely intense level. Hounding Toliver every day in practice was Drew Ryan, a sophomore who played guard at Montgomery College in Rockville last year before transferring to this university. That was, at least, before Ryan tore his anterior cruciate ligament, medial collateral ligament and Meniscus last month during a practice.
“It hurt us when Drew got hurt, because he was the one who put himself out there for us,” forward Laura Harper said. “He was the point guard. He was the one in KT’s head.”
“When I was on the court, she knew what she had to go through every day,” Ryan said of Toliver. “She knew she couldn’t take a play off if I was guarding her.”
While McGrew was informed about the practice squad by a team manager who lived in the building he was an resident assistant for, Ryan came to this university with the intentions of playing against the defending national champions. The math-turned-kinesiology major said he could have played Division II at schools like Kutztown or Millersville, but instead came to this university for the degree.
“For me it’s kind of networking, because I want to coach college basketball, and now I’m friends with a Division I coaching staff that won a national championship,” Ryan said. “Plus it’ll look good on my resumé.”
n Title IX steps in
As much of a help as the male practice squad members have been, the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics is trying to banish them from women’s practices. According to the CWA, having men on the scout team “violates the spirit of gender equity and Title IX.”
“To have talented, capable female student-athletes stand on the sidelines during official practice while the team’s starters practice against ‘more talented men’ is a lost opportunity,” the CWA said in a statement. “Many of these female student-athletes are on full scholarship and were recruited to participate in intercollegiate athletics at many other institutions. To have them sitting out of practice while a full ‘scout team’ of men come to practices is costing them the opportunity for growth and betterment that they were promised during recruitment.”
The Terps, as well as most other teams across the country, could not disagree more.
“In one word: stupid,” Toliver said about the CWA’s stance. “We need guys to help the game progress and get more to the level where the guy’s game is. I guess the whole Title IX thing wants women to do it by themselves, and that’s retarded. It’s nice to get help from people who reach out, and the guys are doing a great job with it.”
The misconception is that while the teams’ starting five players are battling it out on the court against five men, the teams’ reserves are dispatched to the sideline to watch. But conversely, the bench players may be getting more experience due to the practice-squad players’ presence.
“Normally it would be that the last five girls on the team would be mimicking the other team, which means they’re learning the other team’s stuff, not this team’s,” McGrew said. “It gives them more opportunities to play the role that the first team would play.”
Walz gives the men DVDs with highlights of the Terps’ next opponent and assigns each to take on the role of a certain player. He then gives them sheets with the opponent’s key plays and has them memorize the sets before practice.
When the Terps play well, the practice-squad players are thrilled. When they lose, they take ownership.
“If a guard like an Ivory Latta or a [Lindsey] Harding absolutely destroys us, that hurts me personally because it’s my job to prepare them offensively and defensively for what they need to see,” Ryan said.
Ryan’s job in the future may be in limbo, but due to the strong opposition to the CWA’s statement last December, male practice-squad teams around the country seem to be safe for now.
If any progress is made on the CWA’s side, a ruling will likely be made during the off-season. But with coaches throughout all three divisions of college basketball strongly against the proposal, expect Ryan to be back on the court next season when his leg heals.
Terp head coach Brenda Frese said that the CWA has not done enough research yet, and that if the committee members attended practices and asked coaches, they would see how valuable the men are to a women’s basketball program.
n Support on and off the court
At the start of the season, the Terps only had nine active players on their roster. If they wanted to run an inter-squad scrimmage at practice, under the proposed rules, they would have to find females on the campus who would be willing to guard Coleman or match post moves with Crystal Langhorne on a daily basis.
“If you want to have a practice team of all women, so be it, but they’ll probably be playing at Tennessee,” said Dave Lax, a 2006 graduate and one of three practice-squad members last season.
Frese said she has used a male scout team her entire coaching career. It would be tough for coaches to make the adjustment of not having a core of men’s players to battle against their team each day.
“You’re not going to find a 6-[foot]-7-[inch] Allison Bales to go against, or else they would be on your roster,” Frese said.
Aside from helping the women hone their skills, the scout team acts as an additional support system for the team.
Last year, Lax and the other two scout team members traveled to Boston for the final four. They had to pay their own way and go separately from the team. Lax and his teammates slept on the floor of a booster’s hotel room and decided they would only stay for the semifinals because they had to attend class the next day.
At the conclusion of the victory over North Carolina, Toliver and Coleman’s mothers told the men that they “better be there on Tuesday” for the championship game.
They were there that Tuesday, and while the Terps were celebrating on the court, Shay Doron invited them to help cut down the nets.
“Every possession was so scary for us and so exciting,” Lax said. “We just hugged everyone wearing red … If I had to do it again, I’d do it exactly the same way.”
McGrew knows that his place on the Terps is more than just as a daily opponent, and he too wants to experience what Lax got to go through. When asked if he would attend this year’s final four if the Terps make it, McGrew did not hesitate.
“Oh yes, without a doubt. I can’t wait.”
Contact reporter Mark Selig at mseligdbk@gmail.com.
