The Marquette women’s basketball team was beaten by the Rutgers Scarlet Knights on Saturday 76-55. The 21-point loss is the largest Marquette has suffered since falling to Connecticut by 32 on Dec. 9.

“For 28 minutes of the game we played them even,” said coach Teri Mitchell. “But that doesn’t matter because for the first 12 minutes, they took it to us and we never recovered.”

The game seemed ominous right from the start when, after taking a 4-2 lead, Rutgers went on a 10 minute, 15-1 run, to take a 26-7 lead. Rutgers was eventually able to build up a 25-point lead when they led 32-7 with 3:33 left in the first half.

“We played our best basketball of the year today,” said Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer. “It was one of the first times that I thought we had offensive control.

Marquette was able to chip away at that lead a little, but still went into the break down 19 points, 33-14. The first half against Rutgers was Marquette’s worst shooting half of the season, as it went 14.7 percent from the field and one-for-12 from three-point range.

“It was really frustrating,” senior guard Courtney Weibel said of the team’s poor shooting performance. “We spend a lot of time in the gym shooting, and when the shots aren’t falling, it’s hard. But we just need to get back in the gym and work things out for Providence.”

Marquette played much better offensively in the second half, almost tripling its first half output of 14 points. However, it was still unable to shut down the Scarlet Knights, who scored 43 points in the second half.

The Golden Eagles came out strong at the start of the second half, scoring the first five points and cutting the lead to 14, but were unable to keep the momentum going.

Rutgers roared back and stretched the lead to 21 two minutes later, with a score of 40-19. Marquette would again cut the lead back to 14 on a three-pointer by senior guard Tatiyiana McMorris. But once again Marquette could not hold back the attack of Rutgers.

If there was any bright spot on the day for Marquette, it was the play of senior forward Jasmine Collins and Weibel off the bench. The duo combined for 27 points and 10 rebounds. Collins scored 15 points and had nine rebounds, leading the team in both categories, while Weibel contributed 12 points of her own, scoring all of them from beyond the arc.

“Jasmine and Courtney Weibel absolutely have starting potential, and they both played really well today,” Mitchell said.

The team returns to action at Providence on Tuesday.