No. 19 Maryland women’s basketball extends win streak to three with 74-60 win over Indiana

Photo courtesy of Ashley Ray/Maryland Terrapins

After holding a 12-point advantage just five minutes prior, No. 19 Maryland women’s basketball led 39-37 with 2:48 left in the third quarter and desperately needed a basket to halt Indiana’s momentum.

As she’s done all season long, Shyanne Sellers rose to the occasion. After scoring just two points through 27 minutes of play, Sellers took her defender 1-on-1, blew past her with ease and finished off an easy layup. That sparked a 10-2 run and a Sellers’ takeover.

On the opening two possessions of the fourth quarter, she knocked down back-to-back jumpers from behind the arc. A 23-point outburst in nearly 13 minutes of play catapulted the Terps to a 74-60 road win and spoiled Indiana’s Senior Night Thursday.

“The first three quarters weren’t going my way. I felt like I was letting my team down,” Sellers said. “I felt like most of them were pretty good shots and they felt good so I knew they would start falling. Thankfully they started falling in the fourth quarter.”

Without Saylor Poffenbarger — the leading rebounder and third-highest scorer — Maryland needed one of its other role players to step up. It was Christina Dalce who did just that. She notched seven of the Terps’ first nine points to get the offense going. Dalce finished with 11 points and eight rebounds.

Indiana’s lack of size has been a problem at times this season, and that was on full display. The Hoosiers had no answers for Dalce, allowing her to easily score. On multiple occasions, she caught the ball around the free-throw line, attacked the basket and finished off the easy layup over a smaller defender.

However, it wasn’t just Dalce who provided a much-needed spark. After combining for 15 minutes over the past seven contests, Amari DeBerry knew she would see more court time against Indiana. And she gave Maryland four impactful minutes. The 6-foot-6 forward utilized her length to record three first-half blocks, while also contributing four points.

“It’s a really physical, really tough game, but I thought we were disruptive,” head coach Brenda Frese said. “We had a ton of deflections, a lot of stops that really helped us to be able to get stops to scores.”

Despite this, the Terps’ offense struggled out of the gates. It took nearly four minutes before Maryland got on the scoreboard, missing its first seven shots from the field and recording three early turnovers.

But the Hoosiers showed no signs of a sluggish start, opening up an early six-point advantage. Entering Thursday’s contest, Indiana held the second-best three-point shooting percentage in the Big Ten. That was evident in the first quarter, as jumpers from junior guards Shay Ciezki and Yarden Grazon led a 50% shooting output from downtown. 

“I just thought we were really resilient through their runs,” Frese said. “When they came out in the first quarter, I thought we were really confident and resilient to be able to play through it and really settled in.”

Once Dalce got the scoring started, the Terps couldn’t be contained. They responded with a 7-0 run to take their first lead of the game. A crucial three-pointer from Sarah Te-Biasu knotted the game at 14 apiece after the first quarter.

Maryland’s defense turned it up another notch in the second quarter. It held the Hoosiers to just six points on 21.4% shooting from the field. 

With the Terps down 18-16 midway through the second quarter, they embarked on a 14-0 run to flip the game. The duo of Kaylene Smikle and DeBerry led the resurgence, accounting for 10 of Maryland’s 16 second-quarter points. 

The Terps had all the momentum heading into the break and had an opportunity to put the game out of reach. Instead, Indiana landed the first blow of the second half. The Hoosiers used a 13-3 run to trim Maryland’s deficit to two points.

But it was Sellers’ late-game heroics that restored the Terps’ double-digit advantage and put the game out of reach, moving them to 10-1 on the road.

“Really proud of this team to be able to come into a really tough environment against a really good team with Indiana,” Frese said. “Just all the adversity we faced, losing Saylor before this game and obviously not having Bri [McDaniel].”

She finished with 25 points on 7-for-15 shooting from the field and a perfect 8-for-8 from the charity stripe. Smikle added 16 points and six rebounds. Allie Kubek’s presence on the glass was massive, as she recorded a game-high 11 boards.

Indiana’s backcourt tandem of Garzon and Ciezki combined for 33 points on 11-for-22 shooting, but their efforts were outdone by a complete Maryland performance.

The Terps wrap up regular season play with a big matchup against No. 12 Ohio State on Sunday. Maryland will be looking to seal up a double-bye heading into the Big Ten Tournament and avenge a 74-66 loss from Jan. 23.