Lady Lions hope confidence found on road sticks against No. 5 Maryland

How much faith can one put into two games?

A lot, if you’re the Penn State women’s basketball team.

In the Lady Lions’ last two outings, both Midwest road wins in conference play, the team looked cohesive. In the simplest of terms, they put up points and made crucial defensive stops all within the same game.

For a team that struggled most of the season to match those two key elements together, there is a bit of relief that things seem to be “clicking.”

“I think we’re being a little bit more aggressive in terms of dictating things instead of reacting to what our opponent is doing offensively,” said head coach Coquese Washington during Monday’s media availability. “I think our communication is way better than it was earlier in the season.”

Washington said she saw the changes in practice weeks ago, but of course, in-game development was hard to come by for the Lady Lions as conference play started.

“Before, it was like ‘Oh, let’s win the offensive drills (in practice),’ ” said forward Peyton Whitted. “Now we’re putting the same amount of focus in the defense as we are the offense and it’s really been showing over the last month.

“We’ve been improving each day in practice, and finally last week, everything kind of clicked. All of that hard work really showed in those last two games, we got the stops we needed, and we played hard and played together.”

The mental shift in mindset helped more than the physical effort exerted.

“Taking more pride in our defense was really the big change, and just having more confidence in it as well,” said Whitted.

And, she said, the fact that the dominant performances came on the road absolutely boosted the team’s morale. The Lady Lions held both Illinois and Iowa under their season scoring averages in front of their opponents’ fans, after all.

That confidence will be key as Penn State prepares for its biggest conference challenge yet when it hosts No. 5 Maryland at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

Whether the team wins or loses is obviously most important, but against a powerhouse like Maryland, what might be just as important is how the Lady Lions play them, regardless of the outcome. The current starting set of Brianna Banks, Teniya Page, Lindsey Spann, Kaliyah Mitchell and Whitted has technically seen just seven or eight games together, due to injury and rotating personnel. So, the matchup with the Terps could very well show that those two road wins really were signs of a team turnaround, the beginnings of the cohesion so desired by Washington all year.

The Terrapins lost a few key players last season but replaced them with talent.

“One of the things that makes them a really good team is their balance,” said Washington. “They’re probably the deepest team that we will face, in terms of their balanced inside-outside attack of (center) Brionna Jones and (guard) Shatori Walker-Kimbrough, and (guard) Brene Moseley on perimeter.

“Then you throw in (guard) Kristen Confroy, who really stretches the defense, and then you add in Tierney Pfirman off the bench, another forward who can make some shots.”

It’s an attack that produces the No. 2 scoring offense in the Big Ten, with an average of 85.7 points per game (just 0.2 behind No. 1 Ohio State), and a plus-29.5 scoring margin. The Terps are also shooting a conference-best 49.8 percent from the field.

This story was originally published January 26, 2016 at 5:30 PM with the headline "Lady Lions hope confidence found on road sticks against No. 5 Maryland."