Maryland women’s basketball seniors Shatori Walker-Kimbrough and Brionna Jones entered this season determined to avenge last year’s second-round NCAA tournament loss to Washington.
Throughout this year’s postseason run, Walker-Kimbrough talked about dedicating her final season to the seniors from last year’s team.
However, Walker-Kimbrough and Jones made it just one step further before No. 10-seed Oregon upset the No. 3-seed Terps, 77-63, in the Sweet 16 on Saturday. It marked what the Terps felt was an unceremonious ending to two illustrious careers.
“It sucks when you have two amazing people and two amazing players, and you know they deserve so much more,” freshman guard Destiny Slocum said. “We clawed and we fought for them, and I wish we could have done more. And that was the thing that was going through my head at those last seconds.”
Walker-Kimbrough and Jones played in every game of their four years at Maryland, finishing tied in third with 142 games. They reached the Final Four in their first two seasons, tout six conference titles in the regular-season and tournaments, and had their jerseys hung from the Xfinity Center rafters after their Senior Day game.
Walker-Kimbrough is the fourth-best scorer in team history (2,156 points), Maryland’s most accurate three-point shooter of all time (.459) and has two of the top five scoring seasons.
Jones’ 697 points this season were the most ever by a Terp, and she was one rebound short of tying former Terp Alyssa Thomas’ single-season record of 381 boards. She leaves Maryland with the second-best shooting percentage (.650) of all time and the third-most rebounds (1,209).
“That’s why we’re in coaching,” coach Brenda Frese said, her voice shaking. “Their four years and their progression, and how they came in as freshmen and where they were.”
After Oregon dismantled Maryland en route to the Elite Eight, though, none of that seemed to be on the forefront of Walker-Kimbrough or Jones’ minds.
Walker-Kimbrough started slow, making one of her six shots before halftime, and never found her deep shooting stroke, missing all three of her three-point attempts. The guard matched Jones with a team-high 16 points.
“Their defense was pretty good, making my shots difficult,” Walker-Kimbrough said succinctly. “I give credit to the defense, their defense.”
Jones had 16 points and 15 rebounds, the 25th double-double of her senior year, but her 8-for-16 shooting performance was just the fourth time all year she made 50 percent of her shots. For the first time since the season opener, the center never went to the free throw line.
“Credit to them,” Jones said. “They came out hard on defense.”
In the locker room after the postgame press conference, Walker-Kimbrough looked on from the corner with a towel draped around her neck, silently removing her shoes and athletic tape.
It was a stark contrast to the scene in the Xfinity Center locker room the previous weekend, when the Terps advanced past the second round and clinched a spot in the Sweet 16.
Former center Malina Howard — one of last season’s seniors — had entered the room with the coaching staff, and Walker-Kimbrough curved her hands into a heart and held them up to her face, framing Howard. Frese said every win this year belongs in part to Howard and the rest of her class.
That was the last win of Maryland’s season, though. Less than a week later, Walker-Kimbrough and Jones took their jerseys off for the final time, and just like Howard last year, did so not surrounded by confetti or in the Final Four, but by gloomy-faced teammates who’d dreamt of a more fitting send-off.
“They’re going to hand the baton off to the next wave of players,” Frese said. “They have a perfect example all season of how to work and how to get here early and stay late and how to put yourself in a position to be really, really successful.”
