COLLEGE PARK — Maryland women’s basketball has seen your brackets, especially the ones that had Alabama etched into the Sweet 16.

“A lot of people doubted us,” All-Big Ten guard Kaylene Smikle said. “But we’re gonna keep showing up.”

While those predictions did exist in the conscience of Terps players Monday night, the most important bracket was the one on a stand in the Maryland locker room. Players raced to it after Maryland’s 111-108 double-overtime victory, the second-highest point total in a women’s NCAA Tournament game ever, to slap a Maryland logo onto the empty spot in the next round.

The honor was for Shyanne Sellers, the senior guard who scored 28 points in her final game in Xfinity Center. Maryland basketball hasn’t lacked unforgettable NCAA Tournament moments this week. The latest, which coach Brenda Frese said was the first double-overtime game she has been part of in nearly two decades, has the Terps playing in their third Sweet 16 in the past four seasons.

“This one, absolutely, I’m going to remember for a really long time,” Frese said.

The Terps nearly had a victory in hand at the end of the first overtime, but a three-point lead with just seconds to play is hardly safe in March. A critical Saylor Poffenbarger foul on a 3-point shooter gave Alabama another chance, and Sarah Ashlee Barker, who had a career-high 45 points, drained all three chances from the line to force a second overtime.

Maryland bounced back from the error and made enough plays in the final five minutes to survive. Smikle scored 24 in the win, and Sarah Te-Biasu added 26, including eight in the final overtime session.

“We just kept fighting,” Te-Biasu said. “That’s all we did.”

Maryland led 19-15 after the opening quarter as Sellers scored seven early points. Its advantage grew to 10 after a Smikle steal and score, spelling an Alabama timeout with the Crimson Tide searching for answers.They found them. Alabama closed the first half on an 18-6 run to enter the break up two. Maryland made just one field goal over the final six minutes of the period. Like Saturday’s second-half comeback against No. 13 seed Norfolk State, the Terps needed to play from behind. Frese credited that sluggish start two days ago to the jitters that come with the NCAA Tournament — most of her roster had never been here before. At first, it seemed those were gone by Monday night.

Three quick Alabama buckets after play resumed brought a frustrated Frese onto the court to stop the run. Her team, down seven and facing its largest deficit of the night, went from smiling and finding easy buckets to straight-faced and struggling to find a rhythm.

Seven became 14 after Barker’s third 3-pointer of the night that spelled another Frese timeout with four minutes to play in the third. Maryland was helpless. A game that once appeared in command for the Terps slipped into one they couldn’t control. That was compounded when Sellers collected her fourth foul in the final moments of the third quarter and sat for longer than she otherwise would have the rest of the way.

“It wasn’t really a specific play. It was a specific timeout,” Sellers said. “I remember we were just talking about score, stop, score, stop, score. Get a stop, get it within 10 going into the fourth and we’re right there, and that’s exactly what we did.”

A quick run without the star guard brought Maryland back to down 73-67 with six minutes to play, and another late push capped by a Te-Biasu triple in the final 15 seconds evened the score and sent the game to its first overtime.

There, Poffenbarger missed one of two free throws with six seconds left then fouled a 3-point shooter to give Alabama a chance. Barker made all three. “I’m extremely hard on myself,” she said. “But they picked me up.”

Both sides eclipsed triple digits in the second overtime, a charge on the Maryland side led by Te-Biasu’s pair of 3-pointers. Meanwhile, Sellers stayed out of trouble and never fouled out despite being one away for more than 15 minutes of game time.

Up three with seconds to play and Alabama owning possession again — the same situation the Terps mishandled minutes earlier — Maryland didn’t foul and closed out the victory.

A loss would have dismissed this group earlier than Frese hoped when she constructed this transfer-heavy roster last spring. It also would have been the second consecutive season Maryland bowed out before the Sweet 16. Instead, top-seeded South Carolina looms next. The reigning national champion Gamecocks went undefeated last year but entered this March with three losses.

Top seeds are usually unavoidable for No. 4 seeds like Maryland, which the Terps men are finding out, too. Wins like this one on Monday offer valuable experience, as nail-biting and excruciating as they might be to those in the stands and at home. But this is nothing new to the ones taking the shots.

“We’ve worked since June for this,” Poffenbarger said. “All of us dreamed of this. We’ve worked all of our careers for this kind of moment.”

Have a news tip? Contact Taylor Lyons at tlyons@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/TaylorJLyons.