Even on a night supporting a great cause, the women’s basketball team was unable to hold off its opponents at the Pavilion on Saturday. After falling 49-36 to Rutgers’ Scarlet Knights, the team added another loss to its record and became 12-12 overall and 1-10 in Big East play. Villanova hosted Rutgers on “Pink out the Pavilion” night, which supports the Kay Yow WBCA Cancer Fund.

It was not until 8:46 that the next points of the game were made by sophomore guard Sarah Jones, her only basket of the game.  The Wildcats ended the first half down 20-15 after senior guard Maria Getty’s 3-pointer at 1:03, which was the answer to a 10-0 run by Rutgers.

Getty was the top scorer for the Wildcats’ with 15 points as she worked to close the gap in the second half.  Getty’s jump shot put the Wildcats four points away from their opponents with just over 16 minutes left. Nine of her points were in the second half in an attempt to close the double digit lead the Scarlet Knights held for mainly the entire second half.  

Rutgers built its lead after Villanova failed to answer nine points, making the score 33-20 with 12:38 remaining.  Freshman redshirt Laura Sweeney joined Getty in cutting the Scarlet Knight lead to single digits for the last time with 11:05 left to play. And even with a 10 point game with just over two and a half minutes left, Villanova found no success and Rutgers found the free-throw line, making seven of nine free throws.

Although Getty’s four of seven from the field was followed by a team collective five of 19, Suhey stood out with seven points, the second highest amount of points for the team. Junior center Heather Scanlon had nine rebounds and led the team in an impressive 35-35 rebound game. Overall, the team shot 30 percent with 15-of-50 and shot 24 percent from the 3-point range with six of 25, with Getty’s six of 16 plus three 3-pointers.

Brittany Ray led the Scarlet Knights’ offense with 14 points from five of 12.  The win was secured by April Sykes’ four free-throw completions in the last two minutes.  Both Myia McCurdy and Chelsey Lee had eight rebounds for Rutgers.

This was the third game of the season in which the Wildcats were unable to score over 40 points, all three times occurring during games against other Big East opponents.  

Villanova has not been able to score over 50 points in 11 games this season, and it did not help that the team was zero for three at the free throw line, starting late in the game with 1:39 remaining. Even with the team as a whole struggling, Getty came closer to being the 22nd player in school history to reach 1,000 points, with six points needed to reach the mark.

Villanova’s three-game home-stand ends on Wednesday when the Wildcats host Pittsburgh at 7 p.m.