Trip to Santa Barbara is No Vacation

Noto bene: A hello to those of you in cyberspace. I'm John Willmott, one of the women's basketball broadcasters at WMUC. I, along with Scott and a few others, will be dropping in from time to time to offer analysis. Feel free to comment and add your take - we'll try to be as interactive as possible with this.

OK.....they're human.

For those of you that didn't drop $5 to watch the webcast of the Terps taking on UC Santa Barbara late Friday night (or if you were tired from waking up at 3 a.m. to grab that deeply discounted LCD TV), you missed what was easily the most competitive game Maryland has played. Maryland won by a single-digit margin for the first time all season, beating the Gauchos 75-71.

First off, let's make this much clear - this is not the same UCSB team that Maryland destroyed last season at the Comcast Center. Four starters and 11 letterwinners are back from a squad that made its 12th straight postseason appearance last year. They're another year older and wiser and, more importantly, the game was in their place.

With that said, it was still an uncharacteristic performance from the Terps. Maryland had, by far, their worst shooting performance of the year, shooting only 38.3% from the field. That's seven and a half percentage points worse than their previous low, a 45.9% outing against Oklahoma. The three-point shooting wasn't there either, since Maryland set lows for threes made and attempted, as well as three-point percentage.

Worst of all, though, was the lack of scoring balance that the Terps brought to the table. Marissa Coleman, Kristi Toliver and Laura Harper scored 30, 19 and 15, respectively, but the rest of the team only managed 11 points - combined. For a team as deep as Maryland, that's nothing short of disappointing, and while it was enough against the Gauchos last night, it's not going to cut it against the ACC or the rest of the torture test Maryland calls a nonconference schedule.

The two things that immediately jump out, though, are two notable absences for Maryland. Most obvious was Crystal Langhorne, who sat out her sixth game this season with her injury. Also missing, however, was head coach Brenda Frese. Following guidance from her doctor, coach sat out the Thanksgiving trip and left play-calling to her assistant staff.

As amazing as the Terps have been early on, I think we all realized that a game like this was coming. It was simply not realistic to believe that everyone in the Terps' way was going to be destroyed by the 26.5 points per game they had been averaging. This was also the opportune time for it to happen - a Thanksgiving trip out to the West Coast to take on a strong mid-major team bent on revenge is a perfect setup for a closer-than-expected result. Luckily, Maryland was able to get out unscathed.

The other bright spot in all of this - oddly enough - is the fact that Coach Frese wasn't able to make the trip. The day will come when she has to leave to have the twins, and the reins will be handed full-time to the assistants, likely led by first-year assistant Daron Park. As valuable as Brenda Frese is to the Maryland program, any opportunities that her team can get without her at the helm will be incredibly valuable, especially when Coach is forced to step aside full-time.

The Terps will try and return to their prior form tomorrow against UCLA. Again, we won't be there, but we'll be following along. Tip time is at 5:00, and the game will be televised on Comcast SportsNet Plus. The Plus must mean it's better, but if you're like me and have no freaking clue where to find it on the dial, head over to CSN and have them straighten you out. Either way, we'll talk to you again live on Tuesday night.