Duke's Streak At Maryland Ends With 85-70 Loss

Monday, January 14

College Park, Md.

7:00 p.m.

Duke University

Maryland

Duke's Streak At Maryland Ends With 85-70 Loss

1/14/2008 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball

By: Duke Sports Information

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) - Maryland's seniors already know how it feels to win the NCAA championship. Now, finally, they know what it's like to beat Duke at home.

No. 4 Maryland pulled away to an 85-70 victory over the 10th-ranked Blue Devils on Monday night before 15,531 fans, the fifth-largest crowd in Atlantic Coast Conference history.

The Terrapins (20-1, 4-0) had lost nine straight at home against Duke (13-4, 2-1), including a 69-57 decision last season before a sellout crowd.

The game was a rematch of the 2006 national championship game, which Maryland won in overtime. The stakes weren't as high this time, but that didn't blunt the pleasure the Terrapins derived from beating their conference rivals.

The Terrapins attempted 42 free throws and outscored the Blue Devils 33-10 at the foul line.

Wanisha Smith and Jasmine Thomas each scored 17 for the Blue Devils, whose eight-game winning streak ended.

"We've got to work on our poise down the stretch," McCallie said. "We played too fast, probably made some poor decisions. We just didn't finish."

Down 13 early in the first half, Duke used its second 10-0 run of the game to close to 47-44. Maryland upped the advantage to 9 points, but simply couldn't pull away.

Baskets by Carrem Gay and Thomas made it 60-55, and after Toliver answered with a long 3-pointer as the shot-clock was about the expire, Gay made a three-point play to keep Duke within five.

Minutes later, the Blue Devils completed the comeback, getting four points from Smith in a 7-0 burst that tied it at 65 with 7 minutes to go.

Maryland, however, closed the game with a 17-2 run.

Maryland missed its first four shots, then made five of the next six to go up 17-4. The Blue Devils started 1-for-8 from the floor, and McCallie burned two timeouts in the opening six minutes in an effort to keep the Terrapins from pulling away.

After Duke scored 10 straight points to get within 3, Langhorne made two layups and three free throws in a 14-6 spurt that made it 31-20.

Again, the Blue Devils fought back. Smith hit a 3-pointer, Joy Cheek made a layup and Abby Waner turned a steal into a three-point play to cut the deficit to 31-28. But Maryland answered with six straight foul shots to build the margin back to 9, and Coleman made successive 3-pointers near the end of the half to lift many in the crowd out of their seats.

The top seven crowds in ACC history have all been at Maryland.

"It was a fun game to be involved in," McCallie said, "until there were six minutes left."