After taking its first loss of the season against Illinois, No. 7 Maryland’s women’s basketball bounced back with an 82-67 victory over Indiana on Sunday evening.
Here are three takeaways from the game.
Okananwa dominates on both ends… again
As Maryland’s shorthanded roster enters the heart of the season, one thing that has become increasingly clear is that its primary source of offense will be Oluchi Okananwa.
Two games ago against Wisconsin, the junior Duke transfer exploded for a career-high 28 points. That new record lasted less than a week.
Okananwa carried Maryland’s offense against Indiana, putting up 34 points.
“I’ve been given a lot more freedom than I have [previously] in my college career,” Okananwa said. ‘With that, I’ve kind of been able to mold it and see, ‘Okay, where are my spots offensively?’”
She got there by her usual methods: blowing past defenders for layups, getting to the free throw line and occasionally stepping beyond the arc for a 3-pointer. When the Terps hit offensive lulls, the ball went to Okananwa every time, and she was able to create.
The most impressive part of Okananwa’s dominance wasn’t even on that end. She was tasked with defending Shay Ciezki, the Big Ten’s leading scorer, on an island. Okananwa face-guarded her relentlessly, chasing her around the perimeter and denying her the opportunity to even receive a pass from any of her teammates.
Ciezki – who came into the game averaging over 23 points a game — finished with 17 points on 5-of-9 from the floor with three turnovers. Six of those 17 came from the free-throw line.
“My Nigerian genes maybe, I don’t know,” Okananwa said with a laugh on what allows her to keep her motor going on both ends. “It’s just something I’ve always done, something I always hold myself to.”
Regardless of what allows Okananwa to play at that high of a level on both ends, if she keeps it up, she will solidify herself as a legitimate contender for Big Ten Player of the Year.
Terps show resilience
Before Maryland’s game against Illinois, many players had no experience with the ups and downs of a season in an elite conference like the Big Ten. The Terps made it through their first 14 games without a loss thanks to a combination of strong play, a favorable schedule and good fortune.
The Fighting Illini welcomed Maryland to 2026 with its first loss, though, and the Terps were forced to respond on just three days of rest.
“We don’t take losses lightly,” Isimenme Ozzy-Momodu said. “In practice we said, ‘No more.’”
On paper, Indiana would seem like an easy team to be matched up against in a bounce-back spot — it lost its first three conference matchups and had been backsliding for about a month. But the Hoosiers returned a key piece in forward Zania Socka-Nguemen in time for Maryland.
“We missed her, it’s hard to run a good offense without a post presence,” Indiana head coach Teri Moren said of her return.
Early in the season, when the former five-star recruit from Silver Spring was healthy, the Hoosiers were rolling and undefeated.
Indiana posed Maryland a more serious threat with a healthy squad, but Frese’s team was ready to answer the bell and made sure to avoid the start of any losing streak.
“Losing sucks, that’s not what we do here, but at the same point, the perspective was that it was our first loss,” head coach Brenda Frese said. “It was a terrific response, which I knew they would have.”
Halftime defensive adjustments worked
On a night where the Xfinity Center crowd celebrated Frese’s 2006 national championship run, her ability as a tactician shone.
Despite appearing to be the far better team over the first 20 minutes, Maryland went to the half up by just five points and with the feeling that Indiana had all the momentum. The second quarter ended with a string of Hoosiers free throws, while Maryland’s offense seemed to be grinding for every point they could get.
“It was a pretty intense halftime because I didn’t like how we played in the second quarter,” Frese said. “We let our missed shots turn into run outs and threes by Indiana.”
After Frese’s impassioned halftime speech, the Terps jumped on Indiana to open the second half, holding it scoreless for over four minutes while they opened up a 12-0 run, pushing the lead to 19.
The Hoosiers did their best to keep the game close after that run, but the gap was too big. Every time the lead was cut, Maryland came up with enough of an answer to fend them off.
The Terps turned up the on-ball pressure on Indiana, forcing them into bad shots and turnovers. On the other end, Frese relentlessly attacked Socka-Nguemen — who was playing with four fouls — allowing Ozzy-Momodu to get going offensively on top of her efforts on the glass.
