The AU women’s basketball team fell to the No. 6 University of Maryland Terrapins 76-42 Dec. 1 at Bender Arena, as the Terps picked up their ninth-straight win and posted their best defensive performance of the season.
Geleisa George scored a team-high 10 points for the Eagles (5-4, 0-0 PL) off the bench, while Lisa Strack chipped in nine points and four assists. Twenty of AU’s 42 points came from bench players.
“We’ve got really good players coming off the bench,” AU Head Coach Matt Corkery said. “We’ve got players that are plenty capable of being starters if we wanted to use them in that way. I think it’s great that when we substitute, we get energy, we get an added boost and we have players who bring a new dimension to the game.”
Maryland (9-0, 0-0 ACC) saw five players reach double figures, led by Alyssa Thomas’ 17 points on 8-10 shooting.
“I think the lead kind of got away from us a little bit when they were getting easy transition opportunities or second chance opportunities,” Corkery said. “But overall [I’m] proud of the effort, proud of how hard we played and how we got after it today, despite the outcome.”
AU jumped out aggressively as Strack hit a 3-pointer less than a minute into play for the game’s first basket. But the Eagles held the lead shortly, and Maryland put up three jumpers in a row.
With AU falling behind by three points, Alexis Dobbs cut the early Maryland lead to 8-7 with a jumper. That would be the last time the Eagles would score for the next few minutes, as Maryland went on an 11-0 run that was not broken until George came off the bench and nailed back-to-back jumpers.
The Eagles knocked in only five more points on the half, as the Terps continued to take advantage of the struggling AU offense that went 7-29 in the opening half.
The half ended with Maryland leading 38-16.
AU was unable to stop the Terps in the second half, having similar offensive woes and letting the deficit grow larger.
The highlight of the half came when Maryland’s Brene Moseley made a steal, passed to Thomas and started the fast break. It seemed Thomas would go for the easy layup, but at the last minute, handed off to Moseley who converted the layup for a 54-23 advantage.
The game ended with AU going 16-54 from the field and 2-22 from beyond the arc.
“I feel like we got a ton of open looks, they just didn’t drop,” Strack said. “But like coach said, I can speak for myself a lot of the times when I took my 3’s, my feet weren’t set; I hopped into it. I think we had good looks, we just got to knock them down.”
The Eagles will next travel to Troy, Ala., where they will face Troy University Dec. 11 before beginning a three-game homestand.
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