Maryland Terps Still Get No Respect

What does it take for Maryland women’s basketball to get respect? In two games, ESPN has broadcast less than 3 minutes of coverage, none from the 2nd round game (and even skipped the #1 seed entirely during one of the updates). An article from the AP about parity leading into the 2009 “sweet-16” (link) says:

There is a lot of championship experience left with UConn, Stanford, Baylor and Purdue still playing. Those four teams have combined to win seven of the past 10 national titles.

Never mind that Stanford hasn’t won the women’s championship since 1992. Forget that those four teams listed have combined to win only six of the last ten national titles. (The other four are Notre Dame, Maryland, and a pair for Tennessee.)  Those two erroneous sentences aside, there is still no other mention of Maryland in the piece.

None. Nada. Nichts. Bupkis.

Many other schools are mentioned by name or nickname: Auburn(2), Ball State(3), Baylor(2), California, Connecticut(9), Duke(2), Florida, Harvard, Louisville(3), LSU(4), Michigan State, North Carolina(2), Purdue, Rutgers(5), San Diego State, Stanford(4), Tennessee(5), UC Santa Barbara, Vermont(2). And Harvard isn’t even in this year’s tournament!

During the 2009 ACC Tournament, the NC papers referred to the Maryland women’s basketball team as “Intruders”. In-tru-ders. I guess we should be happy that they mentioned the team at all.

I suppose that as long as the Terps keep their focus and keep bringing home championships, then it all balances out. Let the Huskies, the Scarlet Knights and all the others get all the ink. As long as our trophy case at Comcast keeps filling, that should be recognition enough.