The Georgia Tech women's basketball team has proven it can play with the top teams in the country. Monday night, it showed again that it still can't beat them.
The Yellow Jackets lost their sixth game to a ranked team this season, this time to No. 9 Maryland by a 64-56 score at Gwinnett Arena. Ranked 24th in the country, Tech has not beaten a ranked team since March.
"It's about them believing they're a top-10, top-15 team," coach MaChelle Joseph said of her players.
The Jackets succumbed to the Terrapins with no answer for Maryland forwards Tianna Hawkins and Alyssa Thomas, who both scored 23 points. Hawkins hit on an unreal 11 of 13 attempts for 23 points.
The Jackets took a second loss to Maryland. The Terrapins beat Tech Jan. 6 after falling behind by 20 points in the second half. In a taut second half, Tech took a 54-52 lead with 3:16 to play on a layup from forward Tyaunna Marshall. It completed a 10-0 run after Maryland had pounded out an 8-0 run of its own.
However, it would prove to be the last time the Jackets scored until five seconds remained.
"We've been in every game," center Sasha Goodlett said. "It's just a sense of us coming together and going after it with reckless abandon."
Tech fell to 17-7 overall and 7-4 in the ACC. Maryland (20-3, 7-3) leapfrogged the Jackets for fourth place in the ACC, a crucial flip since the top four finishers in the league will earn a first-round bye in the conference tournament.
"We knew that coming in here, they were going to give us their best game because we stole one at our place," said Thomas, who made 12-of-12 free throws.
To Joseph, the difference lay in free throws and rebounding. Maryland made 17 of 19 from the line to Tech's six of eight.
"They went at us very aggressively, and on the offensive end, we were on our heels a little bit," Joseph said. "I thought our kids played extremely hard."
On the glass, the Terrapins claimed a 43-28 advantage and scored 19 second-chance points to Tech's six.
"The rebounds is what did it," Goodlett said. "It felt like we would play 25 great seconds on defense and then we'd give up an offensive rebound."
A choppy first half was followed by a tight second in which there were 11 ties and seven lead changes. Goodlett picked up her game, scoring 10 of her team-high 15 points after halftime. In the first half, Tech's defensive pressure helped cause a sloppy first half in which Tech reached double digits after 11 minutes of play and Maryland didn't join the Jackets until the 7:06 mark. Maryland, which leads the ACC in field-goal percentage 48.1 percent, had to rally to make 9 of 30 (30.0 percent) in the first half.
The full-court pressure and half-court trapping yielded results, as the Jackets took a 24-14 lead on a 3-pointer by Metra Walthour with 3:57 left in the first half to top an 11-4 run. Maryland closed the half, however, by scoring the final 10 points of the half for a 24-24 tie at halftime.
