This. In the first half Maryland was totally caught off guard by Iowa's pace. Iowa made them pay by pushing the ball down the court and getting high percentage looks before they were set up. Maryland was crashing the offensive glass *hard*, which earned them some second chance points, but it came at the expense of their transition defense, so it pretty much evened out.
That, combined with Clark's UNREAL shooting in the first half was just killer. Teams accept that Clark will make a couple long bombs every game, but the fact that she went 5-7 from three in the first half is ridiculous even by Clark's standards. A couple of those were wide open looks from the corner that were just inexcusable to allow, but even more were contested. Impossible to stop when she is on like that.
I would argue that Maryland didn't even guard our supporting cast that well, but you wouldn't know it from the box score. Molly, Kate, McKenna, and Gabbie all had wide open looks from 3 that they didn't convert. Usually they're money on those and it's Caitlin with the more inefficient numbers, but it was the other way around last night.
We're lucky we built up such a comfortable lead in the first half because we didn't play all that great in the second half. Their best defensive was pressuring the ball in the half court to force risky passes and swipe away careless dribbles. I would expect the Terps to ditch the press and try to slow the pace way down when we see them in College Park, which is more in line with how they played us last year.
As far as Maryland's offense was concerned, they also stuck to their gameplan better in the second half. Attacking the basket instead of settling for jumpers. If we went man, Sellers would just drive baseline. If we went zone, they'd get the ball to Miller at the elbow and let her drive at Monika. Both we never really stopped...