Women’s Basketball

Northwestern’s 16-game Big Ten schedule includes 14 winnable games against unranked teams and a home contest against No. 11 Ohio State, who beat the Wildcats 94-87 on Tuesday.

Then there is the other game.

That contest is Saturday’s road matchup with No. 3 Maryland (14-1, 2-0 Big Ten), the two-time defending Big Ten champions who, just last week, came within 6 points of snapping Connecticut’s then-86 game winning streak. An NU (13-3, 2-1) win would be an eye-opening upset against a team that is 12-0 against unranked teams and a possible Final Four participant.

“They cover all the bases. They can play inside-out, they can score, play in transition, play half court,” coach Joe McKeown said of the Terrapins. “Defensively, they’re a challenge because they have quickness and size.”

The two teams’ recent respective games at Nebraska might give a good indication of the disparity between them. The Cats struggled against the Cornhuskers, starting slow and failing to score for more than six minutes late in the fourth quarter before escaping with a 62-58 win.

The Terrapins rolled through Nebraska like they have most opponents, building a 17-point lead in the first quarter en route to a 94-49 win, the Cornhuskers’ worst defeat since 1975.

The Cats, however, believe they have improved markedly since their late December trip to Lincoln.

“As a team we’ve learned so much already from our last game,” senior forward Nia Coffey said. “We understand what we need to do.”

Recent history, however, isn’t kind to the Cats. The Terrapins beat NU three times last season, including a 21-point rout in the Big Ten Tournament and a 79-70 win in Evanston in which Maryland led by as many as 20 points before the Cats made a charge.

NU hasn’t beaten the Terrapins since they joined the Big Ten in 2014. And this Maryland team likely rivals the 2014-15 version that finished 36-3 and made the Final Four.

The Terrapins are third in the country in scoring average at 89.8 points per game — more than a full point higher than Ohio State — and are second in the nation in scoring margin, beating opponents by an average of 31 points.

But senior guard Christen Inman said that does not concern the Cats.

“We’ve played Maryland so many times, this is just another game for us,” Inman said. “This is another team in the Big Ten that we have to beat.”

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @ckpaxton