After about the four-minute mark of the MSU women's basketball team's loss to Maryland on Saturday, MSU head coach Joanne P. McCallie believes her team became observers, content with watching a great Terrapins team dribble circles around them.
The result: A 97-57 trouncing.
But after a 7 a.m. film session Sunday, McCallie said the team is ready to move on.
"There were some competitive moments with some really neat stuff going on, and then there were moments when we were spectators," McCallie said Monday at her weekly press conference. "There's just nothing else to say about it. We were watching them instead of playing against them."
But even after how badly the game ended up, McCallie is proud to have faced such a tough challenge.
"There's a lot of teams that would run away from that game," she said. "People wouldn't even schedule it. They would chicken out. We don't chicken out.
"You have to put yourself out there a little bit. You can't be afraid, and I think our team learned some great lessons, and I don't think there's any environment they'll be in again this year as challenging as that one was."
Not all was lost, though from an offensive standpoint.
Senior guard Victoria Lucas-Perry showed that she could hang with the best, scoring 20 points in 32 minutes.
"Victoria played strong," McCallie said. "What you saw with Victoria was her USA Basketball experience coming out. She was very dominant and played like she belonged, and she deserves a lot of credit for that."
And the game was a bit of a reality check for the Spartans, who were winners of five straight going in.
"When you get thumped like we did, it's a wake-up call for everybody," McCallie said.
"We had a great practice on Sunday, and we went right at it and flushed it out, so to speak."
Down to earth
After averaging 16 points and nearly four assists per game in the four games before Maryland, senior guard Rene Haynes scored three points on 1-of-7 shooting Saturday. It marked the end of a largely consistent stretch of play for MSU's point guard.
"Rene was on kind of a tear there," McCallie said. "She made that big shot at Indiana and had four straight games of being just incredible — very, very good. The best point guard numbers we've had for four straight games pretty much.
"Maybe not the best day to pick for a bad day, but she's also had big games before where she's played very well in big games. I don't want to excuse her, but she's been pretty consistent."
The Spartans fell one spot to No. 20 in The Associated Press Top 25 poll released Monday.
Injury report
McCallie said junior center Laura Hall is out indefinitely after aggravating a nagging foot injury.
Hall has averaged 2.9 points in 8.1 minutes per game this season.
Her season high in minutes was 18 on Dec. 9 against Hartford.
