If all you did was listen to the tone of the postgame press conferences, you’d have thought the outcome was entirely different. First came Georgetown, and although hardly jubilant, Coach Terri Williams-Flournoy, junior redshirt guard Brina Pollack and sophomore guard Shanice Fuller said they hoped the outing would serve as a spark for the rest of the season, and they discussed the confidence and the toughness with which the team played. Then Rutgers Head Coach C. Vivian Stringer entered the room and talked about being out of sync, feeling uncomfortable from start to finish, and a game that she thought was “scary.” And yet, it was her fifth ranked Scarlet Knights that led from wire to wire and came away with a 57-47 victory that, after the half, was never closer than seven. “I don’t like these kind of games,” Stringer said. “It wasn’t that I didn’t think we were going to win, but I don’t like games like this. We were out of synch, it was a choppy, it was a very uncomfortable game. If they had hit a few more shots – you just got to put teams away.” Nearly four years to the day after its last win against a ranked team, Georgetown found itself down seven to the nation’s fifth-ranked team with the clock showing 1:35 left, and setting up for its most important defensive stand of the game. A stop would give the Hoyas a shot, an outside chance, at their first win over Rutgers in seven tries and their first win over a ranked team since a Jan. 17, 2004, win against Virginia Tech. “We knew if we did not stretch that team out by more than 10 with five minutes to go, we were in position to lose that game,” Stringer said. With the shot clock winding down, Georgetown induced Scarlet Knights’ sophomore guard Epiphanny Prince to miss a contested three. But waiting on the weak side for the rebound was junior forward Heather Zurich, who converted an easy put-back, pushing the lead to nine and dashing any last hopes the Hoyas had of an upset. “Weak side guard drops, we get that rebound,” Williams-Flournoy said after the game. “But that wasn’t the major point in that game.” Sophomore forward Jaleesa Butler finished the evening as Georgetown’s only scorer in double figures, with 14 points in 35 minutes. Pollack and Fuller, who had eight rebounds, each added seven. Essence Carson, despite cold shooting (35.6 percent) by the rest of her team, shot at a torrid pace all night, finishing with 18 points on 6-of-7 shooting (3-of-4 from three). For good measure, she added 10 rebounds. “I thought it was a well-fought game tonight on our behalf. We made some defensive stops when we needed to and we scored when we needed to,” Williams-Flournoy added. “I thought our kids played extremely hard tonight.” Georgetown’s leading scorer for the season, Kieraah Marlow, fighting an injured neck and hounding defense from Essence Carson, was held scoreless in 26 minutes of action. “That’s my top player and she’s sitting on the bench – that’s not where I want her,” Williams-Flournoy said. After hanging tough through the first half in spite of trailing by double digits for most of the period and 13 at the break, Georgetown made a concerted effort in the second half to get to the basket more consistently and be more physical at both ends. “We weren’t as aggressive in the first half as we should have been,” Williams-Flournoy said. “I think sometimes when you play these teams you come out too passive, and we shouldn’t have.” After only getting to the free-throw line twice before intermission, Georgetown went to the charity stripe 16 times afterwards, making 11. The Hoyas also limited their turnovers to six in the second half, forcing the Scarlet Knights to commit eight. On the night, Georgetown had 19 turnovers with only 15 field goals. Still, Williams-Flournoy and her players said that playing a top-five team essentially to a draw in the second half was a portent of good things to come. “We just want to make that a turning point,” Fuller said. “We just gotta come out like that every night.”