Watson sharpening her game

Hard work behind scenes driving Terps’ rehabbing sharpshooter

COLLEGE PARK — At the Maryland women’s basketball media day in October, guard Sarah Myers took a break from playing faux-team reporter, put down the mic she had pointed toward her teammate Blair Watson and screwed up her face in anguish. Watson had just mentioned one of the grisliest parts of her rehabilitation after she tore her right anterior cruciate ligament and lateral meniscus in January: “the bending process.”

“Oh my god, the screams,” Myers said, turning her face away.

Watson’s Maryland teammates were by her side through every step of the guard’s road to recovery, which explains why everyone on the bench for the Terps’ second game of the season, last Sunday against Dayton, leaped to their feet after one particular sequence.

In the middle of the first quarter, the junior sharpshooter hit a 3-pointer, her specialty. Next came a steal leading to another 3. Then, Watson stole the ball again and hit a breakaway jumper. She scored eight points in 32 seconds, causing even coach Brenda Frese to stomp in celebration.

“Oh, Blair’s worked so hard behind the scenes, and I said to the team in the locker room, she’s not even 100 percent yet,” Frese said after the game. “When she can come out and will her team with that kind of energy and spirit, I thought she was the difference in the game. We should be able to have everyone play that hard every possession.” Just under a year ago, Watson was 17 games into a standout season in which she was Maryland’s clear second option on offense behind Kaila Charles, averaging 13.8 points per game and shooting 44.1 percent from beyond the arc. But then she went up for a layup in a January game and crumpled to the floor when she came down.

What followed was a challenging 10 months: Surgery in early February, the news that she had played too many games for the NCAA to grant her a medical waiver for her sophomore year and a half-season spent either riding the bench or in rehab in College Park while experiencing some of the worst pain she’s ever felt in her life. All the while, her teammates played on without her, struggling at times where she could have helped them the most - on offense.

“It was hard,” Watson said. “It was a long, hard process.”

The result of the period between her injury and when Maryland’s team doctors cleared her to play in October is a player transformed. Watson can still hit big 3-pointers and put up healthy numbers on offense, as evidenced by her 9.3 points in a piecemeal 19.3 minutes per game while Frese works her up to a normal workload. But her focus on the court has shifted more to defense.

Off the court, the previously shy and soft-spoken Watson has become a vocal leader.

The leadership part came naturally for the New Jersey native. She got to watch a lot of her team while stuck on the bench in a knee brace last year and became the person around whom her teammates would huddle for pointers during timeouts.

The vocal part developed differently. It was a conscious decision on Watson’s part to open up more, not just to her team, but to the media as well.

“This year I wanted people to see a different side of me, especially because I did go through so much in the last few months,” Watson said. “I’d say I’m a lot stronger than I thought I was . ... It kind of reassured me that I’m a very strong-willed person and when adversity does happen to me, I can pull through it.”

Watson is one of the ninth-ranked Terps’ many scoring threats that will be required for their first big test of the nonconference schedule today at No. 10 South Carolina (2-0). Yet her goal for the season is to work on her defense and let the offense follow.

Frese likes Watson as a defender — her wingspan gives the team some extra length and her work ethic is tireless.