Maryland women’s basketball (16-11, 8-8 Big Ten) hosts its final home game at Xfinity Center for the 2023-24 season Thursday night, welcoming Wisconsin (13-13, 6-10 Big Ten) for the teams’ sole regular season matchup of the campaign.
The Terps currently are tied for sixth in the Big Ten standings with two regular season games left before the conference tournament begins next week in Minneapolis.
Maryland had high expectations entering the campaign, picked to finish fourth by both the media and coaches in the Big Ten preseason poll. The Terps kept largely the same roster that sent them to the Elite Eight last season outside of Diamond Miller and Abbey Meyers, and were also getting Allie Kubek back from an ACL injury.
But this season has not gone as expected for Maryland, who began the year ranked as the No. 14 team in the AP Poll but fell out after some blowout losses to ranked teams. The Terps haven’t been able to re-enter the Top 25 Poll and have struggled to secure wins against their ranked conference foes, keeping them in the middle of the pack in the Big Ten.
Coach Brenda Frese expected the scoring to be by committee entering the season. Frese was true to her word, but not in a way she envisioned, as it took a while for multiple pieces of the offense to click and be consistent — there would be a game when one player put up big numbers before retreating into the background for a stretch. The pattern repeated into 2024 until Bri McDaniel and Jakia Brown-Turner found their grooves.
Maryland faced a daunting regular season, playing one of the hardest schedules in the country, and losing three players to season-ending knee injuries to shrink the team’s depth. The depth was never really there all season, as Emma Chardon and Riley Nelson did not make much of an impact on the court during their limited action.
Chardon averaged 6.5 minutes across eight games while five-star freshman Nelson played just 14.1 minutes a game and contributed 5.1 points before getting injured halfway into the season.
After losing graduate student Lavender Briggs for the rest of the season with a knee injury last week, the Terps are down to a primarily seven-player rotation and have little wiggle room.
“We’ve faced a lot of adversity at this point in the season and you got to be used to things constantly changing,” Brinae Alexander said. “You also have to be ready when your number is called.”
Even with the inconsistency this season, Maryland has yet to suffer a bad loss and kept numerous games close The Terps trailed by just five points after the third quarter against No. 2 Ohio State last weekend, and against No. 6 Iowa Feb. 3, grabbed a 63-61 lead in the third quarter. But Maryland hasn’t put together a complete 40-minute performance against the best competition it’s faced, and the Terps sit on the right side of the bubble in most of the projections as a double-digit seed as a result.
Maryland needs everyone in its rotation to contribute points, take better care of the basketball and stay out of foul trouble to make noise in March. First comes the Terps’ February finale against the Badgers.
“We have a very small margin for error where we have to be really consistent as a team,” Frese said.
