Maryland Women S Basketball

COLLEGE PARK -- The sixth-ranked Maryland women's basketball team prepared hard in practice Friday and Saturday for Duke senior point guard Lindsey Harding to make sure that this time would be different. This time, the Terps planned to give Harding a personal escort up the Comcast Center floor from baseline to baseline, to ensure that she wouldn't drive unmolested to the basket as she had six weeks earlier in Durham. Maryland women@Boston College Sunday, 3 p.m., Comcast SportsNet

The groundhog didn't see its shadow yesterday, which means six more weeks of Bruce Chen on the free-agent market. ... Nobody said it was going to be easy for the Maryland women's basketball team to repeat as national champions. No, wait ... everybody said it was going to be easy. Guess again. ... Corey Patterson and Erik Bedard are the only Orioles still eligible for arbitration. Must be nice to know you're getting a raise - win, lose or settle. ... This week's best quote, courtesy of Chicago Bears quarterback Rex Grossman: "I'm realizing how ignorant you guys [reporters]

The Maryland women's basketball team begins its preseason Sunday at 4 p.m. when it faces Tapiolan of Finland in an exhibition game at Cole Field House.Terps coach Chris Weller will enter her 24th season without starters Tiffany Brown and Kelley Gibson, both of whom suffered late-summer setbacks. Brown, last season's point guard, was ruled academically ineligible after the summer semester. Gibson tore her right anterior cruciate ligament in September.The absence of Brown and Gibson, the graduation of Sonia Chase, Stephanie Cross and Kalisa Davis means that Branka Bogunovic is the only substantive returnee from last season's squad that finished 15-13, 7-9 in the ACC.Brown, a junior who averaged 7.3 points per game in 1997-98, said her task for now is to provide leadership until her scheduled return in late December.

McDonogh's Vicki Brick, last year's All-Metro girls basketball Player of the Year, said yesterday that she has orally committed to Maryland. She plans to sign before the early signing period for basketball ends on Nov. 18.Since Brick arrived at McDonogh, the Eagles have won all three Association of Independent Schools A Division championships and compiled a record of 62-8.Last year, she led the Eagles to a 24-1 season and the No. 1 ranking, averaging 20.4 points, 3.8 assists and 5.1 steals.

In some of yesterday's editions, the college to which former University of Maryland women's basketball player Meghan McIntyre transferred was reported incorrectly. She went to Drexel University.The Sun regrets the errors.Pub date 10/30/98

CHARLOTTE, N.C.-- Twice this season, the Maryland women's basketball team had led North Carolina State at halftime, only to watch the advantage melt away into disappointing losses.But, in perhaps their most satisfying win of the season, the Terps made a halftime lead stand up, beating the ninth-ranked Wolfpack, 61-48, last night.With some grit, solid defense and a trio of determined seniors, sixth seed Maryland (15-12) withstood a stern challenge to earn its first berth in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament semifinals in four years.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- After yesterday's 60-52 overtime loss to Duke in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament, the Maryland women's basketball team is living testimony to the saying that those who fail to remember the past are doomed to repeat its failures.For the second time in three weeks, the Terps frittered away a second-half lead to the 25th-ranked Blue Devils, lost their composure and let Duke escape.In this case, fourth-seeded Maryland (18-9) held off one Duke comeback to take a four-point lead with 1: 41 to go, only to see Blue Devils senior guard Kira Orr make a free throw, then sink a three-pointer with 30 seconds to go in regulation to force overtime.

COLLEGE PARK -- For the last three years, the Maryland women's basketball team has been pushed around a landscape upon which it once was dominant.Last night's 72-53 win over No. 20 Clemson was perhaps a sign the Terps are ready to do some pushing back, as they stomped the defending Atlantic Coast Conference tournament champion Tigers, who just 10 days before beat then-No. 2 Georgia.Except for a three-minute span in the first half, Maryland (5-1, 1-0 ACC), played as dominating a game as it has since the 1991-92 season, when it was ranked No. 1 for four weeks.

COLLEGE PARK -- After two weeks of doing a lot of things wrong, the Maryland women's basketball team did enough things right to stun No. 14 Duke, 63-52, last night at Cole Field House.After taking a 29-point loss flush on the chin Saturday at Georgia Tech, Maryland looked to be in for a long night against the Blue Devils, who started the night half a game out of first place in the Atlantic Coast Conference.But the Terps (9-11 overall, 3-7 ACC) put together their best overall effort of the year in ending a five-game losing streak.

COLLEGE PARK -- Maryland women's basketball coach Chris Weller has been waiting for Kelley Gibson to live up to her promise, and her patience was rewarded handsomely last night in the Terps' 61-60 win over Georgia Tech at Cole Field House.Gibson, one of the most highly touted players to enter the Maryland program since Olympian Vicky Bullett, scored a career-high 20 points, including the game-winner, an eight-foot pull-up jumper in the lane with eight seconds left.Gibson, who missed virtually all of last season with an anterior cruciate ligament tear in her right knee, scored the last six points for the Terps (6-5, 1-1 in the Atlantic Coast Conference)

COLLEGE PARK - -For every great pass that freshman point guard Dara Taylor made in Maryland's first exhibition game last week, it seemed she made another one that whizzed out of bounds or off a teammate's hands. But in the Terrapins' second exhibition game on Tuesday night, Taylor's passes found their mark and she repeatedly set her teammates up for easy baskets. She finished with seven assists and just one turnover to go along with 14 points in Maryland's 101-43 victory over Division III Catholic.

Kristi Toliver is a quiet, thoughtful soul content to strum her guitar and go to class like any other college senior. Unless you put a basketball into her hands. Then, the Maryland point guard becomes something else entirely - Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant distilled into a 5-foot-7 female form, the kind of kid who knew from birth she would make the biggest shots in the biggest games. "She's just ruthless," says Dena Evans, one of her basketball mentors. "She can take the heart out of a team with one shot."

Overdue attention for UM women I was delighted to read The Baltimore Sun's praise for the Maryland Terrapins women's basketball team ("Terps take two," editorial, March 10). Marissa Coleman, Kristi Toliver and the rest of the team are amazing athletes who exhibit a high level of skill and finesse. But not enough people are aware of that fact, and the media have been a big part of the problem. The Baltimore Sun itself frequently relegates a victory by the women's team to Page 7 while featuring a men's loss on the sports section cover.

SPOKANE, Wash. -- Perception, in basketball, as in life, can be as powerful as reality. To wit, a week ago, the Maryland women's basketball team appeared to be listless and on the ropes in an 80-66 win over Coppin State in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Six days later, the Terps held the same 80-66 advantage in a regional semifinal win over Vanderbilt, but while the score was the same, the lasting image left from the win could hardly be more different. Last night, a Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena crowd saw in Maryland (33-3)

SPOKANE, Wash. -- The Maryland women's basketball team has played about 40 good minutes in this NCAA tournament. Unfortunately, it has taken the Terps two games to do it. A team with this kind of talent can get away with uneven performances in the early stages of the tournament, but by the time you reach the Sweet 16 - which for the Terps begins tonight at 9 - playing half a game is the quickest way back to the airport, back to College Park, back to...

COLLEGE PARK -- Late last night, probably after you put the kids to bed - maybe after you put yourself to bed - the Maryland women's basketball team, a parade of shouts and screams, rolled into its Comcast Center locker room one final time this season. "Sixteen, baby!" shouted senior Crystal Langhorne, putting an exclamation point on the Terps' spot in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament. If it was too late for you to make the trek to College Park on a weeknight, the game was televised.

In the end, finding out they had received a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament was far easier for the Maryland women's basketball team than actually earning the seed itself. With a crowd of local media and an ESPN crew assembled in coach Brenda Frese's family room last night, the drain on electrical power caused one of the circuits in the house to blow just a few minutes before their region was shown. And ESPN didn't help matters, either, by posting the Spokane region, where the Terps will play, last of the four regional brackets.

COLLEGE PARK -- The Maryland women's basketball team, and especially its seniors, has an impressive list of accomplishments over the past three years, including a lengthy stint atop the national polls last season, more victories than any other class in program history, and, of course, the national title two years ago. But, unless the fifth-ranked Terps have a breakthrough at this weekend's Atlantic Coast Conference tournament at the Greensboro (N.C.)...

Markus and Tyler are averaging 0.0 points per game - combined. Though they're sleeping through the night OK, neither seems to understand the offense, and both are a ways from figuring out this whole taking-it-one-game-at-a-time thing. Yet if you've only followed college basketball casually these past few months, all you know about Maryland women's basketball is that Markus and Tyler, the recently delivered fraternal twins of coach Brenda Frese, joined the team last month. From ESPN to USA Today to The New York Times, that has been the season's dominant story line.

Having passed Vicky Bullett on the Maryland women's basketball all-time scoring and rebounding lists this season, forward Crystal Langhorne joined her yesterday as the only Terps women to be named Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year. Langhorne, a 6-foot-2 senior from Willingboro, N.J., was named the league's top player in balloting conducted by the Atlantic Coast Conference Sports Media Association, receiving 23 of 49 first-place votes. North Carolina senior forward Erlana Larkins finished second in the voting and Terps junior guard Kristi Toliver placed third.