Le Journal

Two years ago, college sports’ drastic conference realignment changes brought major changes to Big Ten women’s basketball by bringing in two more elite contenders from Los Angeles: USC and UCLA.Head coach Brenda Frese was eager to welcome them to a conference she has dominated since her arrival in 2014, but things have not recently broken her team’s way. Maryland fell to 1-3 in their four matchups against the pair, receiving a blowout loss from the No. 3 Bruins for a second straight year. The Terps fell 97-67 in this year’s edition — their worst loss of the season. Oluchi Okananwa led all scorers with 25 in the loss, while Gabriela Jaquez led the Bruins with 22. “It’s going to be about how we respond,” Saylor Poffenbarger said. “We have a lot of youth within our team, and this is going to prepare them for the games in March that are really important.” UCLA wasted no time establishing why it’s so dangerous, quickly feeding the ball into the post to Lauren Betts for a pair of early layups. She helped her team jump out to a 13-4 lead before Maryland felt like it had even settled into the game. Poffenbarger gave the Terps a shot in the arm, though, taking the ball to the rim with aggression. She looked more like she did early in the season and gave Maryland’s offense a foothold. The Terps battled back to cut the lead down to two, and the teams traded buckets and stops in the back half of the opening quarter. “I need to play like that every game,” Poffenbarger said. “I needed to get my rhythm back and get back to my confidence [after returning from injury]. My team needs this from me.”Maryland was down by just four points with under a minute to go, with a chance to get a stop and a bucket before the first frame ended. Then Kyndal Walker landed on Bruins’ guard Charlisse Leger-Walker’s foot beyond the arc, giving her three free throws. Maryland caught a break — she made just one — but the final miss careened to her teammate Angela Dugalić. Leger-Walker streaked back out to the perimeter for an open 3-pointer, which she knocked down. “They make you pay for every mistake,” Frese said. “Cant remember the last time we had two missed opportunities at the free throw line with box outs.” Those kinds of plays were emblematic of Maryland’s inability to establish its identity against a team of UCLA’s caliber. The Terps don’t often get outrebounded, but UCLA dominated the battle of the boards, 46-24. The Bruins used the momentum they snatched at the end of the first quarter to open the game up in the second. Specifically, they began to light it up from the perimeter. Ledger-Walker found her stroke, hitting multiple 3-pointers.While the Terps collapsed on Lauren Betts and her sister Siena, they lost track of Ledger-Walker and other Bruins’ shooters — Jaquez and Gianna Kneepkens — who began to light Maryland up. On the other end, Poffenbarger and Okananwa did their best to keep Maryland alive. They made some tough shots, but the Terps went into the locker room down 12 points in need of major second-half adjustments. Instead, they came out with a string of missed 3-pointers by Yarden Garzon. Meanwhile, UCLA continued to build offensively, going to the Betts sisters down low, who finished layups and drew fouls. When that wasn’t working, Jaquez or Ledger-Walker found jumpers from beyond the arc or midrange. Okananwa did her best to keep Maryland alive, not dropping at all from her trademark intensity and attacking the rim. Still, buckets were hard to come by, as Betts slowed everything down at the rim. “There’s a reason they’re ranked in the top four, all of them can space the floor, so it’s a really hard matchup,” Frese said. Alongside rebounding, Frese likes her teams to control the pace — making opponents uncomfortable by running at them in transition, getting easy layups and drawing fouls. Instead, the game was played at UCLA’s speed, as it was the team getting out in transition to hurt the Terps. By the time the fourth quarter came around,…

Maryland men’s basketball hadn’t won a game since 2025. When conference play picked back up in early January, it lost four straight. But like the Terps, Penn State entered Sunday’s contest with an identical Big Ten record: 0-6. After seizing an early lead, Maryland ultimately came out on top in the battle of the struggling programs, 96-73. Here are three takeaways from Sunday’s action. Diggy Coit is a superstar There’s no doubt that Penn State presented the Terps’ easiest matchup since Old Dominion on Dec. 28. But Maryland’s cohesion and execution Sunday makes one wonder how it looked so discombobulated against its recent Big Ten foes. Look no further than Diggy Coit. The senior was the reason why the game was essentially over at the half. Coit has exploded for multiple high-scoring efforts over the course of season; he’s an extremely streaky shooter with a lethal stepback jumper. However, he’s seldom stacked these iconic performances. After his 30-point outing against USC on Tuesday, Coit outdid himself with a 43-point performance in Xfinity Center. It was Coit’s showing in the first half that dictated the game’s flow. He outscored the Nittany Lions by himself in the opening frame, logging a staggering 30 points on 10-of-14 shooting. His 3-point shooting was incredible, no doubt — the 5-foot-11 sniper racked up six triples in the first 20 minutes. Some of those makes were well beyond the arc, too. Perhaps more impressive was Coit’s diverse array of moves to get to the basket. Often, he worked to isolate himself on a big, utilizing a switch on a screen or a pick with one of Maryland’s frontcourt players. The crafty guard simply proved too nimble for some of Penn State’s flat-footed forwards, and his high-off-glass scoop layups and ability to draw fouls were indicative of a player on a heater. But Coit’s on-ball gravity did wonders for the Terps’ ball movement and securing open looks. In the first half, Maryland had seven assists, with multiple going to players spaced along the 3-point line. Elijah Saunders hit two first-half triples — a result of the well-oiled offense. What’s up with the second half struggles? Maryland went step-for-step with USC in the first half Tuesday, but it completely fell apart down the stretch. That narrative of second half struggles continued Sunday. The Nittany Lions used a 15-0 scoring run to cut Maryland’s lead down to 10 points over the first 10 minutes of the period. One thing was evident in that dismal stretch — head coach Buzz Williams did very little to ensure that Coit handled the ball on the offensive end. Simply put, the Terps were spoiled by Coit’s near-perfect first half. That is, they rarely had to craft a a set offensive game plan because the offense was constantly in motion, shooting in rhythm and operating smoothly on odd-man breaks. But when the Nittany Lions began to make their shots and momentum shifted, they had time to set its structure on defense and trap Maryland. When Coit did get possession of the ball, he was often double-teamed and cornered — in fact, he didn’t score a single point in the frame until nearly the nine-minute mark. When Maryland’s offense slows down, it hinders it significantly. But when Coit got the ball in his hands again, things shifted back in Maryland’s favor, and it won the game quite handily. With Pharrel Payne, the Terps could get away with slowing down the offense and searching for paint mismatches. Without the star big, speed and motion must be the team’s calling card. 10 rotation players for Buzz One of the most interesting aspects of Williams’ coaching strategies has been his lineups, which he has tampered with constantly throughout the season. Whether it be due to injuries, poor performance or successful combinations, Williams has tried a litany of tandems and mixtures — they’ve led to contrasting results. On Sunday, the starting lineup consisted of Coit, Saunders, Darius Adams, Isaiah Watts and George Turkson Jr. The notable omission, of…

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