SENT PACKING

The verbal tug-of-war in the days preceding the Terrapin women's basketball team's second-round NCAA Tournament game against Georgetown last week, at least on paper, didn't seem like the No. 4-No. 5 seed matchup it technically was. As the Terps, the top dog of the Washington area, confidently stated their intentions to advance to another Sweet 16, the Hoyas summarily dismissed the region's status quo pecking order as inconsequential and even outdated.

The press-conference salvos, both teams knew, ultimately would cede to the on-court results at Comcast Center soon enough. And shortly after a shockingly thorough 79-57 Hoyas drubbing Tuesday night, Georgetown coach Terri Williams-Flournoy strode up to the dais inside Comcast Center, snuck a peak at the two grinning players to her right and declared what had been made patently obvious that night.

"I told you we weren't scared," Williams-Flournoy said.

With a flurry of 3-pointers that buried the Terps and a suffocating pressure defense that kept them there, the Hoyas dealt their hosts and crosstown rivals their worst loss of the season. The 22-point defeat was the Terps' second to Georgetown this season, but little about the Hoyas' 53-45 victory in November — save bragging rights — figured to carry over into Tuesday's battle.

That wasn't entirely the case. There were obvious remnants of the ugly loss for the Terps, who followed their 29-turnover and season-worst shooting performance with 20 turnovers and 31.6 percent shooting from the field in the season-ending defeat.

But what Georgetown managed was hardly expected. Guard Sugar Rodgers scored a career-high 34 points on 7-for-10 shooting from 3-point range, first helping stake the Hoyas to an early 11-0 lead and then repeatedly delivering hope-crushing blows to a Terp team desperately seeking any window of opportunity it could find.

"I think at the beginning she got hot and she didn't really cool off," guard Anjale Barrett said. "Sometimes we lost her, but she was on fire today."

Little the Terps did to stop Rodgers worked. She shook off defenders when matched up in man-to-man. She found holes easily in zones of every form and fashion. She even found ways to top double teams, banking in a fadeaway, one-handed 3-pointer over two Terp defenders as the shot clock expired to give the Hoyas a 40-24 lead in the first half.

"The shots they were taking, the shots that they made I thought really hurt us, especially early, with our defense breaking down into our offense," coach Brenda Frese said.

"We came out with an agenda," said Hoya guard Monica McNutt, who finished with 14 points and four of the team's 13 3-pointers. "We thoroughly believe in ourselves. For some reason, we keep hearing people don't believe in us and weren't taking us seriously. Through the grapevine, we heard someone tell them that they simply played bad when they came to McDonough [Arena]. Absolutely, we had a little chip on our shoulders. We had something to prove."

As Rodgers and the Hoyas surged onward, the question of which Georgetown mainstay the Terps were more ill-prepared to combat — Rodgers or the team's swarming defense — became all the more unclear. No Terp guard finished with more than four assists, and the team's turnover total (20) nearly doubled its number of assists (11), another victim of a Georgetown defense that refused to allow the Terps to do anything they wanted.

Even when their shots weren't falling, as was the case for much of Tuesday, the Terps' normally reliable control of the glass went conspicuously absent. The nation's No. 2 rebounding team finished with just two more rebounds than the Hoyas, limiting its second-chance points and demoralizing its slim comeback hopes.

Afterward, Frese sat glumly at the same table Williams-Flournoy would later occupy, offering pictures of hope in a night largely devoid of it. The Terps, the ninth-year coach reminded reporters, wouldn't be losing any starters. They were set to bring back 10 players who were freshmen and sophomores.

Still, the most pressing facts of the night — another loss to Georgetown, the season's first double-digit loss, a second straight year without advancing to the Big Dance's second weekend — were also the most agonizing for a team that hadn't expected to cope with the finality of a season so soon.

"They forced us to play a game that wasn't real basketball," center Lynetta Kizer said. "We just have to get back to it this offseason and come back hard next year. Like Coach said, we'll be back."

shaffer@umdbk.com