EXPECTING GREATNESS - Terrapin women's basketball season recap

This season was going to say a lot about the Terrapin women's basketball team.

After the Terps won the first national championship in program history two years ago, and then lost early in the NCAA tournament last year, this season was to be the indicator of where the Terps really stand.

Was the celebration in Boston in 2006 a fluke, or was the heartbreak in Hartford in 2007 the aberration?

With their 98-87 loss in the Spokane regional final Monday, the Terps fell short of their goal of another national title. But after finishing with a 33-4 record, the Terps proved to everybody what they already knew - that they belong among the nation's elite.

"We're going to remember all the great times we had with one another, the great wins and obviously all our successes," junior guard Kristi Toliver said. "We'll try not to think about the bad things."

While anything less than a national championship can't be considered a complete success, there are certainly plenty of positives for the Terps to take away from this season.

They legitimately looked like the best team in the country in November with wins against top-10 teams Oklahoma and LSU.

They beat archrival Duke at home for the first time since 1998 in January, and in February they beat the Blue Devils at Cameron Indoor Stadium for the first time since 2000.

The Terps went on winning streaks of 10, 12 and eight games, won the second-most games in program history, and made it all the way to the regional finals.

It's all even more impressive considering coach Brenda Frese missed nine games while carrying twins. The Terps went 8-1 without Frese on the bench, and won the game at Duke the day Markus and Tyler were born.

"[These players] set the bar and raised the standard for Maryland women's basketball," Frese said.

The star-studded Terps also achieved plenty of individual milestones.

Senior forward Crystal Langhorne finished her unbelievable career as the Terps' all-time leading scorer and rebounder, and she had her jersey honored on Senior Day in February.

Junior forward Marissa Coleman, senior forward Laura Harper and Toliver each scored their 1,000th career points this season, Toliver became the Terps' all-time leader in 3-pointers made and free throw percentage, and Harper will leave College Park as the Terps' all-time leader in blocked shots. By the Stanford loss, this team was the first in NCAA history to boast four 1,400-point scorers at one time.

Toliver also broke the ACC single-season record for assists.

"It just puts so much into perspective about how quick a career goes by," Harper said. "It's really tough."

After losing a number of impact players from this year's team, the Terps will undoubtedly have a different look next year.

With Langhorne, Harper and forward Jade Perry gone, frontcourt depth will be a major question for the Terps.

Forward Drey Mingo, a freshman this year, is the most likely in-house candidate to help fill the frontcourt void, and the Terps hope blue-chip recruit Lynetta Kizer and the top-rated junior college forward in the country, Demaura Liles, will also contribute.

"It's going to be completely different," Toliver said. "Marissa and I are going to be the lone seniors. We're going to have to set the tone like the seniors we have now did.

"[The seniors] did a tremendous job leading this team, and all Marissa and I can do is just try to feed off what they did."

The 2007-08 Terps fell short of their ultimate goal, but they put together a season that is worth remembering.

"As difficult as right now is for our team and for our locker room," Frese said after the loss to the Cardinal, "I don't want to be sad that it's over. I want to be happy that it happened."

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