The Terps look to wrap up their West Coast road trip with a win.
After earning Brenda Frese her 600th win Sunday at Oregon, No. 16 Maryland women’s basketball stays on the West Coast and heads North to face Washington.
The Terps are looking for their first win against Washington ever — the Huskies took the only matchup between the two teams in 2016.
The Terps and Huskies will play in a pre-Super Bowl matchup Sunday at 4 p.m. ET. The game will be streamed on Big Ten Plus.
Washington Huskies (14-9, 5-6 Big Ten)
Head coach Tina Langley is in her fourth year with Washington after serving as an assistant under Frese at Maryland from 2008 to 2015 and a six-year tenure as Rice’s head coach. In her nine total years as a head coach, she has taken her team to the NCAA Tournament once, but has yet to do so at Washington.
“It’s a family reunion being able to go against Tina Langley, who was with me for two of our final fours in 2014 and 2015,” Frese said. “Then, [Washington associate head coach] David Atkins, the father of Rylan Atkins, who was our director of basketball [operations from 2009-14].”
Washington has experienced a decent start to the season, but has suffered key losses to then-No. 7 LSU, No. 1 UCLA, then-No. 20 Michigan State and No. 8 Ohio State, along with tough defeats to teams like Montana.
Players to watch
Elle Ladine, junior guard, 5-foot-11, No. 24 — Ladine leads the Huskies with 15.7 points per game in her third season with the team, and first as a starter. She also averages 4.6 rebounds and 2.4 assists in 23 starts this season, shooting 45.3% from the field and 36.4% from deep.
Sayvia Sellers, sophomore guard, 5-foot-7, No. 0 — Sellers is in her second season with the Huskies after being named to the Pac-12 All-Freshman team last season. She is second on the team with 15.5 points per game, while also averaging 3.8 assists and 2.8 rebounds this season.
Dalayah Daniels, graduate student forward, 6-foot-4, No. 14 — Daniels is in her third season at Washington after spending her first two years at Cal. She leads the Huskies in with 6.7 rebounds per game, to go with 11.3 points per game. She has started every game in her 88-game career at Washington.
Strength
Efficiency. Washington is one of the best teams in the Big Ten in terms of shooting. The Huskies are second in the conference with a 47.1% shooting percentage from the field and are second-best from deep, hitting 36.3% of their 3-point attempts. Washington also has the conference’s second-best free-throw percentage, making 78.2% of its attempts from the charity stripe.
Weakness
Rebounding. Washington averages just 35.2 boards per game, good for the third-fewest in the Big Ten. Meanwhile, Maryland is third-best in the conference at rebounding, with 41.9 boards per game.
Three things to watch
1. Can Maryland start a run? After a recent rough stretch, the Terps have not won consecutive games in over three weeks. Maryland has a chance to end that trend Sunday.
2. Can Sarah Te-Biasu keep it up? Te-Biasu has endured her best stretch of the season, scoring 20-or-more points in two of the last three games, including 26 at Oregon. It will be interesting to see if Te-Biasu can keep up her hot hand Sunday.
3. Will Christina Dalce’s minutes increase? After only playing eight minutes Thursday at Oregon, Dalce’s presence on the court has been lacking as of late. Maryland may try to implement her more to get her back to the form she was in earlier this season.