The Maryland women’s basketball players started murmuring as they sat inside Xfinity Center on Sunday evening, patiently awaiting their NCAA tournament fate. The minutes ticked away, and team after team was announced, and the Terrapins ended up in the very last pairing named. There was little doubt the Terps would be included — the question was where and against whom?
Maryland
Maryland women return to NCAA tournament, will face Iowa State in first round
When Maryland was finally called, a bit of a good fortune came with an upcoming West Coast trip.
Longtime Maryland coach Brenda Frese is in the midst of her most challenging season on the court in more than a decade. Her Terrapins (19-13, 9-9) posted their worst conference record since joining the Big Ten in 2014, and they had their fewest league wins since 2009-10, which was the last time the program didn’t make the tournament.
The program avoided that fate Sunday night, when the selection committee named Maryland the No. 10 seed in the Portland 4 Region, where it will face No. 7 seed Iowa State (20-11, 12-6 Big 12) in a first-round game in Palo Alto, Calif., on Friday. The Terps will face an uphill climb to advance to the tournament’s second weekend for the fourth consecutive year. If they win their opener, they will face either No. 2 seed Stanford or No. 15 seed Norfolk State, with the winner advancing to the Sweet 16.
The good fortune was the fact Frese spent four years as an assistant at Iowa State (1995-99) under current Cyclones coach Bill Fennelly and has a bit of institutional knowledge on the opponent. She called Fennelly one of her most influential mentors.
“Really kind of what propelled me and my coaching career,” Frese said. “He’s a great X and O coach, so he’s going to individually game plan. … He’s one of the best coaches out there when you talk about X’s and O’s. I know their system. I watched them in the Big 12 tournament when they played Texas and those games because I’ve always watched them over the years.”
Though there’s plenty of history between the coaches, this will be the first meeting between the programs. The Cyclones are the fifth-highest scoring team in the Big 12 (74.6 points per game), and their 37.5 percent three-point shooting led the league. Defense is not a strength: Iowa State ranks 12th in the conference in points allowed (68.0).
“The fact that it’s taken 22 years here at Maryland and in my coaching career to finally be able to coach against [Fennelly] is pretty exciting,” Frese said.
This is the first time since 2018 the Terps will not host games on the tournament’s opening weekend, which doesn’t include the pandemic-affected 2021 tournament that was played entirely in San Antonio. That honor is reserved for teams placed on the top four seed lines.
“Clearly a unique element,” Frese said about going on the road. “But for us, that’s why we played the schedule we played this season. You don’t even blink when you go in and that first matchup is still a neutral court when you’re playing against Iowa State. For us, we feel like the schedule has prepared us.”
Maryland secured its spot in the tournament after it advanced to the Big Ten tournament semifinals with wins over Illinois and No. 1 seed Ohio State. It was considered by bracket analysts to be squarely on the tournament bubble before that run in Minneapolis this month.
Maryland has advanced at least to the second round in 12 consecutive NCAA tournaments and in 18 of the past 19. Frese has missed the tournament just twice since she took over in College Park in 2002, and the winningest coach in program history has never lost in the first round with the Terrapins.
The Terps went 0-8 against ranked teams in the regular season before they upset Ohio State in the Big Ten tournament quarterfinals. They closed with a 7-2 stretch with losses to only Ohio State and Indiana. The conference tournament win over Ohio State was the best performance of the season against a team considered Final Four caliber.
“I think the biggest [lesson learned] is just we can compete with anyone,” guard Shyanne Sellers said about the Big Ten tournament. “The Ohio State win, I know we could have done it all along and all season. But just getting that win really right there just proves that we can really compete with anybody.”
Among other tournament teams from D.C., Maryland and Virginia, Virginia Tech (24-7, 14-4) seemed set up for another deep tournament run after it advanced to the Final Four last season, but a knee injury to three-time ACC player of the year Elizabeth Kitley has severely affected the team. The Hokies were seeded fourth in the Portland 3 Region and will face No. 13 seed Marshall on Friday.
Norfolk State (27-5, 13-1) will head to the tournament after winning the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament for the second year in a row, earning that date with Stanford on Friday.
Richmond (29-5, 16-2) won the Atlantic 10 tournament for the first time. The Spiders earned a No. 10 seed in the Portland 3 Region and will meet No. 7 seed Duke on Friday.