No. 3 UCLA too much for No. 12 Maryland women’s basketball in 97-67 loss

Two years ago, college sports’ drastic conference realignment changes brought major changes to Big Ten women’s basketball by bringing in two more elite contenders from Los Angeles: USC and UCLA.

Head coach Brenda Frese was eager to welcome them to a conference she has dominated since her arrival in 2014, but things have not recently broken her team’s way. Maryland fell to 1-3 in their four matchups against the pair, receiving a blowout loss from the No. 3 Bruins for a second straight year.

The Terps fell 97-67 in this year’s edition — their worst loss of the season. Oluchi Okananwa led all scorers with 25 in the loss, while Gabriela Jaquez led the Bruins with 22.

“It’s going to be about how we respond,” Saylor Poffenbarger said. “We have a lot of youth within our team, and this is going to prepare them for the games in March that are really important.”

UCLA wasted no time establishing why it’s so dangerous, quickly feeding the ball into the post to Lauren Betts for a pair of early layups. She helped her team jump out to a 13-4 lead before Maryland felt like it had even settled into the game.

Poffenbarger gave the Terps a shot in the arm, though, taking the ball to the rim with aggression. She looked more like she did early in the season and gave Maryland’s offense a foothold. The Terps battled back to cut the lead down to two, and the teams traded buckets and stops in the back half of the opening quarter.

“I need to play like that every game,” Poffenbarger said. “I needed to get my rhythm back and get back to my confidence [after returning from injury]. My team needs this from me.”

Maryland was down by just four points with under a minute to go, with a chance to get a stop and a bucket before the first frame ended. Then Kyndal Walker landed on Bruins’ guard Charlisse Leger-Walker’s foot beyond the arc, giving her three free throws. Maryland caught a break — she made just one — but the final miss careened to her teammate Angela Dugalić. Leger-Walker streaked back out to the perimeter for an open 3-pointer, which she knocked down.

“They make you pay for every mistake,” Frese said. “Cant remember the last time we had two missed opportunities at the free throw line with box outs.”

Those kinds of plays were emblematic of Maryland’s inability to establish its identity against a team of UCLA’s caliber. The Terps don’t often get outrebounded, but UCLA dominated the battle of the boards, 46-24.

The Bruins used the momentum they snatched at the end of the first quarter to open the game up in the second. Specifically, they began to light it up from the perimeter. Ledger-Walker found her stroke, hitting multiple 3-pointers.

While the Terps collapsed on Lauren Betts and her sister Siena, they lost track of Ledger-Walker and other Bruins’ shooters — Jaquez and Gianna Kneepkens — who began to light Maryland up.

On the other end, Poffenbarger and Okananwa did their best to keep Maryland alive. They made some tough shots, but the Terps went into the locker room down 12 points in need of major second-half adjustments.

Instead, they came out with a string of missed 3-pointers by Yarden Garzon. Meanwhile, UCLA continued to build offensively, going to the Betts sisters down low, who finished layups and drew fouls.

When that wasn’t working, Jaquez or Ledger-Walker found jumpers from beyond the arc or midrange. Okananwa did her best to keep Maryland alive, not dropping at all from her trademark intensity and attacking the rim. Still, buckets were hard to come by, as Betts slowed everything down at the rim.

“There’s a reason they’re ranked in the top four, all of them can space the floor, so it’s a really hard matchup,” Frese said.

Alongside rebounding, Frese likes her teams to control the pace — making opponents uncomfortable by running at them in transition, getting easy layups and drawing fouls. Instead, the game was played at UCLA’s speed, as it was the team getting out in transition to hurt the Terps.

By the time the fourth quarter came around, Maryland was down 26 and preparing for its flight home.

Three things to know

1. Terps couldn’t get inside. Maryland’s offense was inefficient, thanks to a combination of poor perimeter shooting and Lauren Betts stifling most of Maryland’s attempts to get to the rim. She had five blocks, while the Terps shot 37.1% from the field and 26.1% from deep.

2. Garzon struggled. Garzon has not been as reliable in a Maryland uniform as she had been in the first three years of her career for the Hoosiers. In a game where the Terps needed offensive boosts, she was 2-of-11 from the floor and 2-of-8 from deep.

3. Terps go 1-1 in the City of Angels. While the uncompetitive nature of the loss will sting for Maryland, going 1-1 on the road against USC and UCLA was about as good as it could realistically hope for in its current state of health. Maryland will return home for three straight Big Ten games at the Xfinity Center.

from Testudo Times https://ift.tt/NnLsgHp