Candyce Bingham's Weekly Blog
February 04, 2009 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 19, 2009
A lot has happened since my last blog. We are off to a 5-0 start in the BIG EAST! And once again our fans packed the house with over 15,000 to witness our 64-59 win over Rutgers! It was a hard fought battle and it was great to have all the fans cheering us on.
We finished our 10-game home stand with a perfect 10-0 record after being on the road the majority of the start of the season. And we capped off the run with a win over Rutgers which couldn't have been better. Angel was on fire at the beginning of the game scoring our team's first 12 points. She ended the game with 31 points and the rest of the team stepped up big as well.
Last Tuesday we traveled to Tampa to take on South Florida on Wednesday evening. The Bulls were the third highest scoring team in the country. They like to get up and down the floor and shoot three's. They like to play a fast pace game like we do and they like to press a lot and turn people over. Our focus was to take care of the ball and shoot layups against their press. That is exactly what we did and they only pressed us the first four minutes of the game. It was a close game at first but then we closed out the first half with a 17-1 run.
During the second half they pulled within six points. Their guards can really shoot the three and they got hot in the second half to surge their comeback. Angel and Keshia both fouled out so we had to pull together as a team and get defensive stops and make plays on the offensive end. We were able to do just that. Mary and Des stepped up and made some huge baskets and free throws. The defeated the Bulls 76-60.
We were home for only a day before leaving Friday morning to go to Washington, D.C. This was a homecoming for Angel, Tise and Coach Walz since he coached at Maryland for five years. This is also the sight of the 2009 Inauguration. Even though we weren't going to be able to stay until the actual Inauguration it was nice to see all the people coming into town to support Barak Obama. We also saw a few national monuments in passing but couldn't really visit them because of the street closings.
When we arrived at our hotel and went to our rooms there was only one bed and a pull out couch along with a nice kitchen. I lucked out and had my own room while many had to flip a coin about who was going to sleep on the bed the first night and who would end up on the couch. We then went to practice and were suppose to go to Outback Steakhouse to eat dinner. Come to find out our bus driver wasn't even from around area and had no idea where he was going. We literally drove around for an hour because he couldn't find the Outback and ended up at Don Pablo's, which was down the street from our hotel.
Saturday we were set to take on a much improved Georgetown team that was currently 8-0 at home. We broke open an early 11-2 lead with Angel scoring our first 11 points. It was good to see her get off to another great start because she was in front of all her family and friends. The game was close for the first couple of minutes but we took control early and had a 20-point lead going into halftime. The second half seemed to be full of fouls from both teams but we pulled off a 74-58 win and ended their 8-0 home winning streak. It was nice to be on the road and have a lot of fans cheering for us instead of against us. Some of our boosters and courtsiders were at the game. A couple of current Maryland players and Coach Walz's former players came to the game to support us. That made things fun and exciting because it's very rare to have a people supporting us on the road.
After the game on our way to the hotel we seemed to get into a minor vender bender. Our bus driver was going to make a right turn at a light but I guess the person to the right of us grew impatient and decided that they wanted to keep creeping up. Which meant the bus was hitting the side of the car and for a while he didn't know that. We had no idea until Brandie said the bus just hit this car next to us.
We finally pulled over and sorted everything out and made it back to the hotel safely. Many of us were in a rush to get back to the hotel so we could watch our men play Pittsburgh who WERE the number 1 team in the country and they WERE also undefeated. Our men pulled off the upset in really well played game.
Well I guess I will end here. This week we only have one game and that is at home against Cincinnati. This game will be televised on CBS College Sports and then on Sunday we travel to Storrs. We will take on top-ranked UConn in a Big Monday game on ESPN2 at 7:30 p.m.
GO CARDS!
