If it didn’t know beforehand, the No. 3 Terrapin women’s basketball team found out in Monday’s 68-60 loss at No. 4 Rutgers that the Scarlet Knights pride themselves on defense.
Averaging 81.2 points per game during their 10-game winning streak to open the season, the Terps (10-1) were stifled for most of the second half Monday, making just five field goals after halftime as the Scarlet Knights (5-1) slowly but surely overcame a 10-point halftime deficit and began to pull away.
“We like to believe that we can take most [teams] 10, 15, 20, 25 points off of their average,” Scarlet Knights head coach C. Vivian Stringer said. “And that’s basically what happened [Monday].”
The Scarlet Knights, who before Monday allowed opponents 47.6 points per game, tried from the beginning to slow the pace of the game to take the Terps out of their offensive flow.
But in the first half, the Terps looked unaffected by the Scarlet Knights’ pressure, shooting 61.9 percent from the floor and building their first double-digit lead shortly before halftime.
“We were pretty much even on everything else in the first half, but they were getting their open breaks because we weren’t locating their shooters fast enough,” Scarlet Knights senior forward Essence Carson said. “But we got it together, we talked about it, and we decided we were going to play some defense.”
The Scarlet Knights slowed things down even more in the second half, and began to focus more on shutting down the Terps’ post players on the inside, even with their starting center Kia Vaughn out for most of the half because of foul trouble.
When the Terps’ outside shooting went cold, and the Scarlet Knights started to make it closer, the Terps’ lead began to look vulnerable.
“They were fronting us in the post,” Terp coach Brenda Frese said. “We went to a four-guard lineup so we’d only have one post player in there. I think we let their intensity on the defensive end get to us more than maybe we needed to.”
The Terps shot just 21.7 percent from the field in the second half, and 40.9 percent for the game, significantly below their season average before Monday of 50.3 percent.
“You saw the Maryland kids – their eyes started bugging so we just kept going at them,” Scarlet Knights sophomore guard Epiphanny Prince said.
Frese said Monday’s loss will help the Terps as they continue on in their season.
Playing a top-5 team in a hostile road environment can only help prepare the Terps for the challenges that lie ahead.
“I thought [this game was] just a great lesson for us to be able to learn from early in the season,” Frese said. “It’s one game of many in our season and that’s why we wanted to play it.”
The Terps return to action tonight to face Middle Tennessee State (3-3) at Comcast Center.
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