Doron Bounces Back and So Do the Terps

BOSTON, April 4 -- Her teammates consider her the epicenter of this Maryland team, so the Terrapins fell silent when Shay Doron smacked hard against the floor late in Tuesday night's game. The guard dropped parallel to the ground and landed squarely on her elbow. She didn't move for 10 seconds.

"I watched," freshman Kristi Toliver said, "and my heart stopped beating."

Doron's heroic return over the next few minutes helped resurrect the Terrapins in a 78-75 upset of Duke in the NCAA title game. The junior guard -- the first landmark recruit for Coach Brenda Frese -- taped up her elbow and returned to score four points in overtime. She gritted out the final few minutes until the buzzer sounded.

After that, Doron said, she didn't feel anything.

"It hurt, but I knew I could be effective," Doron said. "When you're in a game like that, adrenaline takes over. I had to get back in there and get going. You always want to go at full speed."

She was moving at a breakneck pace after a rebound with less than a minute left when she collided with Duke's Mistie Williams, who was called for a foul. Doron said she felt numb for a few seconds while she was flat on the court. When she moved, her head tipped up to look at the scoreboard. Maryland trailed by four with 58 seconds left.

Ashleigh Newman entered the game and shot Doron's free throws. She made one of two. Then Doron trotted off the bench to replace her.

"I honestly lost feeling in my hand for a good two seconds on the floor," Doron said. "I just fell really hard on my elbow, and I don't know what happened. I just fell right on the elbow. I wanted to take the free throws, but it was a good decision not to let me. I was really emotional."

She stayed that way the rest of the game -- but for a drastically different reason. Doron set a screen for Toliver in the final seconds, allowing her to make a game-tying three-pointer with 6.1 seconds left. Doron talked to several teammates at the end of regulation, imploring them to calm down.

Her overtime started shakily. She turned over the ball on Maryland's first possession and stomped her foot on the court. Then she made two free throws to tie the score with two minutes left and a layup to tie it again 45 seconds later.

"She was huge in overtime," Frese said.

It proved fitting, teammates said later, that Doron came back onto the court to guide the Terrapins. On a team for which six of the seven leading scorers are freshmen and sophomores, Doron stands out as the unquestioned leader. She turned down several elite schools and committed to a Maryland team that had not advanced to the NCAA tournament's round of 16 for more than a decade. In her three years at Maryland, she's guided the Terrapins to the tournament three times.

"This is the perfect ending," Doron said.