It took the Terrapin women’s basketball team nearly three years to build a 48-game home winning streak. But in a span of just four days, the Terps have started a streak they neither wanted nor can afford.
After dropping a heartbreaking contest to Miami at Comcast Center on Thursday, the Terps again squandered a late lead and the comforts of home in an unaesthetic 58-57 loss to Duke yesterday night. The Terps (14-6) are 2-4 in conference play for the first time since 2003.
“It’s tough,” said coach Brenda Frese. “We’re just trying to get better.”
The Terps held the No. 6 Blue Devils (17-3, 5-0 ACC) to less than 33 percent shooting for the game while hitting just more than 40 percent of their own shots.
The Terps endured early first-half stretches of 5:23 without a point and 8:53 without a field goal, but when forward Tianna Hawkins banked in two of her seven first-half points to end the drought, the Terps were only down 8-5 — and almost 10 minutes had already passed.
Even when play stopped, though, neither side did much better. The two combined to shoot less than 50 percent from the free throw line in the first half.
“We weren’t getting the looks we were supposed to get,” Frese said. “We’ve been there before.”
After the Terps notched only their second lead of the game following guard Dara Taylor’s layup early in the second half, Duke’s preseason All-ACC guard Jasmine Thomas started to put on a clinic. After a 2-for-9 start, Thomas hit her next six shots as the Blue Devils pushed forward with 15-4 run to build a 51-40 lead midway through the second half.
“She did a great job putting her team on her back,” Frese said. “She really had her way with us. She’s a special player.”
As Thomas slowly but surely began to chip away at the Terps’ zone look, the Terps themselves struggled to find holes against the Blue Devils’ zone pressure — until they found their own sniper.
After guard Lori Bjork, the team’s most dangerous outside threat, managed just two shots in the first half, the team’s lone senior finally freed herself. Bjork knocked down back-to-back three-pointers to spark a 10-0 run that cut the Duke lead to 51-50 with just more than five minutes remaining.
The Blue Devils kept their distance until Bjork resurfaced, sending her defender jumping toward the stands with a pump fake before calmly hitting a pull-up 18-footer to give the Terps a 54-53 lead with more than three minutes remaining. It was their first advantage in almost 13 minutes.
“I definitely thought it could be a momentum changing, game changing type of stretch there, and we couldn’t hang onto it,” said Bjork, who finished with 11 points.
Duke didn’t wait long to grab the advantage again. The Blue Devils jumped ahead on a Karima Mitchell leaner as the shot clock neared zero, and Terp forward Diandra Tchatchouang missed an open bank shot in the paint on the ensuing position.
Duke forward Joy Cheek sank two free throws with 20 seconds remaining to bump the lead to 57-54, and guard Anjale Barrett, who had taken just 22 three-pointers this season entering Sunday’s matchup, couldn’t knock down a good look from deep.
The shot Barrett was hoping for didn’t come until the game’s final possession, when she hit a meaningless three-pointer as time expired.
shaffer@umdbk.com
