Rutgers women's basketball outrebounded, hurt by turnovers once again in loss to Maryland
The Rutgers women's basketball team fell to Maryland 67-59 on Tuesday at Jersey Mike's Arena on Livingston campus. The Scarlet Knights' (7-18, 1-11) lack of presence on the boards hurt their chances at victory against the Terrapins (13-10, 5-7). Rutgers has now lost 13 of its last 14 games.
Maryland took a quick lead to start the contest and led the Knights 6-4 at the first media timeout.
At the 2:09 mark of the first quarter, Rutgers owned an 11-8 lead. The Terrapins, though, would go on an 8-0 run to end the first quarter as Jakia Brown-Turner and Brinae Alexander were able to knock down two three-pointers. Maryland would lead the Knights 16-11 at the end of the first 10 minutes.
The second quarter would feature much more scoring. At the 7:09 mark, the Terrapins extended their lead to 24-15.
Approximately 2 minutes later, freshman guard Lisa Thompson nailed a three-pointer to put Rutgers within 4 points as it trailed Maryland 26-22. Junior guard and forward Destiny Adams followed Thompson with a layup as the Knights would trail by just 2 points.
From around the 4-minute mark on, the Terrapins would go on an 11-4 run to close out the first half with a 37-28 lead.
Adams led Rutgers with 11 points, and Thompson followed her with 9 points at the end of the first two quarters. Brown-Turner led Maryland with 9 points of her own after the opening half.
The Terrapins started off the third quarter on a 7-0 run that would force head coach Coquese Washington to call an early timeout approximately 2 minutes into the period.
At the 4:03 mark of the third quarter, Maryland jumped out to a 51-34 lead as the Terrapins took advantage of the Knights' inability to corral rebounds. Rutgers was able to strike back with a 7-0 run of its own to make the score 51-41 in favor of Maryland. By the end of the third quarter, the Knights were down 54-41 to the Terrapins.
At the 4:49 mark of the fourth quarter, Shyanne Sellers hit a jumper to give Maryland a 62-49 lead. Freshman guard Jillian Huerter would quickly answer with her second three-pointer of the quarter that would ignite a 10-0 Rutgers run and put the Knights within 3 points of the Terrapins. Maryland led 62-59 with 2:08 remaining.
With the help of rebounding and drawing fouls, the Terrapins would take over the last 2 minutes on their way to an 8-point victory.
In the loss, Rutgers was outrebounded 48-37 while also committing 23 fouls, allowing Maryland to receive trips to the charity stripe. The Terrapins were 19 for 28 from the free-throw line.
"(Maryland) was pretty tough in the paint," Washington said after the game. "They were tough on the glass — they were aggressive, drawing fouls, driving to the basket … So, I thought their aggressiveness really helped them get to the free throw line."
Once again, the Knights were plagued by turnovers. This time, they gave the ball away 22 times, leading to 14 points off turnovers for Maryland.
"I think sometimes what's hurting our offensive momentum are the turnovers," Washington said. "We have some bad timing turnovers that kill momentum, whether it's the start of the game or the middle of a quarter. We've got to make better decisions."
Rutgers will look to bounce back on Saturday at 2 p.m. when it heads to Crisler Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to take on Michigan. The game will be broadcast on the Big Ten Network as well as 88.7 WRSU-FM.
"I thought we had a lot of good moments in the fourth quarter," Washington said. "Just dug ourselves a little bit of a hole, but I liked the fight and the execution."
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