Players perspectives across women's basketball

Maryland senior Marissa Coleman is one of six women's basketball players who will provide updates on their NCAA tournament experience.

For The Associated Press

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) -64 to 32.

32 to Sweet 16?

One down, and five more to go until we achieve our ultimate goal.

We played a pretty good game against Dartmouth in the opening round. We did not play our best on the offensive end but we made some improvements on the defensive end. And, you know what they say, "Defense wins championships.''

We had a great crowd come out and support us Sunday afternoon - 10,000 plus! I expect we will have even more fan support Tuesday night.

We play Utah tomorrow night, and it should be a great game. The Utes are a great team, and we are especially excited to play them for a couple of reasons: Kristi (Toliver) and I played them to get to the Final Four in 2006 and our assistant coach (Daron Park) coached there two years ago. Coach Park was especially focused and excited in practice today, so we have to do our best to help him get a win against his old squad.

We are one of the teams fortunate enough to play at home during the tournament, and our fans have been great all season. Well, all but our student section. Now, we do have our faithful 20 students that come to every game, but rarely (unless we are playing Duke or UNC), do we get much more than that.

So, Coach B (Brenda Frese), being the clever coach she is, decided to give the students a little extra incentive to come out and support us tomorrow night: PIZZA! The first 100 students who come to the game tomorrow will get free pizza, on Coach B.

Not only will the students get to witness March Madness first hand, they can have dinner for free! A great way to spend your Tuesday night if you ask me.

In a little less than 24 hours, it will be Gametime. Oh, how I love Gametime!

Hopefully, the student fans come out to support us and help us "Protect this House.''

Go Terps!