Shortly after the Terps took the rubber game of an ACC series against Virginia Tech on Sunday, Terrapin softball infielder Alex Schultz was asked about the Terps’ upcoming game at Towson.

Hearing the question, Schultz couldn’t help but crack a smile.

“[Our strategy is] just to beat up on them,” Schultz said. “They’re not anything special.”

That may be the case, but it didn’t matter March 6. In the Maryland Round Robin tournament last month, the Tigers dropped the Terps, 2-0, in one of the team’s most disappointing losses of the season.

One month later, the Terps (25-16) are determined to not let it happen again.

The early March loss was a surprising blemish on an otherwise encouraging weekend. The Terps went 4-1 at the tournament, beating both Princeton and Mount St. Mary’s twice to pull the team’s record above .500 after struggling for the season’s first two weekends.

But with only 14 games remaining in the regular season  — and their NCAA Tournament hopes dwindling — the Terps cannot afford to have another letdown against the Tigers (23-12).

“I don’t think we’ll overlook Towson at all,” Coach Laura Watten said. “We better not. We can’t do that. I don’t think that’s the mentality of our team right now. They remember that game, they remember how upset I was. They also remember what they should have, could have, would have.”

Pitcher Kendra Knight shut down Towson’s offense when the two teams first met, but the Tigers strung together two hits and capitalized on an error to bring home two runs in the sixth inning. The Terps mustered only two hits on the day and stranded all six baserunners in the loss, including a possible game-tying run in the bottom of the seventh.

“We were really winning big in our tournament against all the other teams we played,” Watten said. “We were just overconfident, we didn’t take care of ourselves and go out and attack them. We gave them a couple runs. We just got to go with a different mentality and show them we’re a totally different team.”

Watten’s postgame sentiments stuck with the Terps, and the team is determined to not let what it sees as an easy win slip through its fingers again.

“[Watten] was exactly how everybody else felt,” Schultz said. “We felt that way. There’s no way we should have lost that game, and her emotions reflect how we feel too.”

The Terps have played sporadically all season, beating ranked opponents such as then-No. 18 Oklahoma State and then-No. 16 Florida State while also falling to weaker teams such as Virginia Tech and Hofstra. The squad enters today’s game having won 16 of its last 17 nonconference games, but started ACC play on a seven-game losing streak.

“It doesn’t matter who we are playing,” Watten said. “We need to go out, play our best and make sure we’re taking care of all the little things.”

If the Terps want to go into their weekend series against ACC force North Carolina in Chapel Hill with any momentum at all, they cannot overlook Towson again.

This time around, they are confident they won’t.

“I think we’re going to have a completely different mindset,” pitcher Kerry Hickey said. “We’re going to come out ready to prove something. Keep coming out like we did against Virginia Tech, and we’ll be fine.”

schneider@umdbk.com