Duke WBB plays at Maryland on Sunday 11/10 at 1pm ET on FS1 (
streaming link,
listen,
live stats)
I guess I started writing this game preview back in August, when the Maryland women took a
foreign tour to Croatia and Montenegro to play a pair of exhibition games. In that post I mentioned the Terrapins barely getting into the 2024 NCAA Tournament after going 9-9 in conference play, and I provided a very early look at what head coach Brenda Frese did in the offseason to form this year's squad. (It's worth a read, but I did include a video of her dancing, so you've been warned.)
Maryland is ranked #18 in the AP and Coaches Polls, and #14 by
Bart Torvik. They were picked to finish 4th in the Big Ten, by both the coaches and the media, in a pair of
preseason polls. Both voting bodies also selected one Terp, Shyanne Sellers, to their 10-player All-Conference preseason team. The Big Ten held a Media Day in early October, and in one
segment, Coach Frese, Sellers, and incoming transfer Christina Dalce previewed their team:
"We're going to be really fast, and you know I love getting up and down the floor, and being able to push the Maryland tempo that we want to play at, and we're going to be able to send waves..."
As I observed in my summer writeup, Coach Frese started her head coaching tenure at Maryland when Kara Lawson was still playing at Tennessee, and she's now in her 23rd season. Last year she used a 9-player rotation, and while only 4 of those players have returned, 3 were starters: Sellers, Allie Kubek, and Bri McDaniel. So far this season, the Terps have a pair of big wins, 74-32 against UMBC in Baltimore (
recap,
box score), and 70-47 at home against Coppin State (
recap,
box score). Granted, it's a small sample size, but based on those two games, their roster has winnowed down to the following rotation:
PROBABLE STARTERS
6-0 junior guard Kaylene Smikle (13.5 pts, 3.0 reb, 0.5 ast, 2.0 stl)
5-5 grad guard Sarah Te-Biasu (10.0 pts, 3.0 reb, 2.0 ast, 1.0 stl)
6-2 senior guard Shyanne Sellers (9.0 pts, 4.5 reb, 3.5 ast, 1.5 stl)
6-2 senior forward Christina Dalce (8.5 pts, 7.0 reb, 1.0 ast, 1.0 stl)
6-2 grad forward Allie Kubek (6.5 pts, 6.0 reb, 0.5 ast)
TOP RESERVES
6-2 redshirt junior guard Saylor Poffenbarger (6.5 pts, 8.5 reb, 1.5 ast, 1.5 blk)
5-10 junior guard Bri McDaniel (5.5 pts, 1.0 reb, 1.0 ast)
5-11 grad wing Mir McLean (5.5 pts, 5.0 reb, 1.0 ast)
6-6 senior forward Amari DeBerry (4.0 pts, 0.0 reb, 0.5 ast)
6-0 sophomore forward Emily Fisher (2.0 pts, 0.5 reb, 0.0 ast)
6-2 freshman wing Ava McKennie (1.0 pts, 1.5 reb. 0.5 ast, 2.0 stl)
BENCH PLAYERS
6-2 redshirt junior forward Emma Chardon
6-3 junior forward Isimenme Ozzy-Momodu
5-9 freshman guard Kyndal Walker
6-2 freshman forward Breanna Williams
I don't have to describe the 9 newcomers because Coach Frese already did, as transcribed by
Inside the Black & Gold:
"We also welcome all-Big Ten first team honoree Kaylene Smikle coming from Rutgers, I think you got a little taste yesterday to be able to see she's a big-time scorer that's going to have an immediate impact. She can score it at all three levels. We also bring in Atlantic 10 Player of the Year with Sarah Te-Biasu, who gives us a true ultimate point guard – can score it, can pass it, really high IQ. We also have co-Big East Defensive Player of the Year coming from Villanova with Christina Dalce, who gained invaluable experience this past summer with playing three-on-three internationally. She's a rebounder, a defender, a shot blocker, and going to be really, really impressive in our transition game.
Saylor Poffenbarger, we welcome her back home. Long time overdue. Double-double coming out of the SEC. She's our connector. She's the one that kind of puts it all together and we're excited to have her back. We also love the fact that we've been able to bring in 6-foot-6 Amari DeBerry as well as Mir McLean. When you talk about their winning championship mentality, their rebounding and again, to be able to extend that depth for us on the roster.
We also added three freshmen, with Kyndal [Walker], [Breanna Williams] and Ava [McKennie]. And what I love about these three is they all come in having won championships. They have a winner’s mentality, not afraid to work, and have really been impressive as a class coming in.”
The Next did a Big Ten preview that covers each team, and they did a good job summarizing Maryland's offseason changes.
In some ways, Duke's road win at Liberty was a warmup for this game, but in other ways, there's really no comparison. Liberty Arena holds 4,000 people, which is the size of the student section for the
XFINITY Center in College Park, Maryland. Its seating capacity is just under 18,000 -- everything is bigger in the Big Ten. Keep in mind, though, that many of the players on this Duke team won an NCAA Tournament game against Ohio State on their home floor in Columbus, a slightly larger venue and with much more at stake.
A final note of relevance: on Monday, the Duke program
announced that Riley Nelson, a 6-2 sophomore guard who transferred from Maryland to Duke over the summer, will miss the 2024-2025 season with a medical redshirt, as she continues to recover from a knee injury that she sustained in January. She'll have to voice her newfound allegiance from the bench.
dbknews.com
