NCAAW: Maryland Terps benefited from Smikle, Te-Biasu, transfer army

The transfer portal is messing with the emotions of women’s college basketball fans.

But for fans of the Maryland Terrapins, who had experienced the heartbreak of seeing so many talented players leave in recent years, it messed with our emotions in a good way in 2024-25.

Prior to this season, we suffered the whiplash of seeing a bunch of key contributors star in red, black and gold. Shakira Austin. Taylor Mikesell. Ashley Owsu. And, most of all, Angel Resse. But for only a brief time. So it messed with us. That’s not to say the transfer portal hasn’t been bringing us joy from the jump. Who could forget Abby Meyers, Katie Benzan, Jakia Brown-Turner, Chloe Bibby, Brinae Alexander, Mimi Collins, Lavender Briggs and Elisa Pinzan?

But this was a year to truly stand up and cheer for the transfer portal if you root for the turtles. Head coach Brenda Frese’s squad was almost completely made up of transfers. Of eight rotation players, only senior Shyanne Sellers and junior Bri McDaniel started their college careers in College Park. You had newcomers Kaylene Smikle, Sarah Te-Biasu, Saylor Poffenbarger and Christina Dalce, as well as second-year Terp Allie Kubek, all making huge contributions. Newbie Mir McLean also chipped in for a team that got off to the fourth-best start in program history (14-0) and quickly made a jump from No. 18 to No. 11 in the AP Top 25 poll after the first week of the 2024-25 season before peaking at No. 7 during their undefeated stretch.

The team would go on to be hindered by a season-ending ACL tear suffered by McDaniel, arguably the team’s third-best player, as well as injuries to arguable-best-player Sellers and key 3-point threat and rebounder Poffenbarger that caused those two to not be 100 percent down the stretch, ultimately resulting in a Sweet 16 exit at the hands of defending champion and No. 1-seed South Carolina.

It was a disappointing finish. The Terps came within four points of the mighty Gamecocks despite their injury woes, and had they won, they would have felt like they could have won the whole tournament.

Endings are always disappointing unless your team wins it all. Every year has been disappointing as a Terp fan since 2006. 2023—making the Elite Eight!—was a bit less disappointing. But Maryland beat an Olivia Miles-less Notre Dame team in the Sweet Sixteen to get there. It felt a little lucky. Well, this year, the Terps were unlucky because McDaniel would have made up that four-point difference, meaning we would have been making a hard-earned Elite Eight trip and could have gone even further.

I felt like the Terps had championship potential ever since a five-point loss to USC on Jan. 8. If we make smarter plays down the stretch of that game against the then-No. 4 Trojans, we carry momentum over, beat Wisconsin and Minnesota more soundly in our next two contests and maybe don’t drop all of the three games after that against No. 7 Texas, No. 12 Ohio State and No. 1 UCLA. Of course, the beginning of that three-game losing streak also coincided with the beginning of McDaniel’s absence. With a win over USC, we would have maintained a confidence that would have prevented our eventual losses to lesser teams. With that confidence and with McDaniel healthy, I think we remain in that top 11 all season long—and maybe even join the big six of UCLA, South Carolina, Texas, USC, UConn and Notre Dame, becoming a seventh team that the media considers to be a tier above the rest of the country.

That’s part of the story of this season for the Terps: We were better than what our Sweet 16 finish indicates, and it’s hard to let that go. However, the other part of the story is that incredible 14-0 start—led mostly by transfers—and the incredible way we responded to McDaniel’s injury, with Te-Biasu capturing vengeance over Ohio State with an overtime, game-winning 3 to close the regular season, followed by her and fellow transfers Smikle, Kubek and McLean (DEFENSE!) coming up clutch again in a double-overtime classic against No. 5 seed Alabama that allowed us to at least get to our fourth Sweet 16 in five years and 12th under Frese. McDaniel was, of course, also huge in the time that she played, and what a senior season it was for Sellers, who I think was really Maryland’s best player despite Smikle being our leading scorer.

But the real story is how 15 young women, including nine transfers, came together—most playing with each other for the first time—and formed a chemistry that would have put them in position to compete for a championship had injuries not gotten in the way.

Maryland fans have lost Austin, Mikesell, Owusu and Reese to the transfer portal. In the case of Austin, Mikesell and Reese, they all became bigger stars away from College Park, which was tough to watch. One moment you feel a connection to them because they play for your school, and you root for them like crazy; the next you’re confused about how to feel about them as they don a different jersey. Going further back, you could also point to Lexie Brown and Natasha Cloud, who both turned out to be WNBA players like Austin and Reese. I know what it was like to go to Maryland at the same time as those two, root for them and then see them leave.

But I’ve also seen the other side of it with all those transfers from the past and then with Smikle, Te-Biasu, Kubek, Poffenbarger, Dalce and McLean. Meyers was so key during our 2023 Elite Eight run and Benzan shot 50 percent from 3 with 93 makes one season! And so many great personalities. (Did you see Dalce this year?!) I’ve learned that you can make lasting memories, and a lasting impact on a program and fanbase, in just one or two seasons.

Whiplash, yes. But also excitement.

And don’t forget that special feeling of seeing a player come home, as we experienced with Meyers, Brown-Turner, Poffenbarger and McLean; meanwhile Kubek was already home when she played at Towson University in Maryland. (Not saying this was the case with all of the players I just mentioned, but some transfers dream of playing for Maryland and only go somewhere else initially because they’re not recruited by the Terps out of high school.)

The question now is where do the Terps go from here? Can they really plug in a roster full of transfers and expect the same amazing chemistry over and over? It seems unlikely to me.

Frese has continued to recruit very well. It goes without saying that getting the No. 4 recruit in Austin (2018) and the No. 2 recruit in Reese (2020) were huge accomplishments. But both of them transferred away before they were able to bring Maryland past the Sweet Sixteen. In the case of Austin, she never helped us out of the Round of 32, though she was a key part of a No. 4 AP poll finish to the NCAA Tournament-less 2020 season. Other top recruits from the DMV area in Azzi Fudd and Kiki Rice went elsewhere, partly contributing to Maryland’s 10-year-long Final Four drought and 19-year-long national championship drought.

Should we hope for more four-year Terps? Or, is it actually possible to plug in a ton of transfers every year and consistently make it to the Sweet 16 and beyond? Is this the new normal in college basketball?

I do know this: In the past two seasons since our Elite Eight appearance, we have overachieved. We weren’t expected to do much in 2024 and beat a top-five team for the first time since 2014 en route to a NCAA Tournament appearance that would have turned into second-round appearance had No. 7 seed Iowa State not made an incredible comeback. And this year, we started of ranked No. 18 before proving ourselves worthy of an Elite Eight bid or beyond.

Previously, Frese had only overachieved at Maryland (according to tournament seeding, at least) in 2004 (taking a No. 12 seed to the second round), 2006 (winning the title with a No. 2 seed) and 2014 (taking a No. 4 seed to the Final Four). More often, her Terp teams have underachieved: 2007 (No. 2 seed losing in the second round), 2008 and 2009 (No. 1 seed losing in the Elite Eight both years), 2011 (No. 4 seed losing in the second round), 2016 (No. 2 seed losing in the second round), 2019 (No. 3 seed losing in the second round) and 2021 (No. 2 seed losing in the Sweet 16).

Does the recent overachievement indicate that the Terps have a little extra fight in them of late? Can they capitalize on this renewed energy and finally build all the way back up to another championship, which would be Frese’s second. At best, we’d win it next year and it’d be 20 years later, which would be similar to Notre Dame’s Muffet McGraw’s 17-year gap between first and second. (Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer had a 29-year gap between second and third.)

Someone who’s been eliminating gaps lately—and not just in Aflac commercials—is Dawn Staley. Staley has won three chips in the last eight years and her South Carolina program seems like it’s going to be the go-to destination for recruits for the foreseeable future. Does this mean she could chase Tennessee’s Pat Summitt (eight titles) and UConn’s Geno Auriemma (11)?

Frese is a third-tier all-time coach who is hoping to boost her legacy. Geno and Pat make up the first tier. The second tier includes Kim Mulkey (4), Staley, VanDerveer and McGraw. Though she doesn’t have the long-term body of work of these others, Linda Sharp is the other multi-championship coach, having taken USC to the promised land twice over her 12 years (1977-89) at the helm. Frese is one of nine coaches with one chip.

Seeing if Frese and the Terps can capitalize begins next year, when hopefully McDaniel, Smikle and Poffenbarger will be back. That’s not bad for a big three, especially since they now have experience playing together.

And who knows? Maybe we’ll see some new Maryland heroines emerge from the transfer portal once again.