Maryland 88  GW 54

As expected, a very tall, deep, and talented MD team pressed early and rattled the young Colonials early. Extremely pleased at how they competed after the first quarter. In the second quarter, they seemed to have solved the press and their offense started to flow a lot better. They actually got the lead down to 12 pts, when Luma went down and subsequently missed the rest of the game. From that point on, they were playing without Luma, as well as Zambrotta, Maund, and Loder (not sure why she wasn't there), but didn't back down and competed as hard as they could.
Some observations:

Blethen is a player. She looked extremely confident with her jump shot, and has great range.
Hyduke was stymied by the tall and long defenders, but she took a 6 good three pointers (making 4) and led the team in scoring. After the first quarter, she took good care of the ball.
MoKwuah played 18 minutes, and showed she could compete with Md's bigger players. She scored 10 points in the paint, and should have gotten some fouls that weren't called. When she wasn't double teamed, she flat out beat her defender.
Stepehenson and Taiwo were also contributors.
Gumbs was the recipient of a number of great passes, but missed every shot. She was 0-9. Mostly unnecessarily hurried shots. Would not have changed the outcome, but could have helped her confidence if she made some.

I found it odd for Md to be up by 30+ points, but still playing starters through the 4th quarter, but maybe point differential is important in rankings.

I liked this game, -- I can see improvement, and there were periods where it just seemed like our players knew they compete against a top notch team. It's going to be interesting to see how the chemistry is effected once some of the other players start coming back (no idea how long each is going to be out).

We play Georgetown on Sunday.

 

Last edited by xAC (11/21/2019 8:10 am)