UMBC Falls to Maryland, 70-59

The UMBC women’s basketball team was able to hang around against the No. 9 Maryland Terrapins in front of a near-record crowd of 2,305 people at RAC arena but eventually the size, speed and athleticism of their opponent proved to be too much for them as Maryland held out for a 70-59 victory.

“I’m really proud of the effort we put forth tonight,” said UMBC coach Phil Stern.  “We don’t want to lose but I think that we certainly showed everybody that we can play with the best tonight.”

Maryland scored the first six points of the game before UMBC scored seven-straight to take a 7-6 lead just over three minutes into the game.  Then, after having the game tied at nine a minute and a half later Maryland went on a 17-3 run to take a 26-12 lead over the Retrievers. 

But UMBC did not go away.  Over the next five and a half minutes UMBC cut Maryland’s lead to three with the help of four 3-pointers.  Two of those were from Erin Brown, who led all players with 14 points in the first half.

“We were just trying to stay aggressive,” Brown said.  “Obviously they are bigger and faster than us so we were just trying to stay aggressive, stay within our sets, not do anything outside of ourselves and we were getting anything we wanted on offense so we just kept going with that.”

The Terps extended that lead to nine before the break.

Four minutes into the second half UMBC cut the Terps’ lead to three points after Michelle Kurowski hit a shot from behind the arc, which seemed to awaken her.  After hitting only two field goals in the first half the all-conference guard finished the game with 14 points.

“The second half we knew we were just going to have to run our sets so the more I ran it I saw I was open for the shot and they were falling for me and I really just let the game come to me this time,” Kurowski said.

Maryland’s stifling defense that allowed only 48.3 points per game in their first three outings really limited the Retrievers for the rest of the game.  While good free throw shooting and strong defense kept UMBC around a nine minute field goal drought starting in the eighth minute of the second half allowed Maryland to build a 14-point lead and when UMBC was forced to foul at the end of the game to keep their hopes of an upset alive, Maryland converted.

Brown was held without a point in the second half but finished the game with 14 points and six rebounds while freshman point guard Lauren Chase had 12 points, four assists, and four rebounds.

Maryland coach Brenda Frese said that Brown was a focal point for her defense in the second half and wanted them to get a hand in her face to prevent any more damage.

“She torched us in the first half,” Frese said. “We wanted to be closer to her, stay in there on the catch.”

UMBC turned the ball over only 13 times in the game and had a better field goal percentage, three-pointer percentage, and free throw percentage but Maryland’s size inside was what got the best of them.  Maryland out-rebounded UMBC 47-28 and out-scored them in the paint, 34-16.

“We really wanted to use our size,” Maryland center Lynetta Kizer said. “Coach would keep telling us to keep pounding the ball inside and it was working for us in the second half so we just decided to keep going inside.”

Kizer finished the game with 12 points while forward Tianna Hawkins led all players with 19 points and 18 rebounds.  Brena Moseley had 14.