GW women’s basketball head coach Joe McKeown said there were two things the team focused on leading up to its regular season opener against Georgetown: keeping Hoyas senior Rebekkah Brunson off the offensive glass and stopping junior Mary Lisicky from making three-pointers.
But when Friday’s game ended, Brunson had nine offensive rebounds and Lisicky had five threes, and the Hoyas had won 67-62. It was the 30th all-time meeting between GW and Georgetown, and while the 25th-ranked Colonials (USA Today/ESPN) still hold a 16-14 advantage, the Hoyas have now won three in a row.
Playing in front of 1,532 fans at the Smith Center, only senior Cathy Joens had success against the Georgetown defense, scoring 25 points with six rebounds, six assists and three steals. Junior Anna Montanana never found her rhythm, scoring 12 points on 5-for-14 shooting, and senior Ugo Oha struggled in the paint, finishing with 11 points and 10 rebounds as Brunson consistently fronted her and prevented most entry passes.
“We didn’t do a very good job of getting her the ball or screening for her and she rushed a couple of her shots,” McKeown said. “But we just didn’t play with a lot of poise in the last six or seven minutes of the game, and that’s really what it came down to.”
The Colonials came out of halftime with a 36-33 lead and started the second half strong, taking a 49-40 lead on a Joens three-pointer with 13 minutes remaining. But Georgetown made a 10-1 run over the next three minutes to draw even and then took its first lead with just under nine minutes left on a three from freshman Kate Carlin that made the score 53-52.
The Colonials shot 48 percent from the field in the first half but hit only 33 percent of their field goals in the second half. Joens scored just two points in the final 10 minutes as Georgetown increased its lead.
GW trailed by five with 16 seconds left when Montanana hit a deep three to keep the Colonials alive. But after a Georgetown timeout, the Hoyas threw an inbound pass over the top of everyone to a streaking Brunson, who converted a lay-up as Montanana fouled her. Though she would miss the free throw, the game was effectively over with seven seconds left and a four-point difference.
“Let me tell you a little story,” Georgetown head coach Patrick Knapp said of the inbounds pass. “Rebecca Lobo beat Georgetown in 1993 on that play and I never forgot it. And we’ve used it two or three times and we practiced it the other day.”
Brunson’s final lay-up gave her 15 points on the night to go with a career-high 19 total rebounds. Lisicky finished with a team-high 17 points, going 5 for 12 from behind the arc.
The Colonials led by as many as 12 in the first half, but Georgetown closed out the final four minutes of the half on a 13-4 run to cut the lead to three.
“We had two chances to run them out of the gym,” McKeown said. “We had Georgetown on their heels a little bit and we just weren’t ready to finish the game and they made some big shots.”
