Story By Kimberly Marselas

Terps fans in Boston rejoice along with center Crystal Langhorne. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The women’s basketball team brought home its first national title this spring, capping an exhilarating season with the kind of clutch performances and overtime efficiency on which they’ve built a national reputation.

Maryland won a school-record 34 games and went 6–0 in overtime games this season, including the 78–75 championship victory over Duke. Though the team trailed by 13 points twice in the second half, freshman guard Kristi Toliver hit a stunning three-pointer to tie it at the end of regulation. The perfectly arced shot deflated the highly favored Blue Devils, and the extra minutes gave the Terrapins an added spark.

"Overtime is our time," said freshman guard Marissa Coleman, echoing the late-season mantra of her teammates and coach Brenda Frese. “[Junior Guard] Shay [Doron] looked at everybody [and said] ‘What better way to win a national championship than in overtime, which was our time all season long.’”

The championship game at Boston’s TD Banknorth Garden was the culmination of a climb back to prominence for the Terps, who were making the school’s first Final Four appearance since 1989.

Maryland’s storied past in women’s basketball includes one previous trip to a national final, the 1978 Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women Championship. The team lost the game to ucla but won eight acc Tournament titles between 1978 and 1993, all of them under the leadership of coach Chris Weller. The Terps, however, had largely fallen out of the national spotlight since capturing a No. 1 ranking back in 1992.

When Frese came to campus in 2002, she and Athletic Director Deborah Yow laid out a five-year plan to secure the university’s first ncaa Championship. With a starting lineup of two freshman, two sophomores and one junior, the Terps defied expectations, a No. 2 tournament seed, and a severe stomach virus during the Elite Eight round to deliver the goods a year early.

The players’ youth never bothered Frese, a finalist for the Naismith Award Women’s Coach of the Year and former AP Coach of the Year. When the team was in Boston for a game against Boston College in January, Frese took them to the Garden for a little inspiration. She knew how far her players could go, and she wanted to make sure they knew they could get back there in the post-season.

“You can understand the big picture of why we’re working so hard,” she told them at the time. After the women cut down the Garden’s nets and hoisted the championship trophy above their heads in April, Frese praised them for their poise and togetherness.

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