2013 Women's Basketball NCAA Guide

Experience allows UD coach to let loose, at least for a day Written by MARTIN FRANK COMMENTARY Mar. 18 delawareonline.com UPPER MARLBORO, MD. — Jacquetta May and Akeema Richards took the huge jug of water and sneaked up behind Delaware women’s basketball coach Tina Martin, ready to douse her after going through a second Colonial Athletic Association season undefeated.

But the jug was heavy and they released it too soon. The water only partially got the back of Martin’s blazer.

Undeterred, Martin dropped to the floor face down and did her version of a snow angel in the water. Then she got up smiling and hugged everyone around her.

“I thought to myself, ‘That might be the worst miss we had the entire game,’ ” Martin said. “They missed me totally. Then I was like, ‘Somebody’s got to clean this up.’ Might as well be me. So I dove into the water and did my little snow angel.

“But I wish they would have hit me because I was sweating like crazy.”

Martin had every reason to sweat during the Hens’ 59-56 win over Drexel in the CAA Tournament championship game on Sunday.

The Hens had lost a 17-point lead in the second half and trailed Drexel by a point with less than a minute left before Trumae Lucas and Elena Delle Donne each calmly made two free throws. After Drexel’s last possession ended in a turnover, Delle Donne picked up the ball and flung it the length of the court, draining the final second on the clock.

So Martin celebrated like a child after the last day of school, knowing her team took everyone’s best shot and won – 42 straight times in conference play.

For so many years, we had rarely seen this side of Martin. She had always been so serious and so focused. But having seven seniors has changed everything about her.

“I challenge these young ladies and they give it right back to me,” Martin said. “And I like it. I like it when Elena says, ‘Coach, I think we should play this way.’ I’ll listen to her … [Lauren] Carra came over to me and said, ‘I’ve got a post player on me.’ So I ran a play for her. And it was late in the game.

“They have input. Does it mean I always take it? No. But it means I consider it, I listen to it. That’s the kind of kids they are.”

When Drexel threatened to take over the game, Martin was burning timeouts, trying to find ways to get the ball inside to Delle Donne, or to find open shots for Lucas or Carra.

But she also noticed a calmness in her players, and that, in turn, reassured her.

“In all honesty, being on this team and having seven seniors on this team, and the experience we have, you don’t really get that feeling [of everything slipping away],” Carra said. “We’re all confident in each other that we’re going to make the plays.”

The game was only a microcosm of the last two seasons, when expectations were enormously high and the Hens had to fight to meet every one of them, whether it was Drexel’s rally or Delle Donne’s bout with Lyme disease, or any number of injuries that came up.

“This was stressful,” Martin said. “It has been a stressful, wonderful, amazing two years. ... When I talk about the stress, it’s probably self-imposed. But I don’t want to lose. These kids don’t want to lose.”

Martin revealed after the game that Carra was playing with a bruised hand that was so painful that she couldn’t really shoot.

Instead, she picked off two passes and went in for one layup and passed off to Delle Donne for another. She finished with 10 rebounds and six assists.

“I felt like I had to do something out there,” Carra said sheepishly.

She did enough, and so did her teammates, which is why Martin said she was “the happiest person in the United States of America.”

“I am going to enjoy this [up until] today in the [NCAA Tournament] Selection Show,” Martin added. “As soon as that name flashes up of whoever we’re playing, then that smile will be off my face.”

In other words, back to business.

Contact Martin Frank at mfrank@delawareonline.com.