Thursday, February 14, 2013

A Happy Valentine's Day

The last time the BCs saw Maryland play Clemson, we were watching on our netbook via wi-fi in our hotel room in Buenos Aires . . . some 5,000 miles and an entire hemisphere away.  The wonders of modern technology!  Even better, although the wi-fi in our hotel was supposedly behind a paywall, a wormhole opened up for us, and we were able to watch the Terps for FREE!  Does it get any better than that?

Well, yes it does -- getting to watch the Terps in person (something for which we gladly pay).  And tonight, in their second game this season against the Tigers, the Terps bounced back from their loss on Monday to Duke by crushing Clemson at Comcast, 75-45, in the annual Play4Kay Breast Cancer Awareness game. 

T-Hawk, who didn't have a particularly good outing on Monday, was back in form this evening, leading all scorers with 30 points, and notching another double-double with 12 boards.  And despite spending much of the first half on the bench with two fouls, Alyssa Thomas finished with 17 points and 8 rebounds. Two other Terps were also hard at work around the glass, as Alicia DeVaughn pulled down 11 boards and freshman Malina Howard grabbed 10.

The first half of the game left a bit to be desired, as fouls, turnovers, and low scoring percentages combined for a very long 20 minutes, and saw the Terps only 8 points ahead at the break. But things picked up in the second period, as the Terps kicked it into to a higher gear and rolled to a lop-sided win.

Some post-injury good news: Katie Rutan was finally playing without her face mask tonight, and Tierney Pfirman, recovering from her dislocated patella, was dressed and warmed up with the team.  We hope this means Tierney is working her way back into the lineup and that we'll see her in action again very soon.

And in other good news: the Terps were so far ahead in the second half that Caitlin Adams got more than three minutes of playing time, and, last but not least, Coach B was not ejected.

Next up for the Terps: UVA in Charlottesville on Sunday.

Go Terps . . .  Beat the Cavs!

3 Comments:

At 11:38 PM, Blogger TerpFan said...

Great win and glad to hear that Tianna is only EIGHT rebounds from joining Langhorne & Coleman in the 1000 rebound club. Congrats, Tianna!

 
At 2:05 PM, Anonymous GCM said...

So how is Malina doing so far? I think her strength is distributing the ball, and she demonstrated it several times against Clemson by finding open players from the high post. Malina plays less than our starting center, Alicia, but has more assists with fewer turnovers than Alicia does--although both still have negative assist/turnover ratios. And she's blocked 21 shots to Alicia's 15.

Alicia's numbers show, however, that she's pounding it underneath more than Malina: she has more rebounds, more fouls, and gets fouled more often. Plus, Malina is the second worst foul shooter on the team (not counting brave Caitlin).

According to her bio, Malina averaged 18 pts/game last year as a high school senior, but she doesn't look like she's found her strengths yet at the college level: she's averaging just under 7 pts/game here. Alicia is a tad over 8 and is overall a more efficient--read "higher percentage"--scorer than Malina, even though Malina is a better 3 pt shooter. Still, you'd rather have a center who can take it to the hoop as opposed to bombing away from long distance.

The suggestion so far is that Malina is going to turn out to be more of a finesse player than a banger underneath--but this is, after all, only her freshman year. As Coach Thompson (from some other school around here) used to say, "The best thing about freshmen is that they become sophomores!" So go for it, Malina!

 
At 2:14 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/terrapins-insider/wp/2013/02/16/dukes-mike-krzyzewski-joanne-p-mccallie-have-harsh-words-for-maryland/?tid=pm_pop

Got to love it.

 

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