One Game at a Time

It's been 10 days since the last women's basketball game, and tonight was the final home game of the season for a proud Maryland Women's basketball squad. Tonight the team paid respect to seniors Jade Perry, Ashleigh Newman, Laura Harper, Christie Marrone, and Crystal Langhorne. This squad of 5 players were the first Coach Frese recruited and took the Terps to national prominence in 2006 when they won the NCAA trophy.

There were lots of tears off the court when the seniors emerged from the locker room and assembled in front of the entranceway for the final game of the regular season. Those tears continued when Coach Frese appeared (just 7 days off from delivering twin boys) to deliver glass enclosed jerseys and photos to the seniors and thank them for the prestige they have brought to the Terrapin program.

The media coverage for this evening's game rivaled that of men's basketball. There were television crews from the Sports Machine, WBAL, WUSA, and NBC4. Gail Burton (AP), along with Milton, and several other reporters that usually cover men's basketball, attended. It was pretty tight on the sidelines.

You can view photos of Crystal Langhorne, Jade Perry, Ashleigh Newman, Kristi Toliver, and Laura Harper as well as read about Maryland's thrilling victory over Florida State over on the DC Sports Box.

Fortunately the game was against Florida State and there weren't any Floridians in the media area. If this final home game was against a more local team (Virginia) there would probably have been more competition for spots on the floor.

I shot the game with my D200 and 70-200/2.8 lens, along with my D2H and 400/2.8 prime. The 400 is way too much lens for shooting on the baseline, but 200 is just too short for shooting the other side of the court. Since I don't have a 300 I have to go with the 400 and do my best. I can get some really great tight shots with the 400 but it's also very difficult working in such a tight space.

I'm happy I got Coleman's shot that tied the game with 4 seconds to go. I'm going to run it as my lead-in photo to Anthony Amobi's article on the game.

We applied for credentialed access to the NCAA 1st and 2nd round at Comcast Center on March 23 and March 25. We haven't heard back yet but I'm cautiously optimistic we'll be granted the credential. We've covered every women's home game this season (as well as a few away games) and I think that Maryland now supports our efforts. I hope to hear soon if we were granted access or not.

Baseball is about to get into full swing, and softball played it's first game this past week. Lacrosse also played this weekend and plays again up at Mount St Mary's on Tuesday at 3pm. I probably won't go since it's pretty far away.

A wheel on my Think Tank broke lose in the airport on Saturday. I need to return the bag and get a new one. Hopefully Kirk will help me out!

It's been 8 days ... 8 long days ... since I last attended a sporting event. I realize that in another month or so baseball, softball, women's LAX, and men's LAX will be in full swing and overlapping men's and women's basketball and I'll be dreaming of a couple of nights off. But for now it's safe to say that I've missed getting behind the eyepiece in the week or so that I haven't shot any sports. I've taken pictures around the house and posted them up to my Flickr account, but it's not as fun as athletics.

Tonight Maryland faced Virginia. It was expected that this game would be tight. Both teams are competing for the #1 spot in the ACC, and Virginia is a very physical team. This was obvious almost immediately as Virginia took on a player control foul in one of the early possessions.

Brenda Frese was as huge as ever and it's really quite surprising that she's still sitting courtside and participating in the coaching. It's a real testament to her commitment to the team. She looks like she could pop any day now, and she's still down there talking to Coach Park about plays and what-not. I have a lot of respect for somebody who is over 9 months pregnant and is still actively coaching an ACC game.

The game was very back-and-forth. There was no clear winner throughout the entire contest and both teams had strong leads at different points. Towards the middle of the second half Virginia had the momentum and looked like they were going to take one away from the Terps with an 8 point lead but Marissa Coleman put a stop to it. She had some key plays where she forced a turnover and made a driving layup that gave the Terps the spark they needed to get back into it.

Crystal Langhorne continued to excel and scored 17 points. Laura Harper scored her 186th block and tied Kris Kirchner for the all-time-block record at Maryland. She also banged home 25 points and 15 rebounds. She really is a remarkable player. Marissa Coleman was also in the double-double category tonight with 21 points and 12 rebounds. She managed to keep her cool against Britnee Miller, who was working her from the opening tipoff. At one point shortly before half time Coleman was blatantly fouled by Miller in a really physical manner in the backcourt and it looked like Coleman was going to knock her out. Cooler heads prevailed and Coleman ended up going to the line and scored.

Anthony Amobi from the DC Sports Box was there to work on the article. I didn't get very much time to talk with him this evening because I was busy in the media room helping Yuchen Nie get his email account set up. Yuchen is joining the DC Sports Box and I wanted to make sure he's in the loop on all of our communications. I got there late (as did he) and we were both very hungry so I didn't have much time for chatting before tipoff. It's a shame because there were several people there tonight I would have liked to talk with (Eddie, Reza, Greg, Yuchen, Anthony, and Natalia).

You can read Anthony's article on Maryland's Think-Pink win over the Virginia Cavaliers over on the DC Sports Box website here. It contains my photos as well.

It's been about a week or so since the Maryland vs Duke women's game in the Comcast Center. The DC Sports Box was fortunate enough to receive credentials to this event and it was a lot of fun to attend. Tonight the Terps were back in action playing the Miami Hurricanes.

In the media room prior to the game several reporters were conversing over pasta about how nice the women's game are to work in comparison to the men's games. I've felt the same thing this season. The women's games are much more low key, they're faster, and theres a lot more room down on the floor to work.

Tonight was a good game for the Terps. Crystal Langhorne scored her 2,000th point just 24 seconds into the first half. The 2,000 point plateau is pretty significant. Only 15 other players in the ACC have crossed that threshold, and none of them from the University of Maryland. Toliver also picked up her 500th assist this evening. Ashleigh Newman got a ball for something like 139 consecutive starts as a Terrapin. The team is really racking up the records!

Langhorne's 2,000 points is really remarkable. In comparison, James Gist just passed 1,000 points on the men's team. With 2,000 points she had to score something like 20+ points per game since joining the team. It's pretty amazing.

Anthony was there working on an article. That takes a big load of my shoulders. I'm able to simply photograph and post. His article (along with my photos) of Maryland's 90-50 win over the Miami Hurricanes is over on the DC Sports Box. Please go take a look!

The Terps lost to the Carolina Tar Heels this afternoon down in Chapel Hill. I was up in College Park reporting on the wrestling team, but I considered traveling south to cover this game. The two teams are very good (#3 vs #4) and both teams are loss-less in the ACC conference. Whoever won this game climbs to the undisputed #1 position in the ACC, so it was a pretty important game.

Ultimately I decided to stick around at home. I did watch most of the game and reviewed the box score and notes and wrote an article. It's not very good since I wasn't there in person but its the best I could muster.

The Terps are back in town on Thursday for a game against Miami. I'll hopefully be there to shoot and report.

Well this will be a game the Maryland women won't soon forget... 64 point margin of victory. It's the biggest in Clemson Tiger history and the largest ACC margin of victory for the Terps since they played Wake Forest back in 1980, and the second most lopsided win for the team in the history of the program. They shot 73% in the second half as nearly every shot managed to find the basket. Even diving throws into what seemed like oblivion fell in.

Laura Harper is just amazing. 11 rebounds and 27 points. She's now the 2nd leading scorer in Maryland school history (she past former teammate Shay Doron this evening). Vicky Bullet (now with the Mystics) is the current record holder (from back in 1989) and she's 38 points ahead of Harper. It was great if Harper could become the scoring leader during the upcoming Duke game on Monday. I suppose it's possible given that we play BC on Thursday. 19 points per game? Maybe...

Crystal Langhorne is also ridiculous. Harper's the righty and Langhorne is on the left. Between the two they control the post position. She was the second leading scorer this afternoon with 25 points. Toliver came behind her with 19. It took Toliver awhile to start shooting (she mostly just dished in the first half) but when she did she notched the points pretty quickly. She hit 3 3-pointers and had 10 assists overall.

Ashleigh Newman played her in her 123rd consecutive game, tying a team record.

Lots of fun shooting the game and writing the article tonight. Please go take a look over at the DC Sports Box.