No. 9 Maryland women’s basketball struggled in the first half against George Mason. But it used a strong third quarter to ultimately propel it to a 84-62 victory.
The Terps finished its seven game homestand with an undefeated record, and will now head to Puerto Rico for a pair of contests.
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Here are three takeaways from Maryland’s win.
Poor 3-point shooting forced the Terps inside
Maryland struggled from beyond the arc in the first half. Instead of shooting its way out of the slump, the Terps found other ways to score.
“Every single player on our team can score in the paint, so I think our shots aren’t falling. That’s fine. We’ll go find other ways,” Oluchi Okananwa said.
In the first half, Maryland shot 1-of-10 from deep, missing its final eight 3-point attempts of the first half. In the second half, the Terps were even more conservative, shrinking their offense to inside the arc.
It worked. The Terps went on a run and took an extensive lead in the fourth quarter. Maryland outscored the Patriots by 15 in the third frame despite only hoisting up three 3-pointers.
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Once the Terps moved inside, they got results.
Maryland shot 14-of-23 from the field in the third quarter. Okananwa, Yarden Garzon and Addi Mack combined to shoot 12-of-14 in that stretch.
“I think that we weren’t as focused coming out in the third quarter,” George Mason head coach Vanessa Blair-Lewis said.
The Terps finished 2-of-17 from beyond the arc on Sunday. Maryland adjusted from those struggles by scoring 48 points in the paint.
The Terps used the turnover battle to their advantage
At the end of the first half, Maryland found itself tied with George Mason, and turnovers had much to do with it. The Terps turned the ball over 13 times in the first half and seemed completely out of sorts.
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“I thought we didn’t put a great first 20 minutes together, kind of out of sync and out of rhythm,” head coach Brenda Frese said.
In the third quarter, Maryland’s defense flipped the script, and the turnover bug cleaned up. Maryland forced nine turnovers in the frame, scoring 13 points off of them.
“We stopped turning the ball over, so that helped, but we started our D-to-O, we were able to get stops on the defensive end,” Frese said.
The Terps turned it over just three times in the third quarter and four times in the fourth. Saylor Poffenbarger was the team’s leader in forcing turnovers, intercepting passing lanes and turning the takeaways into layups. She had five steals, and was the facilitator of Maryland’s transitions.
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“Saylor did an amazing job with five steals and just leading us in transition and being unselfish,” Okananwa said. “We’re so dynamic.”
The Terps forced 10 turnovers in the first two frames combined, but their mistakes on offense outweighed the positive momentum. It was cleaning up its act on offense that ultimately played a key role in flipping the switch in the second half.
Domination on the glass
Despite heavily utilizing a small lineup, Maryland won the battle of the boards against George Mason.
The Terps were solid on the defensive end, racking up five more defensive rebounds than the Patriots. But Maryland really took advantage on the offensive glass.
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The Terps had 18 offensive rebounds compared to George Mason’s five, and succeeded at creating second-chance looks. The Terps had 11 more second-chance points, and scored eight of them in the second half.
“I love being able to see it, so it’s who we’ve got to continue to be. And it gives you extra opportunities on the offensive end, when you can get those rebounds,” Frese said.
Mir McLean and Yarden Garzon were particularly impactful — Garzon had nine rebounds and McLean had six. McLean had struggled heading into the match to find playing time but was a force in Maryland’s second-half run down low.
Of Garzon’s nine rebounds, seven were defensive — the offensive boards were grabbed by a committee of Terps. Ozzy-Momodu, McLean and Poffenbarger all had three offensive rebounds.
“It’s huge,” Frese said. “Yarden [Garzon] and [Poffenbarger] really impacted us there.”
