Oklahoma On Their Minds? Last week the Terps played one of the best teams in the world. The day after tomorrow (Sunday) they play a nationally televised game (ESPN2, 5 PM) in Chapel Hill against a highly ranked opponent, Oklahoma, in the prestigious State Farm Tip Off Classic. Tonight . . . well, they played Princeton, an Ivy League also-ran (sorry, BC Judith, but it's true).

Perhaps the Terps didn't bring the same focus to this evening's game that they did to last week's and that they plan to bring on Sunday. Let's face it, the outcome was never in doubt -- Maryland won 76-52 -- but from a fan's perspective, it seemed like a slightly low-energy performance by Maryland.

We should point out, however, that the Terps were playing without everybody's All-American, Crystal Langhorne. Although Lang participated in warmups, she never left the bench after that. Coach B also spread the minutes pretty well among the starters and reserves, including the rookies. Despite limited minutes, two Terps finished with double doubles, Kristi Toliver (16 points, 10 assists), and Jade Perry (12 points, 11 boards), who started in place of Lang. But the BasketCases award the Play of the Game to the Maryland cheerleaders, who formed a human pyramid and tipped in a Kristi Toliver miss (of a ball that had become lodged between the backboard and the rim). After much discussion, the officials disallowed the two points because the cheerleaders' uniforms did not meet NCAA regulations.

As for the opponents . . . the Tigers played hard throughout and acquitted themselves well. (BC Judith wrote that line, but it's true.) Whitney Downs led Princeton with 14 points, and Meagan Cowher was close behind, with 13. Meagan's famous Mom -- and Dad -- were in the house. BC Judith enjoyed chatting with them before the game.

That's all for tonight. The BasketCases will be hitting the road to Chapel Hill tomorrow so we can cheer for the Terps on Sunday. (We're also pretty excited about our first chance to see the Paris twins in person. . . Courtney and Ashley . . . 6' 4" identical twin daughters of NFL star Bubba . . . and, no doubt, a Mom who gets very little press.) As usual on our road trips, we will be filing remote blogs, so stay tuned!

Photo Credit: DC BasketCases

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Saturday Morning Update (rant alert): The quote below was contained in the non-bylined AP story that we linked to last night; it was repeated in the game report (again, no byline) in today's Washington Post , as well as in David Ginsburg's bylined article in today's Baltimore Sun:

"Meagan Cowher, the daughter of former Pittsburgh Steelers
coach Bill Cowher, scored 11 of her 13 points in the first
half. Bill Cowher watched from the stands about 15 rows behind
the Princeton bench. "

Now returning to our regularly scheduled programming rant . . . that sentence taps into one of the BasketCases' pet peeves about the media and female athletes -- whenever there's a famous dad, the moms are almost always neglected. It's as though the daughters were born in a petri dish, and dad was a single parent. (How many times have WNBA fans heard TV announcers say that Cheryl Ford is the daughter of Karl Malone? Never mind that the Mailman, who was not married to Cheryl's Mom, had just about nothing to do with Cheryl growing up, and that Mom raised Cheryl.) It's not that we have any problem when parents (famous or otherwise) are mentioned, but it takes two to tango (unless mom has a turkey baster handy). In Meagan Cowher's case, the omission is particularly egregious, and stupid, since (as our loyal readers know but the AP couldn't bother to find out) Mom Kaye -- and her twin sister Faye, Meagan's aunt -- were college and then professional basketball players. And as our loyal readers also know, Mom Kaye was at the game last night, watching right alongside Dad.