Junior Shatori Walker-Kimbrough scored 19 points and No. 5 Maryland beat No. 19 Michigan State, 60-44, on Sunday night to win the Terps’ second-straight Big Ten Tournament Championship.
Walker-Kimbrough added 10 rebounds. Junior Brionna Jones notched 10 points, 14 boards and six steals while senior Brene Moseley scored 10 points and dished six assists.
Walker-Kimbrough and Jones were named to the all-tournament team and Walker-Kimbrough was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
Maryland won the Big Ten Regular Season Championship last week. Since joining the conference, the Terrapins have won all four conference titles. Maryland has been the No. 1 seed in the last two Big Ten Tournaments.
The Terps (30-3) took a while to find an offensive rhythm, trailing Michigan State 14-12 at the end of the first quarter on 4-of-14 shooting. Senior Chloe Pavlech and Walker-Kimbrough made 3-pointers in the second quarter, but Maryland trailed 26-24 at the half.
The Terrapins used an 11-0 run to take a 38-30 lead late in the third, then opened the fourth with a 9-2 spurt to pull away. Maryland shot 42.4 percent from the field in the second half, including 40 percent from 3-point range, compared with 26.7 percent in the first half. The Terps outscored the Spartans 36-18 in the second half.
Todd
Playing three games in three days impacted both teams. Neither could make jump shots with any consistency and MSU’s zone stifled Brionna Jones who had an uncharacteristically poor 3-7 day shooting while the Terps launched 21 three point shots making only six. Fortunately, MSU was worse going 2-19 from long range and shooting barely 32 percent overall.
Though her shot wasn’t falling, Jones found other ways to contribute with 14 rebounds, six steals and a blocked shot. Tierney Pfirman had a significant impact all weekend but particularly in the semifinal and final. Against Northwestern she scored 17 and pulled down 7 rebounds. Like everyone else, her shot was off Sunday but she grabbed a dozen rebounds half of which came on the offensive glass.
This is the second time under coach Frese that Maryland has put together back to back 30 win seasons. The Terps will host the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament (Selection Show is March 14th) as a two seed.
Charlie Creme has them #7 overall which puts them in the Lexington Region where they’d face South Carolina if both reach the Elite Eight. This doesn’t seem unreasonable atthis moment. Creme The top four seeds are locked – UConn, SC, Notre Dame, Baylor (probably true even if Baylor or UConn loses in their tourney finals tonight).
Oregon State started the week as the 6 overall seed and moved up from that spot to # five overall. They won the Pac 12 Tournament beating UCLA by a dozen in the final Sunday night. Arizona State probably played themselves down from a 2 seed (#7 overall) to a three seed when they lost to Cal in the quarterfinals but Creme bumped UCLA into the #8 spot by virtue of reaching the Pac 12 final. UCLA was #10 in all three selection committee reveals.
Ohio State would likely have grabbed that last spot on the two line had they reached the B1GT final as they started the week as the committee’s #9 team. But their late season fade – losing 3 of their last 4 including twice to MSU and the injury to Ameryst Alston will almost certainly keep them on the 3 line.
The one open question is how the Big 12 final plays out. The most recent reveal came before Baylor crushed Texas by 24. That game was in Waco so it might nit hurt the Longhorns much. However, if Baylor throttles them again in the tourney final tonight, it might cause some shuffling among the two seeds (Oregon State, Texas, Maryland, UCLA).
· 11/12/2019