Gearing Up for a Grudge Match

Game-Day Update Below

ESPN is billing tomorrow night's second-round matchup between Maryland and Louisville in the women's NCAA tournament as a grudge match. That sounds about right to the rabid Terp fans of Roxie's World, who have never gotten over the beat down Maryland suffered at the hands of Coach Jeff Walz's Cardinals in the 2009 Elite Eight. It isn't just the score -- 77-60 -- that still stings, painful as it was to watch the glorious collegiate careers of Marissa Coleman and Kristi Toliver end on such a sour note. What rankles even more is what Walz did when the final whistle blew and Coleman and Toliver sat stunned and disconsolate on the Maryland bench. Walz is a former Maryland assistant coach who was with the team when Brenda Frese guided a group of upstart freshmen, including Coleman and Toliver, to a national championship in 2006. He relied on his intimate knowledge of Maryland's players and its system to formulate a game plan that exploited its weaknesses. His team executed the plan brilliantly -- and when the dismantling was over Walz made a beeline for Coleman and Toliver and tried to comfort the women he had just defeated. Here's what we wrote about the gesture the day after the game:

At that moment when cameras were focused on the devastated stars, Walz, engineer of their disappointment, went over to each of them, got down on his knees, and put his arms around them. Moose thought there was something jarring about it at the time. It seemed disingenuous of him to take on the role of comforting them for a loss he and his team would be boasting about in a matter of seconds. Word of friction between Walz and Frese makes the gesture even harder to take. If Walz sincerely wished to express sympathy to Coleman and Toliver or admiration for their brilliant careers, he should have done so out of the limelight and only after Coleman and Toliver had had a chance to compose themselves. To insert himself into that moment was to take on a role that rightly belonged to his old boss and, apparently, his new foe. He beat her team, handily. He didn't need to try to usurp her role.  

We don't know anything about the rumors of bad blood between Frese and her former assistant (pictured at left in a slightly altered photo from 2006 [via]), which surfaced in the wake of the 2009 contest, but we have a hunch we're not the only ones hungering for a little revenge tomorrow night. When the brackets for this year's tournament were announced and it was clear the Terps and Cardinals could meet again, Marissa Coleman immediately tweeted (yes, Moose follows her -- don't judge) of the matchup: "TERPS get some payback for @KristiToliver and I, would ya?!" (Love you, Shoulders, always will, but that should read, "for @KristiToliver and me.") During first-round action Saturday at the Comcastle, some fans might have greeted Walz with warm fuzzies when he took the floor for his team's game against Michigan State, but there was no love lost for Louisville's head coach up where the Moms sit in section 114. When the short-fused Walz loudly berated a player for throwing up a bad shot (when the Cards already had a comfortable lead), a fan/friend mockingly repeated the coach's rebuke, adding in his own booming voice, "We could hear you all the way up here, Walz!" After that, we spent the rest of the not very entertaining game dissecting Walz's issues -- "He's got an Auriemma complex," one Freudian averred -- and concocting elaborate plots to guarantee a Terp victory tomorrow night, most of which involved sending spoiled seafood to the Louisville team's hotel.

Yes, darlings, that's why they call it Madness, this seasonal affective disorder college basketball fans experience every year come tournament time. We love the game, adore our team, and live for the drama of the major upset or the thrilling comeback. Or, you know, the sweet revenge.

We'll be in the stands tomorrow night, maybe with a special sign imploring the Terps to win it for Marissa and K. T. or to remember 2009. On the other hand, why should we burden these splendid young women with the bitter residue of someone else's past? Their talents and accomplishments are impressive in and of themselves, and they deserve their own shot at glory. It would be hard to fit our sentiments onto even the most carefully painted sign, but perhaps we'll show up at the Comcastle tomorrow with the hope in our hearts that these dazzling young Terps will win on Monday so that we will have the joy of knowing we will get to see them play together again -- at least once more before this special season, like all seasons, ends, in triumph or its opposite.

Sleep well, women. You've got your work cut out for you, and we can't wait to cheer you on in your efforts. Peace out.

(Photo Credit: Toni L. Sandys, Washington Post. Maryland forward Alyssa Thomas shoots over Navy's Alix Membreno in a first-round game, 3/17/12.)

Update: WaPo's Gene Wang has a story this morning on the Frese/Walz "subplot" in the looming rematch between Maryland and Louisville. According to Wang, Walz's departure from College Park in 2008 was "acrimonious," though Frese refused to comment on the matter, saying it was not important to the upcoming game. Reading between the lines, one might infer that Walz took a little too much credit for the national championship, including orchestrating the play that sent the title game into overtime. In this YouTube video of Marissa Coleman and other former players talking about that game, Coleman makes it clear that Toliver's sublime shot over Duke center Alison Bales was not the play coaches had drawn up. After the 2009 loss to Louisville, Coleman also publicly took issue with Walz's suggestion that Maryland's body language suggested the team was taking Louisville lightly as it focused on getting back to the Final Four. "Well, Coach Walz was wrong," Coleman commented when told what Walz had said.

Like we said, dude's got an Auriemma complex. We don't care what motivates the Terps to go out and get the W tonight. We just want them to win, but if it turns out the victory is fueled by a collective gynocentric urge to smack down an arrogant, bullying mansplainer, well, that's all right by us. We are women, hear us roar. Go, Terps!

Something for Everybody

It's Friday, darlings. The embodied me has been dead for a little more than two weeks, and countless thousands are dead or missing in Haiti. With all due respect to the grim reaper and the souls of the departed, can we agree that some healthy distraction is in order? Good. I thought so. We've racked our very small brains and trolled the interwebs, trying to come up with tasty treats to appeal to a number of the different demographic groups who hang out here. Even if you don't fit precisely into one of these groups, we hope you'll find something that will burn a few of the seconds that stand between you and happy hour this afternoon. And don't worry -- We'll save you a prime seat at Ishmael's, the seedy yet cozy bar around the corner from the global headquarters of RW Enterprises, LLC. Barkeep Peter Coffin's got half-price specials on rum drinks today, because there's a warming trend happening in our neck of the woods. Come by for a tropical beverage and a towering platter of nachos. Order your own extra queso sauce, though, because you know Moose won't be sharing hers. Love you, darlings. Mean it. Play on.

For the Big and Tall Girls: Put down your hankies and pick up your pom-poms, wimmin, we got us some basketball blogging to do! We apologize for the deplorably late start on this season's worshiping at the Shrine of the Holy Round Ball, but it's taken us some time to get to know Coach B's band of mighty women, a team so new and young that the players have training wheels on their athletic shoes. How young is the team the moms have taken to calling the Baby Terps or the Littlest Turtles or the Terratots? Well, in last night's win over Boston College, the Terps had three freshmen in the starting lineup. This team is so young that sophomore Lynetta Kizer is considered, like, a tribal elder, unless you count guard Lori Bjork, a grad student who joined the Terps last season after three years at Illinois but couldn't play until this year because of NCAA transfer rules. (And you should definitely count Bjork, by the way, who has been rocking the house from 3-point land in the last couple of games and seems to be a calming presence on the floor.) The team seems to be finding its groove after some early losses away from home, including a Tobacco Road meltdown against NC State last week. We're hoping that last night's win, coupled with a squeaker in Charlottesville on Monday, will earn the Baby Terps a spot in next week's top 25. The moms haven't picked a favorite yet among the Terratots, but they are keeping a close eye on 6'3" forward Diandra Tchatchouang (pictured above left; photo by Jonathan Newton, Wa Po) who scored a game-high 18 points against BC. At first they were amusing themselves by trying to come up with nicknames more pronounceable than Tchatchouang. They liked both "Ka-ching" and "Szechuan," but Moose felt so guilty about seeming to mock someone with an unusual name that she started cheering in Tchatchouang's native French. Yep, Diandra, that's us right there at mid-court -- the crazy old broads with the hand-painted signs shouting "Allons y!" every time you touch the ball. Bonne chance, petite tortue!

For the Queer Law Geeks Ambivalent About Marriage But Unable to Stop Paying Attention to the Issue: Big doings this week with the start of the federal case on the constitutionality of California's Prop 8. Perry v. Schwarzenegger may ultimately give the Supreme Court of the United States a chance to weigh in on whether marriage inequality is compatible with those four little words conveniently carved into the frieze the justices see on their way into work each morning. The law prof bloggers have been on this case like white on rice, so click over to see what Katherine Franke has to say about Judge Vaughn Walker's apparent willingness to entertain the idea that the state should get out of the marriage business altogether. Or consult Nan Hunter's list of recommendations of where to go for the best coverage of the trial. Tenured Radical, who is back on native soil and has returned to blogging with a vengeance this week, has a good analysis of the testimony by sex and marriage historians Nancy Cott and George Chauncey.

For English Profs Who Still Can't Believe There Will Never Be Another MLA in December: The backlash is organizing. It's virtual, it's viral, it's as full of irony and wit as a blog written by a really funny dead dog! Inside Higher Ed is already reporting on it. You can follow it on Twitter! Join a Facebook group! Steal cleverly Photoshopped images (as we did, at left) from the blog that's been set up for "MLA 2010, the best conference that never was nor will be." (With the shift in schedule, there won't be a convention in 2010. The next meeting will be in January, 2011 in LA.) We're impressed with this effort and encouraged to see other humanists becoming humorists. (Hey, maybe that's what post-humanism is! Haven't you always wondered?) We think they need some help, though. A virtual mock conference is going to call for a massive effort of faux-organization. (Thought: Here's something Bush could do with his post-presidency!) Roxie's World would like to offer our services to MLA 2010. We'll task our pack of loyal, exceptionally clever readers to help come up with session titles for the conference that shall never be. So far, they've come up with "Teachers Travesty: The Best of Professorial Invective from 2010." That's a good start, but let's keep the ball rolling. Try these on for size:

• When Species Tweet: Dogs, Humans, and the Tools of Social Petworking
• Excellence Without Money: Or, Lies My Provost Told Me
• Reading Gawain in the Age of Obama: Srsly
• "You're dealing with children. They need to be terrified. It's like mother's milk to them": Lessons in Pedagogy from Sue Sylvester
• The Age of Obama or The Obama Era: Which Makes Literary Critics Sound Hipper and More Politically Astute?
• To Hell With PowerPoint: Singing, Dancing, and Success in the Literature Classroom

Hey, it worked for these guys, in a slightly different context:



Your turn, kids. Special session titles due by noon on Monday. Get cracking! Best proposal wins one of those cute mankinis they're flacking over at MLA 2010. Peace out.

Long Overdue Postmortem on the 00s

A Highly Unsystematic Look Back at the Decade Lately Concluded

Postmortem -- Get it, kids? I promised you there'd be laughs after death, didn't I? And you know I always keep my promises. Postmortem!



I do sincerely apologize that my untimely, though not unexpected, demise last week threw a monkey wrench into all our year-end blogging plans here in Roxie's World. I mean, heck, you all count on us to keep a paw on the zeitgeist, and here we let a new year and a new decade break out without even a token attempt at a summing up or a looking back, no snarky lists of Best Ofs, Worst Ofs, and Why Oh Why Did We Let That Happen? Time waits for no blogger, though, and now such a feat feels so enormous and belated that my typist's grief-addled brain can barely imagine it. She had scribbled down a few notes before she and Goose took off for the MLA convention, but they barely make sense and have a slightly, um, idiosyncratic feel to them. See what you think.

Epic Fail of the Decade, From Which So Many Avoidable Catastrophes Sprang: Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore, which handed George W. Bush the presidency of the United States on December 12, 2000. John Nichols identifies that appalling act of judicial activism as "the root cause of what made the Noughties such a miserable decade for the republic." Sounds about right.

Why the Decade Would Just Flat-Out Suck Even If Nothing Else Had Happened: September 11, 2001. 'Nuf said.

Album of the Decade: Raising Sand, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss (produced by T Bone Burnett). Why? Because it was released in 2007, and it's still in heavy rotation here in Roxie's World. Sorry, Mr. Springsteen, but nothing you did this decade even came close to this extraordinary collaboration.

Film of the Decade: There Will Be Blood (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson). Why? Because qta declared it so in the incredibly thorough and thoughtful review of films and performances he put up on Facebook. The truth is, if we had seen more movies and considered them with the same diligence qta did, we might have come to a different conclusion, but we didn't, so we will happily defer to his judgment.

Best Meal Moose and Goose Ate in the Decade: Alinea, Chicago, December, 2007. The moms still talk about the course that was delivered to the table on little pillows inflated with a nutmeg-scented steam that gently wafted out as the dish settled onto the table.

Most Thrilling Athletic Moment of the Decade: We deny any QTU bias in declaring the winner here to be Kristi Toliver's 3-point shot at the buzzer to put the final of the 2006 NCAA women's basketball championship into overtime -- Sports Illustrated called Toliver's cool-handed move "the shot of the decade." It set up QTU's stunning 78-75 victory over a Duke team that everyone in the country but Moose, Goose, and upstart Coach Brenda Frese had picked to win.

Book of the Decade (Nonfiction, Theory Geeks Focused on Critters Division): When Species Meet by Donna Haraway. A witty, profound analysis of dogs, people, and what they become by being in relationship with one another -- What's not to love?

Book of the Decade (Fiction Division): It's a tie between Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Marilynne Robinson's Home. Why? Because they are glorious books, and we are just thrilled to see the author of 1980's Housekeeping publishing novels again. Oh, and we haven't finished Toni Morrison's A Mercy yet.

Feel-Good Moment of the Decade: Watching Barack Obama take the oath of office on January 20, 2009. Y'all know this blog never harbored great exuberance (critical or uncritical) about Obama's candidacy, but we readily admit that his inauguration was a thrilling spectacle and a milestone for the nation he leads. We are still waiting to see whether the feel-good presidency will turn into the lead-with-courage-and-tactical skill administration, but we'll take that up another day.

Most Succinct Statement We've Stumbled Across About What a Sour, Disappointing, Generally Sucktastic Period of Time it Was:

. . . [F]rom an economic point of view, I’d suggest that we call the decade past the Big Zero. It was a decade in which nothing good happened, and none of the optimistic things we were supposed to believe turned out to be true.

From Paul Krugman, of course.

Poor little 00s. You're gone, and we still don't know what to call you. How about just calling you -- mercifully, finally -- OOver? And not a moment too soon.

(Photo Credit: "Dog Funeral: 1922," from Shorpy, the 100-Year-Old Photo Blog)

Terp Women Eat Kids -- And Birds

Grilled Cardinal Edition

Let's prepare for this evening's Rumble in Raleigh (Maryland's Elite Eight game against the Cardinals of Louisville) with a few glances back (over our Shoulders, as it were) at Saturday's stunning come-from-behind win over Vanderbilt.

First, in case you missed it, here are court-side interviews with Marissa "Shoulders" Coleman and Coach Brenda Frese from ESPN's broadcast of the game. We love watching Coach B standing in the background with a proud smile on her face while Coleman talks about how much she wanted the win:



Next, we've got several new candidates for the Sportswriters' Epic Simile of the Year Contest (trademark RW Enterprises, LLC), as reporters strained their brains (and, one imagines, Google) in their efforts to describe Shoulders' breathtaking 42 point/15 rebound performance. Just like Shakespeare, only with a distinct odor of gym socks in the air, the sportswriters sit themselves down to ponder the eternal question, "Shall I compare thee to a . . . ?" and the results of their pondering are:

Mike Wise in Wa Po sticks mostly to the world of sports as he endeavors to capture the scale of Coleman's accomplishment, though he tucks in a gratuitous rock 'n roll reference (to Bruce Springsteen, whose E Street Band reunion tour in 2000 played in the same arena, Raleigh's RBC Center, where the game was played). Wise compares Coleman's performance to Michael Jordan scoring 55 points against the Knicks in Madison Square Garden or to a 15-year-old Jason Kidd lighting up the house in Northern California prep championships and concludes that "Coleman's sublime game ranks alongside both of them among the greatest individual performances I've ever covered." Oh, in addition to epic similes, Wise offers the poignant news that Coleman's own mother, Joni, missed her daughter's whirlwind feat because she got so nervous when the Terps fell behind that she couldn't bear to watch (which also happened during the Terps' 2006 run for the championship:

"I was too worried. I had to leave the arena and plug my ears when they started losing," Joni said. "I didn't see the comeback, I admit it. But I'll say this: I know how bad she wants it. And I know what she can do."

"She did the same thing in Albuquerque," Marissa said, shrugging and grinning. "My mom . . . she gets so nervous."

Meanwhile, over on ESPN, Mechelle Voepel reaches into the domain of Cold War politics for a comparison that makes Coleman both a superhero and a freedom fighter. Reading it, one imagines Tom Cruise improbably cast in the role of Marissa Coleman in the film Voepel would make of this year's women's tournament:

It seemed like nothing short of the old Berlin Wall could have stopped [Coleman] -- and we would have given her pretty good odds of scaling that, too, on this day.

Nice try, Mechelle, but the winner of Moose's battered old Roget's Thesaurus, at least for this round, is Rick Maese of the Baltimore Sun, who reaches for the sky in a desperate bid to try to convey the scale of what Shoulders did in the last several minutes of the game:

[W]hat Coleman did Saturday afternoon is hard to quantify with numbers and difficult to capture with cameras. She could've started flapping her arms at midcourt and floated to the rafters and it would have been easier to rationalize than the closing minutes of Maryland's emotional 78-74 come-from-behind win over Vanderbilt.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's SHOULDERS! Maese is so taken with his metaphor that he returns to it for the ending of his column:

After what she did Saturday, nothing she does should surprise. If she does start flapping her arms, it might be wise to look up. Coleman's capable of anything.

Dear Rick,

Love you. Mean it. You're one of our favorite sportswriters, and we give props to the Sun for its coverage of Maryland women's b-ball. Wa Po's got nothing on you in this department, despite the excellent work now being done by Camille Powell. We have great sympathy for American sportswriters, who seem doomed by the culture to interpret everything that happens through the "thrill of victory, agony of defeat" formula established decades ago by ABC's Wide World of Sports. And metaphors of flight are, of course, an apt and handy way to capture the transcendent qualities of exceptional athletic feats. In such moments, the athlete is ourselves perfected, ourselves above ourselves, soaring Icarus reaching for the sun, while we sit on the couch eating potato chips. We get it, Rick, but we still think you went a little over the top in those weird images of Marissa flapping her arms. The image is more comic than epic to us, and it captures nothing of the grace of Coleman's powerful athleticism. We think you should keep your eye a little closer to the ground as you watch the game tonight. Remember, the only birds in the house will be the Cardinals -- and we're hoping Shoulders and her pals will be feasting on them.

Yours sincerely,
Roxie

Terp Women Eat Kids -- And Utes

(Marissa "Shoulders" Coleman drives past Utah's Morgan Warburton during Maryland's convincing 2nd-round win at Comcast, 3/24/09. Photo Credit: AP)

Updated below.

Yes, yes, the Terps whupped the out-womaned Utes of Utah in the second round of the NCAA tournament tonight. Of course Shoulders pulled down a career-high 18 rebounds as a lovely farewell gift to the 10,000 adoring fans gathered in the Comcast Center for one more thrilling night with the dazzling prodigies of 2006, now all grown up and reaching for one more shot at collegiate glory. Moose wasn't there, proving that she wasn't lying last semester when she told a class that she couldn't justify canceling a class for an appearance by then-candidate Barack Obama when she wouldn't cancel class for a visit by the Pope or even for her beloved Lady Terps. Rumor has it her "Fear the Brenda" sign was held aloft by a former Melvillian who is known more as a baseball fan than a basketball fan but did a fine job nonetheless. (Camille Powell's excellent Wa Po report on the game is here.)

So, yes, the Terps move on for a Sweet Sixteen reprise of their matchup last year against Vanderbilt (26-8) Saturday in Raleigh. Still, the truly big news coming out of College Park today is, um, that the Terp Women eat kids.

Here's the report, from the Office of Dubious Role Models and Bizarre Sports Rituals, by way of Dan Steinberg's D.C. Sports Blog at Wa Po. Steinberg is doing a cutely sexist (as opposed to an ugly sexist) little piece on the differences between men's and women's sport teams as a way of compensating for the fact that he hasn't written much about women's college basketball this season, despite the fact that one of the best teams in the country is right in his neighborhood. (Note to dying newspaper industry: You are dying, in part, from self-inflicted wounds.) Anyway, after a couple of predictable jokes about nail polish and Lord and Taylor bags in the locker room, Steinberg lets his readers know that the Mighty Women of Maryland are by no means "soft" by telling a story about the "ruthless slogan" they use in the locker room:

"We say Eat Kids!" Anjale Barrett told me matter-of-factly.

Bet you never heard a John Wooden adage about that one.

So here's what happened. Back in the fall they had weekly rehearsals for their Midnight Madness dance routine. To keep the intensity up during these rehearsals, sophomore forward Emery Wallace began shouting out motivational things. A Mike Tyson quote jumped out in her mind.

"What'd he say?" she asked me. "Something about eating kids."

And thus, a motto was born.

"She's not stable," star forward Marissa Coleman pointed out about Wallace.

Regardless, that slogan became a tradition during the dance rehearsals. Then it moved inside the locker room. The players started writing it on the white board before games, underneath the three keys provided by the coaching staff. They began putting their fists together and shouting it before leaving the room. They return to the message at halftime, with Wallace tailoring her exact advice based on the first-half performance.

"She'll be like, 'We're halfway through the kids' body now, keep going,' " Yemi Oyefuwa explained. "It's not like we played bad, you already had the head, you already had the hair."

"I've heard her say, 'Get to the feet,' " Marah Strickland noted.

Children of the media age that they are, some of the Terps are concerned that readers understand that the "ruthless slogan" is not to be taken literally:

"We try to stay away from THAT definition; the, you know, real definition," Strickland said. "Eat their kids is more a statement of domination. It's a metaphor."

"We're not actually eating kids," Demauria Liles agreed. "We're just dominating, we're stomping them to the ground."

"We love the kids," Barrett interjected, trying to make sure that no one believes the Maryland program to be anti-child. "it's just something that gets us motivated. We're not like Hannibal Lecter or anything like that."

Freshman Oyefuwa, who hails from London, apparently missed the memo about metaphor:

"Every month I choose a child," she told me. "Sometimes it's one from back home, sometimes it's someone from this country. You try to pick the juicy ones, the ones with nice hair, delicious ones, pretty eyes, because you know, the eyes are the best."

Meanwhile, Terrapin Coach (and mother of two) Brenda Frese is baffled by the origin and meaning of the grisly motivational motto. She comments to Steinberg:

I just know what they write (on the board before games), I don't know what it means. They won't give me an answer. I've asked. Have they given you an answer? Kids. What they come up with nowadays.

No word on whether Frese's twin tykes, Markus and Tyler, are allowed anywhere near the Terps' locker room when the team is going through its pregame calls to cannibalism.

The English profs of Roxie's World are officially mum on the subject, refusing to kill the Terps' tournament buzz by going all academic-y and pointing out the problematic history of powerful women being imaged as terrifying eaters of babies, men, and other living things. Reached in her office moments after her grad class and the Terps game had ended, a weary Moose commented,

Screw it. If they need to engage in a fantasy of cannibalism to get psyched up to grind their next opponent into the dirt, I say more power to 'em. Let 'em eat kids.

You heard it here first, sports fans. Peace out. And we mean that, literally.

A.M. Update: Accolades roll in for Shoulders, KT, and the Cannibal Terps. Bet you anything Mike Wise's Wa Po column will make you cry. Graham Hays has a nice piece up on ESPN. And Wa Po seems to have figured out that photos of strong, sweaty women just might save the newspaper industry. Check out the awesome photo gallery of the Terps' quest for a national championship. Oh, and if you're still savoring last night's Stunning Upset of a Team That Didn't Deserve a #1 Seed in the First Place, go read Mechelle Voepel's analysis of the Duke-Michigan State game. Truth be told, we're surprised that Maryland is the only ACC team left in the draw at this point, but we are constitutionally unable to feel sorry for Duke, even if Shoulders' BFF Abby Waner is crying into her Wheaties this morning. Abby, baby, you shoulda been a Terp!

Necessary Losses

(Duke's Bridgette Mitchell and Maryland's Lynetta Kizer fight for control of the ball in the first half of their battle at Cameron Indoor Stadium, 1/12/09. Photo Credit: AP [click here, then go to the Photo Gallery].)

Coach B put it best in saying of her team's 68-65 loss last night to the Duke Blue Devils: "We look at this almost like a win. The way that the team fought and battled in the second half makes me very proud of this team."

The moms were proud and impressed with the way the Terps battled back in the second half after a frustrating first half in which Kristi Toliver was held scoreless by brilliant Duke defense. Props to freshman Lynetta Kizer, who fought like a tiger under the basket and did an excellent job of scoring when Toliver couldn't. (Toliver also did a great job of finding Kizer under the basket, but that's to be expected of the World's Greatest Point Guard.)

The Terps were without the services of guard Marah Strickland, who was ill and stayed in College Park. Maryland fans had a moment of panic when senior forward Marissa "Shoulders" Coleman fell to the hardwood and writhed in pain midway through the second half. Moose was prepared to rush to the floor and perform CPR or any other intimate and heroic life-saving gesture, but that turned out not to be necessary, as Coleman had leg cramps and merely need Gatorade and a chance to walk. Still, Shoulders, Moose wants you to know that she stands ready to do anything -- anything -- that might help you to perform at your best.

Down by 11 at the half, the Terps staged a gritty comeback in the second half that was fun to watch even if, in the end, it fell short. Toliver found her offensive groove in the second act and had Duke fans on the edges of their seats in the final minute, as she connected on a 3-pointer with 2.6 left that brought Maryland to within one. Sophomore point guard Jasmine Thomas sank two free throws for Duke that took the lead back to three. Toliver threw up a hail-Mary with less than a second on the clock that bounced off the rim, denying the Terps the chance for a sequel to their thrilling upset of Duke in the semifinals of the 2006 NCAA tournament, when a Toliver 3-pointer with six seconds left sent the game into overtime and set the stage for the young Terps' tournament triumph. Commented Toliver after last night's near miss, "I guess it's too early in the season to break the Dukies' hearts." Kristi, darling, if they had hearts, would they be Dukies? But even if they do, it is never too early to smash them into little pieces and dance upon them with your big, proud Turtle's feet!

In any event, the Blue Devils travel to College Park on Feb. 22, and we sincerely hope that Toliver and company will break their hearts then. In the meantime, we sense the team has found its rhythm and will learn the lessons that a hard-fought loss against a quality team can teach. Kizer played an awesome game but missed four free throws that might have changed the final outcome. The Terps were out-rebounded 56-39 and were particularly weak on the offensive end of the court. They still need to do a better job of figuring out what to do when a defense is smart and strong enough to contain Toliver.

Nonetheless, the season is young, and the moms thoroughly enjoyed their first road trip with the Lady Terps. As for storied Cameron Indoor Stadium, well, let's just say the high school gyms of Moose's basketball-obsessed Hoosier girlhood were every bit as impressive and quite possibly bigger. C'mon, Dukies, would it kill you to join us in the 21st century? And, really, Coach P, can you not diplomatically suggest to the band that "Devil With a Blue Dress On," tempting as it is, is really not the best song to inspire the hard-driving women of your team, who obviously rely on something other than high-heeled shoes and alligator hats to stymie their opponents? We're just sayin'.

Gotta run, kids. Time for this show to hit the highway. Peace out.

Tobacco Road Trip

Just popping in to say that the moms and I are down in North Carolina for the big smackdown between the 5th (or 10th)-ranked Blue Devils and the 14th (or 15th)-ranked Lady Terps. Yes, kids, it's true -- They'll be venturing into the belly of the basketball beast, Cameron Indoor Stadium, accompanied by two of the Carolina Moosians, mild-mannered former Republicans who violently hate the Blue Devils because of their loyalties to a couple of other institutions of higher ed and basketball in the Tarheel State. Look for the four middle-aged people in red shirts proudly holding the hand-painted signs (Fear the Brenda! Terp Women Rule) so familiar to denizens of the Comcast Center. It's their very first road game, so the moms are of course inordinately excited. Tipoff is at 7:30. Game will be broadcast on ESPN2.

Can the Terps pull off a big win in enemy territory? Our beloved seniors, Kristi Toliver and Marissa "Shoulders" Coleman, have had some shaky moments in this young season, as they learn to play with new players, but the team was impressive in its ACC opener against Wake Forest last week. We'll just have to see what Coach B and her Mighty Women have in store for Coach P (as Duke coach Joanne P. McCallie is known) and the strong team she has assembled in her second season in Durham. Tune in, kids, and pray the Devils are kind to these travelin' Terps!

Wa Po had a nice pre-game piece this morning on junior forward Dee Liles, who has been a blast to watch this season. Dee says she's been waiting for two years to have a chance at the Blue Devils. Game on, Dee. Let's go, Terps!

Shoulders of Giants

(Photo Credit: Gene Sweeney, Jr., Baltimore Sun; Maryland's Marissa "Shoulders" Coleman drives past Nebraska's Tray Hester en route to scoring two of her 19 points in the Terps' second-round victory in the NCAA tournament, 3/25/08)

Our beloved Lady Terps gave the moms a late-night scare Tuesday at Comcast, blowing a 15-point first-half lead over Nebraska and looking for all the world as if they might manage to get eliminated from the NCAA tournament in the second round for the second straight year. They were saved from that ignominious ending to a thrilling season by yet another game-changing performance by junior guard Marissa "Shoulders" Coleman, who snapped her team out of its coma by ripping off 9 straight points early in the second half, including a 3-pointer that broke a tie and put Maryland in the lead for good. The Terps are now in Spokane, where they'll face off against Vanderbilt (24-8) in the Sweet Sixteen on Saturday night.

Milton Kent has a great send-off story in the Baltimore Sun that focuses on Coleman's determined effort on Tuesday and on Coach Brenda Frese's efforts to help her team banish the ghosts of last year's early exit. Coleman explains what the moms watched unfold on the Terps' sidelines as a fired-up Frese got up close and personal with her unfocused players:

"In the first half, I wasn't playing as well as I'd like to," said Coleman, who scored 15 of her 19 points in the second half. "Coach B [Brenda Frese] kept pulling me aside and motivating me. We wanted to get out of College Park. That's all we've kept talking about. I was getting the ball in the right places and being aggressive."

Our good friend Dog-Eared Book has abandoned loyalty to the institution that employs her in picking the Mighty Women of Maryland to win the whole tournament. We feel a certain responsibility for her choice and of course long with every fiber of our aching, aging beings for the Terps to snatch a second national championship, so this post, which we have no business writing today, is our own little kiss-for-luck to the dazzling child prodigies who are now all grown up and off in Spokane. We don't want to add to the pressure you feel as you make your way through the bracket, but we would like you to know that we all want to know what it feels like to be a part of a sports dynasty. We want you to be one of those teams that everybody loves to hate, that everybody expects, year in and year out, to be in the final four because that's just what they do. We want the name of Brenda Frese to inspire the same kind of awe and/or loathing that Pat Summitt, Mike Krzyzewski, and Bob Knight inspire. We want "Lady Terps" to be synonymous in the minds of basketball fans everywhere with greatness, with passionate, skilled play, and with selfless dedication to one's team.

But mostly, right now, we want you to focus like laser beams on how to contain Vanderbilt center Liz Sherwood on the defensive end of the court and how to get the ball inside to Crystal Langhorne on the offensive end. It's a 40-minute game. You need to concentrate for every second of those forty minutes to stay alive in this tournament and show the world what excellent heads you have on those gorgeous, strong, broad shoulders. We are with you, women, every step of the way. Go, Terps!

Sentimental Tourneys

(Photo Credit: Toni L. Sandys, Washington Post; Marissa Coleman instructs Markus Thomas in the fine art of cheering for Maryland during the NCAA tournament selection show, 3/17/08)
(Photo Credit: Toni L. Sandys, Washington Post; Kristi Toliver gives Tyler Thomas a kiss for luck during the NCAA tournament selection show, 3/17/08)

Well before the opening tipoff, our beloved Lady Terps of Maryland have emerged as the odds-on favorite to be the feel-good story of this year's NCAA women's basketball tournament. Why? Two words: goo goo and gaga. (Or is that three words? Four words? Zero "words" but excellent onomatopoetic imitations of baby noises? Where are those English profs when you need them?)

In a triumph of good timing and brilliant sports marketing, Maryland coach Brenda Frese gave birth to twins a month ago, which means that two adorable baby boys were available for bouncing on the knees of her adoring players during last night's tournament selection show. The sizable press contingent on hand to record the team's reaction to the announcement that the Terps would be a No. 1 seed for only the second time in program history briefly blew out the power in Frese's home, but the happy moment was thoroughly documented in an aww-inducing series of photos (see above). The littlest Terrapins were all decked out in matching Maryland togs, while their excited circle of muscular surrogate moms endeavored not to drop them when the surprising news was announced. (The team had been expecting a No. 2 seed after losing to Duke in the ACC tournament but edged out Stanford because of a strong non-conference schedule.)

As is often the case, Marissa "Shoulders" Coleman had some of the best comments on the off-court challenges of the evening. "It was nerve-wracking," Coleman said of her efforts to deal with the commotion, the news, and the bundle of joy in her lap. "I'm sweaty. I'm hot. I had to take care of the baby at the same time. I had a lot going on." Per usual, though, Coleman was up to the multi-task, as Kathy Orton reports in Wa Po:

"I'm a natural," Coleman said. "The nurturing mother part of me first came out when I saw the seed."

Of course, Markus wasn't sure what to make of all the commotion.

"He threw me a death stare," Coleman said. "He's mad I woke him up."

Roxie's World is officially beside itself with pride and joy for Shoulders and the whole Maryland crew, who richly deserve their No. 1 seed and all the giddy press coverage they are getting. We give a PAWS UP to anything that brings attention to women's sports and to one of the finest basketball programs in all the land. The doting maiden aunts of Roxie's World are also on board with the whole babies thing. They have already shown up at the Comcast Center with a hand-painted sign exhorting fans to Cheer the Twins and chuckle every time they recall Shoulders saying back in February that it was unfortunate for Duke to be playing the Terps "on the day our babies were born." (Feb. 17: Frese gave birth in the morning, and Maryland beat Duke 76-69 in Durham that afternoon.)

Still.

And yet.

Nevertheless.

A small, cynical voice in the back of our fiercely loyal brains is muttering: Isn't all of this baby business just a convenient way to certify the heteronormativity of the Maryland women's basketball program and, by extension, of women's basketball generally? Doesn't it publicly declare that the Comcast Center is a family-friendly zone? Fear the turtle, we might say, but don't fear the lesbians because there aren't any here. Really. We swear. Coach B is a working mom with a devoted husband and two sets of grandparents ready to babysit come tournament time. The buzz before last year's NCAA tournament was the sudden resignation of LSU coach Pokey Chatman amid allegations of sexual misconduct with a former female player. The buzz this year is babies, babies, babies -- happy, healthy, heterosexually produced babies.

The point here is not to cast aspersions on Coach B, her family, or Maryland's impressive exploitation of a golden marketing opportunity. We don't even blame the media (in this instance) for jumping on a heartwarming story that is, after all, as much about Frese's dedication to her team as it is about her commitment to reproductive heterosexuality. We are thrilled to see Coach B back on the sidelines guiding the mighty women of Maryland in their pursuit of a second national championship. We just can't help noticing that everyone seems a little too eager to play the baby card, perhaps as a means of burying the lesbian card way down deep in the bottom of the pile. Women's sports has always been haunted by the specter of lesbianism, by the fear that athletic prowess undermines both femaleness and femininity. The figure of the predatory dyke in the locker room haunts the cultural imagination and shapes decisions about recruiting, hiring, and marketing in women's sports. Women athletes and coaches, whatever their sexualities, have a stake in exposing and rooting out the homophobia that underlies these attitudes and practices. We're tired of the silences, the evasions, and the repudiations of the lesbians and genderqueers in women's sports. You need us on your teams. You're desperate to have us in the stands. So stop pretending we're not there. Play the baby card, but don't deal the dykes out of the game. You'd sorely miss us if we were actually gone. (For some positive efforts to combat homophobia in women's sports, see the good work of the Women's Sports Foundation and of Pat Griffin, author of Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sport.)

Okay, off the soapbox and back to the business at hand: Cheer the Turtles, Baby -- We'll See You in Tampa!

Randomly Scented

(Photo Credit: My Aunt Isa)

On the grayest December Sunday in the history of low-hanging clouds, Roxie's World is so quiet you can hear the trains on the tracks a mile or so from our house. The moms are mellow from a weekend of holiday fun that isn't over yet -- Moose still has a fundraiser to attend tonight before the Non-Lady Terps' ACC opener against Boston College. (Goose is staying home to catch up on work before the last week of the semester hits.) We took a vote and decided we're way too sleepy to wrap our minds around the weighty subject of Congressional briefings on waterboarding or the astonishing news that Oprah has voted for as many Republicans as Democrats. Instead, we'll pass along some links to stories you might have overlooked in the course of your own holiday revels. Pause for a moment in the midst of the madness for some pointing, clicking, reflecting, and possibly some head-banging over the state of the silly world.

Wa Po launches a series of stories on the leading presidential candidates with a long piece on Hillary Clinton (by sports writer Sally Jenkins) called "Growing Up Rodham." It focuses on the influence of her formidable conservative father, Hugh Rodham, and the softening counterbalance supplied by her mother, Dorothy. The Clintonistas interviewed for the story seem to have decided to use it as the occasion for proving that Clinton is genetically wired for the middle of the road. Her lifelong friend Betsy Ebeling says Clinton is "triangulated" in her very fabric, a condition she vaguely attributes to "that Midwestern thing, cheesy or all-encompassing as that sounds." Jenkins also cites a story Clinton's mother told biographer Gail Sheehy about having taught her daughter how to read a carpenter's level:

"Imagine having this carpenter's level inside you," she said. "You try to keep that bubble in the center. Sometimes it will go way up there," she tilted the level. "And then you have to bring it back."

The resident Midwesterner in our house said she felt a little burning in the back of her throat when she read these treacly paeans to post-war heartland values. She, too, was raised by small-C Midwestern conservatives. She emerged from the experience with a firm conviction that the middle of the road is where animals get killed, though she also escaped with a mighty fine recipe for cheesed olives. She is willing to share that recipe with the Clinton campaign in an effort to lure the hungry housewives of Iowa out on caucus night.

Speaking of women looming large in the public eye, Wa Po ran a piece earlier this week on one of the major deities here in Roxie's World, Maryland women's basketball coach Brenda Frese, who, as we have previously noted, is pregnant with twins and coaching a team that has a serious shot at winning Frese's second national championship. It's a great story, though the b-ball fans here in the home office are nervous as heck about how the coach, her mostly new staff, and her incredibly devoted team will handle the multiple stresses as the season and Frese's pregnancy advance.

Here's a funny (as in interesting) story on blogging in Japan you probably overlooked in the course of your busy week. According to Technorati, Japanese-language blog postings slightly outnumber English-language blog postings, though English speakers outnumber Japanese speakers 5-1. The story also explores the significant differences of style and tone between Japanese and American blogs. No snarkiness, please, we're Japanese:

Blogging in Japan, though, is a far tamer beast than in the United States and the rest of the English-speaking world. Japan's conformist culture has embraced a technology that Americans often use for abrasive self-promotion and refashioned it as a soothingly nonconfrontational medium for getting along.

Bloggers here shy away from politics and barbed language. They rarely trumpet their expertise. While Americans blog to stand out, the Japanese do it to fit in, blogging about small stuff: cats and flowers, bicycles and breakfast, gadgets and TV stars. Compared with Americans, they write at less length, they write anonymously, and they write a whole lot more often.

Finally, an occasional reader from New Jersey put us on the scent of this NYT story about Dogster, the social networking site for dogs. (It's here.) No, your favorite dog blogger does not have a page on Dogster, yet, though some of my canine blogging pals do. We'll look into that when the grades are in and the stockings have been hung by the chimney with care.

Oh, and a parting shot and one last lick for Ripley, a feisty little Cairn terrier who commented here occasionally. Ripley's human companions are the fabulous DC BasketCases. They pass along the sad news that Ripley "crossed over the Rainbow Bridge" earlier this week. Our condolences to Eileen and Judith. And safe travels to Ripley, wherever the bridge takes you.

Peace out, kids. Go find something you love and snuggle it. Trust me, you'll feel better.

Sweeter Than Pie

(Photo Credit: Associated Press)

The Department of Eye Candy insisted we pass along this exceptional photo of Maryland guard Marissa Coleman, known in Roxie's World as Shoulders, for reasons this picture makes obvious, in action late Friday night against UC Santa Barbara. Shoulders scored a career-high 30 points and saved the game for the turkey-stuffed Terrapins, who opened up an early lead but found themselves down by 3 points in the second half to a team they had beaten by 61 points last year. You read that right: 61 points! Coach Brenda Frese, who is pregnant with twins, didn't make the trip to Santa Barbara on the advice of her doctor. (Report on the game is here.) The Terps kept their composure in the last few minutes, though, and won the game on free throws and without the help of forward Crystal Langhorne, who is still out with a sprained ankle.

Here are some early-season predictions from Roxie's World: The Mighty Women of Maryland have shaken off the doubts that plagued them last season, as they tried to figure out what to do after winning a national championship as a young team. They are having a blast on the court, and they will go far this year, even if they have to deliver Coach B's twins themselves at mid-court during a time out in the middle of an ACC tournament game. (Frese is due in early March.) Shoulders will be the strong, calm leader of the team, even after Langhorne returns and re-asserts her dominance under the basket. When that happens, these women will be unbeatable. Oh, wait -- With a 7-0 record, it appears they already are unbeatable!

Pull the red tee-shirts out of the drawers, kids -- It's college basketball season. Roxie's World will root first and always for the Lady and non-Lady Terps of Maryland, but we'll keep an eye on the Scarlet Women of Rutgers as well to see what coach C. Vivian Stringer and captain Essence Carson will do this year after their amazing journey to the championship game last year (and the bizarre Don Imus debacle that followed it). Oh, and if you're looking for another reason to be thrilled that the Maryland women beat LSU last weekend, look at the way the hiring of Van Chancellor to replace Pokey Chatman, who resigned in the wake of allegations of "improper sexual relationships with former players," is being presented by LSU:

Chancellor’s credentials aside, the hiring of a man added to growing concerns among some administrators over the declining number of women in college coaching. On the other hand, the hiring of a man allowed L.S.U. to avoid and eliminate the stereotype of lesbian coaches as sexual predators.

The Lady Tigers have signed seven high school recruits and a junior college player for the 2008-9 season, a group generally rated among the nation’s top three recruiting classes.

“We didn’t dwell on the past,” Chancellor said of recruiting. “We told them what my wife and I stood for, that we believe in equal opportunity and a great education and that you could come here and feel comfortable.”

(That's from a New York Times story on LSU's post-Pokey re-building. Emphasis added to indicate places in the story that made us put our paws on our head and cry.)

Um, okay, I suppose it's a safe bet that if you hire a man to coach a women's basketball team he won't be a lesbian sexual predator. Maybe he'll just be the more typical HETEROSEXUAL MALE sexual predator. Probably not, though, with that WIFE right next to him to certify what he stands for. We all know what a reliable barometer of sexual probity that is, don't we?

Eight months after her resignation, Roxie's World is still waiting to hear Pokey Chatman's side of the LSU story. The Times notes that Chatman reached a $160,000 settlement with LSU and is currently serving as an assistant coach for a professional team in Moscow. Carla Berry, the assistant coach who made the accusations against Chatman, has since left coaching.

Hold 'em high, Shoulders. We need your pride, your strength, and your incredible muscle definition. And LSU needs to pause and consider whether it can compete at the highest level if its communication strategy makes lesbian athletes and coaches feel they are not welcome in the program.

Shoulder to Cry On

(Photo Credit: Bob Child, Associated Press)

We’re big on nick-naming in our house. It’s one of the few things the moms and I have in common with George W. Bush. Fans of Roxie's World know, for example, that I call my moms “Moose” and “Goose” as a tribute to their different styles of parenting, while I respond to everything from “Roxie-roo” and “Rox-machine” to “Pet-izon” and “Pook-a-loe.”

So it should come as no surprise that in our basketball-obsessed household, Maryland forward Marissa Coleman is known fondly as “Shoulders.” Moose gave her that name because Marissa strategically arranges the top of her basketball uniform to assure maximum exposure of two of her most prized assets. They are prized, Moose says, because shoulders are an essential component of Marissa’s success as a shooter, rebounder, and shot-blocker. They are also, according to Moose (who has a fine aesthetic appreciation for the female form), easy on the eyes. Marissa in motion is a thing of fierce beauty, and her powerful shoulders are key to both the fierceness and the beauty. She is one of the scrappiest players in women’s college basketball, but no matter how hard she battles for the ball, nothing ever messes up the careful arrangement of the over-the-shoulder part of “Shoulders’” uniform.

Unfortunately for Marissa and the other Lady Terps, that was the only part of their game last night that wasn’t messed up, as they sought to defend their title as national champions in the second round of the NCAA tournament against the relentless Rebels of Ole Miss. The Terps went down hard, trailing by as much as 23 points to a team they had beaten by 31 points in a November tournament in the Bahamas. Brilliant defense wreaked havoc on the Terps’ normally efficient passing, making it hard to get the ball underneath the basket to Crystal Langhorne and resulting in an astonishing 29 turnovers (which led to an equally astonishing 42 points for the kleptomaniacal Rebels). The Terps rallied late in the second half, as Shoulders and Kristi Toliver combined to score 16 of the team’s last 20 points and close the deficit to 6 with 2:24 left in the game, but it was too little too late. The Rebels hit 20 of 22 free throws in the second half to keep the Terps at bay. Senior Shay Doron and Shoulders both fouled out in the last couple of minutes, and a season that began with visions of a repeat of last year’s glorious triumph came to a crashing, ignominious halt. (Maryland joins Purdue’s 2000 team and Notre Dame’s 2002 team in being defending national champions ousted in the second round of the tournament. Only Old Dominion did worse, by not making the tournament in 1986 after winning the championship in 1985.)

The final score was 89-78. For gory details on the game, see Milton Kent’s wonderful story in The Baltimore Sun. For a glimpse of Coach Brenda Frese’s ferocious attempt to rally her troops during a first half timeout, click on ESPN’s video re-cap.

The moms and I just hate it when March Madness turns too quickly to March Sadness, as it did this season for both the Lady and the non-Lady Terps. (The men also lost in the second round to an incredibly disciplined Butler team.) Our hearts went out to Coach B. and all the tearful Terps on the sidelines last night who seemed stunned by the scale of their defeat and by their inability to adjust to Ole Miss’s stifling defense. Our sense off and on throughout this nonetheless impressive season was that the still young and already accomplished team was having a difficult time managing the expectations generated by that beautiful crystal trophy they brought back to the Comcast Center after last year’s amazing run through the tournament. The hardware in their heads wasn’t ready for the hardware in the hallway and all the pressure that went with it. In clutch moments, as Roxie’s World has observed before, you could see the self-doubt in their eyes, the anxiety in their passes. Can I really do this, they seemed to be wondering? Do I really deserve this? Shouldn’t that glittering jewel of a trophy be in Durham or Chapel Hill rather than College Park?

To which Roxie’s World replies: HELL NO! Our hearts are heavy for you today, but we stand behind the sentiments lovingly painted on the signs my moms held aloft all season in the Comcast Center, even when the grouches behind us threatened to turn us in to the big meanies in the yellow jackets:

• FEAR THE BRENDA
• TERP WOMEN RULE

And, oh, yeah, one more thing: WE CAN’T WAIT TIL NEXT YEAR. We’ll miss you, Shay, but it’s time to FEAR THE JUNIORS, BABY.

Update: The post-mortems on the Terps' disappointing loss are rolling in. They're painful to read, but we hope the folks in the Comcast Center will accept them as a necessary bit of tough love that might be useful to contemplate during the longer-than-expected offseason. David Steele has a particularly hard-hitting piece on Coach B's surprising decision to bench Kristi Toliver and start newcomer Sa'de Wiley-Gatewood at point guard in the NCAA tournament. Milton Kent has a good day-two piece that has thoughtful comments from Shoulders and Coach B, but which also suggests Kristi Toliver was blind-sided by the decision not to start her in the tournament. Please, basketball goddesses, spare us the spectacle of recriminations and in-fighting among our beautiful turtles! The Sun also has a nice sidebar that evaluates all the Lady Terps this season. Highest marks, we're pleased to report, go to Shoulders, who is judged to be "on the verge of superstardom." We give that judgment Five Paws Up and an enthusiastic Roxie's World Seal of Approval. Hold your shoulders high, Marissa. You are a Mighty Woman of Maryland!

Memo to Lady Terps: BELIEVE!

(Photo Credit: Preston Keres - Washington Post)

My beloved Lady Terps suffered a heartbreaking loss last night to the revenge-seeking Tar Heels of North Carolina. (The Heels lost just two games last year, both to the youthful Terps.) They lost 84-71 before a raucous crowd of 17,950 at Comcast Center. (For excellent coverage of the game, see these three pieces in the Post by Marc Carig, Mike Wise, and Kathy Orton.) It's the second time in two weeks that the Terps have been kicked in the gut by one of the elite teams they beat last year enroute to their improbable national title.

Athletes hate being put on the couch and psychoanalyzed when things aren't going their way. They also hate getting advice from arm-chair coaches and disappointed fans, perhaps especially when the advice is offered up on the internets by aging dogs who happen to have blogs. Nonetheless, the moms and Margie and I stayed up late last night thinking and talking about the game, and we came up with some suggestions for the still young though ever mighty women of Maryland. They probably touched on most of these ideas in the locker room last night, but we offer them anyway in a spirit of admiration and high hope for their future:

• Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself: Fear the Turtle? You bet! Fear the Brenda? After last night's totally understandable technical, we reckon so! But watching last night's game, particularly the execrable first half, one got the sense that the Lady Terps have grown a little anxious in the big games. Last year, they played fearlessly because they were too young to worry about what they were doing. This year, with expectations so high and other teams gunning for them, they seem at clutch moments to suffer from pangs of self-doubt. Self-doubt breeds hesitation, and hesitation breeds turnovers (21 last night), poor shot selection (the normally cool-handed Kristi Toliver was 2-9 from 3-point land against the Heels), and missed passes. Coach Brenda Frese is right that her team needs to ease up on itself a little. Think less. Play more. Remember: It's a game.
• Get Your Swagger Back: Coach B. is right on this one, too. You are the It girls of college basketball. Fans adore you. (Last night's crowd set a record for attendance at an ACC women's game.) Opponents respect you. Look in the mirror, and love what you see. Look at your teammates, and love what you can do together. Look at the stands filled with little girls wearing your numbers and screaming your names, and love what you hear. You are strong and beautiful and tough.
• Get Even: Now you've got a couple of ego-bruising losses to avenge. Now you've got the image of Ivory Latta bobbing her head on your home court to celebrate another swishing 3-pointer burnished in your brains. And then there's that last-second shot by Camille Little, taken after you had conceded the game by opting not to foul North Carolina in the final 10 seconds. We want you to remember that bit of poor sportswomanship. Remember it, and use it to fuel your own competitive fire.
• Check the Calendar: It's not even February yet, women. You've got lots of time to make the adjustments you need to make to win the big games. Your rebounding was magnificent last night. You still need to be more effective on defense, and you need to know what to do if Crystal Langhorne is getting shut down underneath the basket. There's a whole lot more right than there is wrong, though, women, and the season is a long way from over.
  

Hold your heads high. Your best is yet to come.

Bedeviled

The president seems to be shrinking again. Here he is in the White House library Wednesday night, making a speech he had put off and put off, like some desperate undergrad hoping against hope that he might find a dog to eat his homework. Sorry, Shrub, not even Barney would take a bite out of the load of hooey you tried to foist off on the American people this time. The latest "new way forward in Iraq" sounds so old and backward that even Republicans are fleeing from it in droves. The Times and the Post both have stories today on the every-man-for-himself mentality that has taken hold among Republicans, who realize Bush's war is a lost cause that has already cost them their majorities in Congress. They are voting for popular Democratic proposals faster than you can say "poll-obsessed, flip-flopping, former theo-con who now thinks global warming is real and negotiating with drug companies for lower prices is a brilliant idea." This spectacle would be fun to watch if it weren't for the fact that American kids and Iraqi civilians will keep dying while Bush and his cronies look for new ways to cover their backsides and postpone the inevitable for two more years.

Bush isn't the only one who was bedeviled this week by pesky enemies who made him seem small and weak. My beloved Lady Terps, reigning national champions and owners of the longest active winning streak in Division I college basketball, traveled to Durham for a re-match with the Duke Blue Devils, whom they last faced in the championship game last April. For the Terps, the reunion wasn't pretty, as Duke's suffocating defense held Maryland to 37.8 percent shooting. The Blue Devils prevailed 81-62, leaving Maryland coach Brenda Frese to say, graciously and succinctly, "This game we were outworked, outhustled, outplayed, outcoached, you name it."

Coach B. hits the nail right on the head. My moms and their new pals over at DC BasketCases, the best darn Washington-area women's basketball blog on the internets, hope the Terps will embrace their stinging loss as an opportunity to learn, to grow, and to kick some serious butt when they face the Blue Devils again on Feb. 18. For a good example of how to bounce back from a bitter defeat, the Lady Terps need only look to that other team with a national championship trophy in the Comcast Center, the non-lady Terps. The Maryland men's team this week suffered an ugly loss to the Miami Hurricanes at home on Wednesday night. (My moms were there. How ugly was it? Judging by the looks on the moms' faces when they got home, I'd say it was as ugly as the boil George Bush got on his face during the Florida recount. Remember that? I do.) Anyway, the boys bounced right back on Saturday, defeating the 17th-ranked Clemson Tigers, the only undefeated team left in men's Division I basketball. The men needed the victory to avoid a disastrous 0-3 start in ACC play, and they got it thanks to a season high 62.7 percent shooting and strong rebounding against the ACC's best offensive rebounding team. We don't know if they answered all the questions that might be raised about them (since the boy Terps in the last couple of seasons have shown a tendency to win big games and let little ones slip away), but we're pleased with the win and hope this team really is ready to take Maryland back to the NCAA tournament.

Basketball is like life, kids. If you don't fear the turtle, you just don't know the score.