Terp women left out of NCAA Tournament

For the first time since her first season in College Park, coach Brenda Frese's Terrapin women's basketball team will miss the NCAA Tournament.

After a rocky season marred by youthful inconsistency and unrealized potential, the Terps officially learned their postseason fate Sunday night, when they were excluded from the 64-team tournament field. It is the first time since the 2002-03 season, Frese's first as the Terps' coach, that the team was not selected for college basketball's big dance.

Instead, the Terps will play on in the sport's less glamorous counterpart, the WNIT. The team plays Iona this Friday at Comcast Center in its opening-round game.

"We're extremely disappointed," Frese said Sunday. "We also know and feel at the end of the day, it's a situation that you don't ever want to put yourself squarely on the bubble. We take full responsibility in terms of not making it in to the tournament."

The young Terps – the team started two freshmen and sophomores in its last game and featured nine players with one season or less of collegiate experience – made for a maddeningly inconsistent outfit equally capable of orchestrating upsets and faltering against lesser competition.

The Terps (19-12) twice lost to ACC champion Duke by only a single possession this season, but also stumbled early on the road, including a startling loss at Towson that foreshadowed the team's unpredictable season.

A particularly brutal midseason stretch likely cost the Terps dearly Sunday. From late January to early February, the team lost four straight home games, including three by a total of five combined points.

After a 5-6 start in conference play, the team dropped four of its last five conference games, including a 66-64 loss to No. 1 seed Duke in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals. A win could have clinched a tournament bid.

"For us, it felt like we were just one possession short or one game short," Frese said. "Those are all possessions, and possessions that are within our control – stepping up and making free throws, one less turnover, getting a defensive stop, getting one more rebound. They're all areas that we can continue to look back on and be able to learn and grow for next season."

As a snubbed "bubble" team, the Terps enter the WNIT as tournament favorites along with Boston College, Michigan and Syracuse. Should they advance past the Gaels (18-13) this week, the Terps would face the winner of Drexel and East Carolina several days later. The sites and dates for the second-round games have not yet been set.

"The more time we get together, the better," Frese said. "Every single day that we get together is an opportunity for us to continue to improve, to be coached, to keep learning the game."

shaffer@umdbk.com