How Abby Meyers turned a fadeaway jumper into her most reliable shot for No. 10 Maryland women’s basketball

The nickname “Automatic Abby” seems appropriate for Abby Meyers.

A senior shooting guard for Maryland women’s basketball, Meyers has converted 42% of her shots this winter, the second-highest rate of her career, and ranks second on the team shooting 40.8% on 3-point attempts.

She has been especially productive with a turnaround fadeaway jumper that has become her signature move.

“In practice and against our scout guys, she’s always shot that shot,” senior shooting guard Brinae Alexander said. “Whether she hits or not, we’re always like, ‘That’s your shot, Abby.’”

“Sometimes I joke that she reminds me a little bit of a throwback in [former Duke star] Christian Laettner,” coach Brenda Frese said. “But she definitely practices it. She spends a lot of time in the gym.”

Meyers said she modeled the shot after studying film of former Dallas Mavericks great Dirk Nowitzki.

“It’s kind of my bread and butter now,” she said. “It’s very easy to me, and as long as I’m balanced, it works, and I’m going to keep doing it.”

How Meyers developed the turnaround fadeaway jumper is an exercise in persistence and recognition. Like a scientist in a lab, she spent considerable time testing and tweaking an effective way to score points, especially against bigger and physical male classmates, teachers and coaches during morning pickup games at Walt Whitman High in Potomac.

In response, Meyers found the fall-away jumper, and a hallmark was born.

“I always say that whenever I play against guys and try to post them up, instead of powering over them because most of the time I would get blocked, I would instead fade, and they could never guard that,” she recalled. “So it kind of just naturally progressed like that.”

Despite resistance from her father, Steven, who countered she should be more balanced when shooting, Meyers continued working on the turnaround fadeaway jumper. She said she has gotten better with the intricacies of the shot as she has aged.

“You get stronger, you need less legs and can just depend on your upper-body strength,” she said. “I always practice it the day before a game. So now I can really rely on it, which is great.”

Meyers honed the fall-away jump shot at Princeton, where she learned she could use her 6-foot frame to post up smaller opponents and shoot over them.

“We really put her in the position to post up against smaller guards using her length, and that turnaround jumper is really hard to guard,” said Tigers coach Carla Berube, who mentored Meyers for two seasons. “We really talked about using her in ball-screen action because she really has a nice pull-up jumper that is very hard to guard because of how high her release is and how quickly she can get that off. Just wanted to use her skill set in ways that are hard to defend her, and I think posting up was one of them.”

Last year, Meyers scored a Princeton-record 538 points, was named the Ivy League Player of the Year and earned honorable mention All-America honors, becoming only the third player in program history to do so. After entering the transfer portal, she bypassed Michigan for Maryland, the team she grew up watching as a teenager.

Meyers said she didn’t hold a grudge against the Terps for overlooking her the first time.

“At the end of the day, it’s a business, right?” she said. “So no hard feelings when you get rejected by one school, and I don’t blame them. I was a young high school player, and I didn’t meet their criteria for the player they were looking for. I can understand it now.”

Meyers’ forgiveness has paid dividends for No. 10 Maryland (16-4, 7-2 Big Ten). Meyers, who ranks third on the team in points (13.4 per game) and rebounds (4.9), fourth in assists (2.7) and tied for second in steals (1.7), has helped offset the transfers of Angel Reese (LSU), Ashley Owusu (Virginia Tech), Mimi Collins (North Carolina State), Channise Lewis (Pittsburgh) and Taisiya Kozlova (Dayton).

Meyers’ presence has been particularly welcomed as part of a three-headed attack featuring senior shooting guard Diamond Miller (18.6 points per game) and sophomore shooting guard Shyanne Sellers (14.9).

“The fact that we have to play differently this year and that we have to have so many scorers with Abby, with [Alexander, who is averaging 9.3 points off the bench], with Shy, with Diamond allows us to be able to spread the court when sometimes we’re going to have some mismatches inside,” Frese said. “So it’s allowed us on the flipside to make people have to come out and guard us for our great guard play.”

Alexander pointed out that Meyers can rely on a plethora of moves to power the Terps offense.

“Her turnaround jumper from mid-range is lethal,” she said. “She also can shoot very well from 3. Some of the shots she takes, it’s like, ‘Whoa,’ but those are Abby’s shots. She knocks down those consistently.”

Meyers has added another shot to her repertoire but has yet to unveil it during games. She has been ending her time during the team’s shootarounds by launching back-to-basket shots from halfcourt. She said she has yet to take more than 10 attempts before making at least one and has video evidence of her nailing three in her first five tries.

All signs seem to be pointing to a successful season, but Meyers said she isn’t getting ahead of herself.

“It’s a work in progress,” she said. “There’s good games and bad games that I have, and it’s a learning experience for me. I do think that my experience thus far has been one of growth and opportunity, and I’m going to continue to put myself in the best position to embrace that.”

No. 13 Michigan at No. 10 Maryland

Thursday, 6:30 p.m.

TV: Big Ten Network