A murmur began to run through the crowd of 4,836 at Comcast Center late in the first half last night, growing with every step Alyssa Thomas took past the Terrapins women’s basketball team bench and to the scorer’s table to check in. By the time she tapped the table with her left hand and took her place back on the court, the arena was in the midst of a standing ovation.

It was a stark contrast from the funeral-like pall that had dropped from the rafters minutes earlier as Thomas laid writhing on the ground outside the North Carolina three-point line.

Pursuing an errant Tar Heels shot, Thomas collided with North Carolina’s Brittany Rountree in midair, rolled over the guard’s back and landed hard on her left side. Thomas stayed on the ground as a silent crowd watched trainers attend to her. For a team devastated by injuries, it was a blow the Terps couldn’t afford.

But once she was back on the court, Thomas and her teammates flourished. The No. 10 Terps notched their sixth straight win, dispatching No. 11 North Carolina, 85-59. And Thomas was right in the middle of it all, totaling 17 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists.

“It’s definitely a scary moment when anyone lands that way, but nothing that hasn’t happened to me before,” Thomas said. “Just a bump to come back from.”

A rematch of a hotly contested matchup three weeks ago in Chapel Hill, N.C., that North Carolina won, 60-57, last night’s tilt appeared to be headed during the first half toward a similarly close finish. The Terps, though, sent things in a different direction.

“We went down to North Carolina and gave them a game we should have won,” said forward Tianna Hawkins, who scored a game-high 25 points. “Today was all about revenge, getting back what we deserve. As a team, we came back and fought the whole game.”

The Terps (16-3, 7-1 ACC) built a 17-10 lead near the midway point of the first half, but the Tar Heels (18-2, 6-1) responded with an 8-0 run to take a one-point advantage. That was the last time North Carolina would lead on the night, though, as they lost for only the second time this season. Guard Chloe Pavlech scored five straight points to spark a 9-0 run, and the Terps took a 26-18 lead at the 7:12 mark.

Then came Thomas’ injury. For a moment, the Terps’ season appeared to hang in the balance. Forward Tierney Pfirman had just been lost for four weeks after dislocating her kneecap in practice Saturday, putting her on the bench next to three teammates who had already been ruled out for the season with torn ACLs.

But after donning padded compression shorts in the locker room and riding an exercise bike behind the bench, Thomas re-entered less than three minutes later.

And with the Tar Heels defense keying on Thomas and Hawkins, Pavlech took advantage. The freshman scored 18 points on 5-of-6 shooting and shot 6-of-6 from the free-throw line after scoring a combined eight points in the Terps’ previous three games.

“Chloe’s a gamer,” coach Brenda Frese said of Pavlech, whose three highest-scoring games have all come against ranked foes. “Chloe lives for the big stage. Chloe wants to shine, and that’s what makes her so special. To have her come out fearless with that kind of confidence, her teammates are able to feed off of that. The bigger the stage, the bigger the moment, Chloe wants it.”

It was all part of an offensive performance in which the Terps shot a season-high 58.2 percent from the field. And that success carried over to the defensive end, too. North Carolina shot just 35.5 percent from the field and a dismal 5.3 percent on 1-of-19 shooting from three-point range.

Leading scorer Tierra Ruffin-Pratt again posted a team-high tying 15 points, but the guard shot 3-of-14 from the field. The lone North Carolina regular to make more than 50 percent of her shots was forward Krista Gross, who had 15 points on 6-of-9 shooting.

When the Tar Heels’ shots weren’t falling, the Terps were there on the boards, where they outrebounded North Carolina, 40-31. The Terps limited the Tar Heels to 10 second-chance points and outscored them in the paint, 40-28.

The Terps’ victory was their fourth this year by at least 20 points against a conference opponent. Despite the slim bench and daunting schedule, there have barely been any lapses in the Terps’ game this season as they enter Sunday’s matchup at Clemson.

“They have separated themselves with their resiliency,” Frese said. “They lock in even more. They understand there’s no room for error. They’ve got to be better. It speaks volumes in terms of the character that we have in this locker room.”

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