The women's basketball team did not dominate the scoreboard during Wednesday night's 60-55 victory over Georgetown, but there is no doubt they owned the backboards. Marquette out-rebounded the Hoyas 52-34 in the game, leading to 19 second-chance points.

Marquette had 18 offensive rebounds at halftime. Georgetown had just 14 total at that point.

"I'm thrilled with the rebounding," head coach Terri Mitchell said. "Because our first six Big East games we have not been rebounding well, and we look at everything as six game seasons so we're in a new season and so we couldn't be more excited about what we did tonight."

During the game it became clear Marquette wanted to attack inside due to Georgetown's guard-dominated lineup. The Golden Eagles' frontcourt duo of Kelly Lam and Svetlana Kovalenko combined for 22 points and 19 rebounds.

Of Lam's 11 rebounds, eight came on the offensive end.

"A lot of my offensive rebounds were weak-side and our team especially has a hard time rebounding weak side so I was like, let's give the other team a taste of our own medicine," Lam said.

Georgetown fought back in the second half, holding Marquette to five offensive rebounds. As a result of the Hoyas' defensive surge, Marquette had just 23 field goal attempts in the second half, compared to 38 in the first.

Junior guard Krystal Ellis had 14 points on 4-of-13 shooting after scoring 30 points at South Florida last weekend.

"If I can't get a shot off that means somebody else will because it's gonna be one-on-one in the post," Ellis said.

It was clear throughout the game that Kovalenko could be relied on to score in the paint. She went 5-for-5 from the floor on her way to 11 points, but her biggest make came far from the basket. She hit a three-pointer with 2:10 remaining to give Marquette the lead for good.

Red-shirt freshman Jocelyn Mellen was also a force inside with five points and eight rebounds, two shy of her career high.

Besides winning the game, rebounding the ball was arguably the only thing the Golden Eagles did well. They shot 36.1 percent from the field, 18.2 percent from beyond the arc and 50 percent from the free-throw line.

While the offense sputtered, Marquette's defense held the Hoyas to 32.8 percent shooting from the field. Georgetown needed the six three-pointers produced by Monica McNutt to stay in the game.

"We easily could have folded when we went down three, but we fought our way out of it and I couldn't be more proud of what they did," Mitchell said. "Now we just all need to move forward."