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Maryland entered this weekend the clear underdog against three opponents with Final Four pedigrees. They left with the trophy, proving that "experience isn't everything."
Freshman point guard Kristi Toliver scored the team's final five points in regulation -- including a rainbow three-pointer from the right corner over 6-7 Alison Bales that tied the game with six seconds to play -- then made the go-ahead free throws in overtime in the Terps' 78-75 win in last night's national championship game. Toliver's heroics capped a 13-point comeback, and gave the school its first-ever women's basketball title.
It's also the first championship for Maryland head coach Brenda Frese, who has taken the Terps from 10-18 to 34-4 and the title in just four years. With the win last night, Maryland becomes just the fourth school -- North Carolina, Connecticut, and Stanford are the others -- to win championships in both men's and women's basketball.
It gets even better for Maryland fans. Of the eight players who saw time in the championship game, seven will return next year. Shay Doron (16 points) is a junior; Laura Harper (16), Crystal Langhorne (12), Ashleigh Newman (4), and Jade Perry (4) are sophomores; and Marissa Coleman (10) joins Toliver in the freshman class. Harper was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four.
In a sport traditionally dominated by -- if not dynasties -- perennial powerhouses, could we be adding Maryland to the list of year-in, year-out title contenders headed by Connecticut and Tennessee? With one national championship already under the collective belt of this young, talented team, it's certainly a possibility.
Maryland officials planned a celebration today at 3 p.m. at the outdoor amphitheater adjacent to Stamp Student Union on the College Park campus.
The victory also gave Maryland fans the opportunity to behave like jackasses. Although the disorder didn't approach the levels of when the Maryland men's team won their title in 2002, it's nice to see Terps supporters showing the same misguided enthusiasm for the women.
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And in the least surprising news item of the day, NBC's morning show reported some small fires in College Park last night. Can't UMD students come up with anything else?
And then this...
Shea Hoxie, 21, a senior majoring in government and politics and criminology, said: "I was disappointed we didn't flip over the bus. We rioted for the women's basketball team, which is out of character for us. We needed something to cheer for."
Yes...the future of America looks bright my friends.
Gee - nice of the Maryland students to jump on the bandwagon (even if they then set it on fire)...for the last game of the season. I hope that enthusiasm carries over to next year. These women deserve more support than they got this past season, and the win last night proves it.
(What's with the fires, anyway? How does drunkenness and petty vandalism show support or excitement for the team's accomplishments?)
Anyway...kudos to the Maryland women for an outstanding season and an even more impressive post-season. Champions! That's awesome! I'm unfortunately in Canada (hockey? why?) on business so didn't get to watch the game live, but am looking forward to watching the tape.
Congratulations, TERPS!
The "rioting" thing has to stop. Vandalism and arson don't equate with support, it's a disgrace to the university, and frankly its about time Dan Mote starts getting held accountable for student behavior.
There was a hit and run, with a critical injury, in the midst of the rioting. (http://www.diamondbackonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/04/05/44339c2e53606)
This isn't rocket science. Let people know in advance that while celebration encouraged, property destruction and violence will mean arrests, and clear violations will mean expulsions from the university.
Congratulations to the women's basketball team. They have a lot to be proud of. But the university community as a whole... should be ashamed of itself.
bring out the riot police and the national guard and tear gas those fewls! congtas to the Lady-Terps, now if the men's program could get on with the program and actually stop sucking.
As a Maryland alumnus who's followed women's basketball there since the program first rose to prominence in the late seventies, I'm delighted that the Terrapins are national champions. At the same time, I wonder whether all of this silliness on Route 1 would have happened had they been playing LSU for the national title instead of Duke, whom people in College Park are ridiculously paranoid about.
Anyway, congratulations -- and I hope the Nationals are smart enough to invite Brenda Frese to throw out the first ball at a game next week.
Coming back from a 13-point deficit, a 5'7" player making a clutch 3-point shot over a 6'7" player...wow. That had to be one of the more exciting games I've ever seen, but then again, I've said that about a lot of Maryland's games this season.
I'm hoarse from all my screaming at the tv, and my cats may never speak to me again, but I couldn't be happier for them. They deserve it!
There is a new riot policy in place. The University has been working on penalties for rioting since the Men's win in 2002. The first draft of the policy was that the University would expel you after you were found guilty of rioting. The new policy (just passed this week, I believe), is that you don't have to be found guilty first... the University can just expel you.
I don't understand what yelling at Mote is going to do about it. There are consequences in place, but if students are going to be morons, then they are going to be morons.
I also add that there still aren't any school-sanctioned alternatives for post-game celebration. Maybe if someone brought up other ideas, eventually the practice would die out when combined with the new legislation.
Perhaps rioting is ridiculous, but, I refuse to sit down and take the criticism from people that a) have not gone to Maryland and b) only throw hatred at Maryland. Rioting happens at all large schools. While visiting Penn State when their men's basketball team lost to Temple in the Sweet 16 a few years back, they rioted. When the Terps beat Indiana for the Nat'l Championship, the kids in Indiana rioted because the lost. The point is, Maryland isn't the only school the riots, it is just the only school that gets national publicity for it because the school happens to be covered by the Washington Post. No one knows about the other schools, because who reads the newspapers from State College or Bloomington? I'm a Terp alum, we rioted, we had a good time jumping up and down on frat row and yelling out "Let's GOOOOOOOOO Maryland!" Every riot is going to have a few bad apples. The administration is doing something about it, regardless of how effective they might be. Just because some kids got drunk and had a little fun, there's no need to judge. Don't judge if you don't know.
"every riot is going to have a few bad apples"
You know how stupid that sounds, right? If it weren't for a few bad apples, riots would be just dandy? Riots typically happen when a small part of non-violent crowd gets out of hand, and it quickly swells into something destructive before people really realize what's happening. But for many of these kids, they PLAN to riot, and the quotes they give - "my first riot" etc - are just bizarre - bordering on amoral, given that by definition a "riot" is violent and dangerous. UMD has GOT to figure something out. They've had several years.
ksm, I a) Went to Maryland and b) throw mostly love the school. I agree that the media can blow these things up (but I don't buy your WaPo theory). They are excellent at finding fuckwads like Shea Hoxie who actually gave the reporter his name for attribution to the quote "I'm dissappointed we didn't flip over the bus", and never seem to find the students who say "I'm dissappointed that fuckwads like Shea Hoxie are trying to knock over a bus".
You aren't helping your cause, or that of any current or former Maryland students. In fact, your comments make us look bad. Maryland alums need to condemn this behavior without qualification. Nobody's "judging" kids for getting drunk and having fun. They're judging them for intentionally starting dangerous riots.
I don't think that riots have to be dangerous or violent.. hence my bad apples comment. When I was in school, we typically ran down to frat row, the frats provided a few couches to burn, and we all just stood around and had a good time, celebrating. Just becuase there is a fire, doesn't mean its bad. People have controlled bonfires all the time. And when the police worked with the students, the "riots" and fires were controlled, and everyone celebrated rather responsibly. But, in any celebration, whether it be school sanctioned or not (and no school can sanction a plan for celebrating after an event like a national championship.. when they try.. no one goes.. but that is a whole other issue..) there will be someone or some group of people that gets out of hand. That is what happens when large groups of people get together. However, when you work with said group, instead of against it, you will often have greater success for all involved. When the police and university started working against the students, rather than with them, that is when things often began to get out of hand, becuase the students felt slighted. If you allow the students to create their own celebration, and only intervene when necessary, chances are, the celebration will be just that.. a celebration. However, when you immediately start arresting people and throwing tear gas, people get angry, and a celebration becomes a riot.
You may disagree with me, but I am living proof that you can run across Rte. 1, not get hurt, have a good time, and chant around a fire celebrating your team without anything bad or unruly happening. I commend that the university is responding to the bad behavior of those students that go beyond a celebration, however, I believe that it would be more effective if they worked with the student body and community at large to ensure that celebrations can continue to occur, while doing all they can to try to ensure the safety of those involved. I do not condone the actions of people who want to flip busses over and cause a raucous, but I do not think that calling them jackasses and pointing guns at innocent students is going to solve the problem.
In addition, I take personal offense to the author calling Maryland students jackasses for the actions after the game. While some students may have acted unruly, I am sure that was not the intention of the masses. Perhaps the author should take into consideration that, by calling students jackasses, he may worsen the problem, by inciting more students to prove the sterotype he has created. Perhaps instead of using offensive language, he could propose a solution, rather than perpetuating the problem.
ksm, your message is MUCH clearer this time; thanks. I mostly agree; sorry if I misread the first comment. In part it's semantics - I understand "riot" to mean violence and disorder, as do most people. Students & alums who condemn destruction but are all for raucous but peaceful celebration should stay away from the term.
When students tell reporters that they have a great time "rioting", and don't really mean violence & property destruction, that contributes to the negative perception - the nightly news will show those quotes, and then show a bus on fire, and then the appearance is that all the students there think it's ok to burn buses. If 95% of the kids are peaceful, that won't be part of the story.
I don't know to what extent the police response escalates these things. I agree with you in principle, but don't know the circumstances well enough to know whether their decisions on when/how to intervene have a negative impact or not.
To be honest, the more this stuff happens, the harder it is for me to be offended by remarks that generalize Maryland. I can't say I wouldn't react the same way if I didn't have an association with the school.
Go Terps. Congrats to Brenda Frese & her squad; will be rooting for a repeat.
I think a lot of these problems arise from out-of-state students, particularly those from places like Long Island and New Jersey, who like to "go away" for college and are more interested in the social aspects of university life than the academics. (BTW, if anyone thinks I'm being anti-New Jersey, let me say that I twice resided in that state for a total of nearly 12 years, and have a lot of good things to say about it. However, few in New Jersey seemingly stays in state for college unless they have to.)
If I were the president of the University of Maryland, I wouldn't decrease the out-of-state student population on campus. However, I would attempt to make it more nationally geographically representative of the U.S. population, with more students from the South and Midwest and fewer from the mid-Atlantic. We'd have fewer of these lunkheads who are just there to party and cause riots on Route 1. We don't want them.
Vincent. I dont think students from the mid-atlantic are the problem. Admitting less students from New Jerser/Long Island. Is going to solve next to nothing. The solution lies in working with the students and attempting to create controlled environments. The majority of students who go to Rt.1 do not perform in any type of "rioting" at all. People are people; whether they are from the south or mid-atlantic; they would still act a fool.
P.S. Im from Maryland, and i attend UMD