PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — The University of Maryland Eastern Shore women hadn't played an official basketball game in 608 days. On Tuesday night (Nov. 9) in the season opener at Saint Joseph's, it looked like every bit of that time.

The Hawks (0-1) managed just seven points in a first quarter — where they shot 3-of-18 from the field — and trailed 41-18 at the half. They finished the contest with 16 turnovers, 24% shooting from the field a, 84-49 loss and a whole lot of work to do.

"The best thing to say about that one is that it's over," Batchelor said. "It started out bad and it ended even worse. I take my hat off to St. Joe's. I thought they played really well tonight. They are a really good team. Their experience showed tonight. They played at a pace that we couldn't keep up with and I thought it was a great learning experience for us.

"35 points on the road in the first game against an Atlantic 10 team and the only thing I could say was don't forget it," Batchelor said. "When we question how hard we have to work and what we have to do to get better just remember this."

The Shore was outrebounded 18-10 in the first quarter, but cut into that deficit on the glass before the break. The shooting woes were a big factor early as the team seemed to have more weight on its shoulders with every miss. Meanwhile, St. Joes shot 46% from the field in the first half and 40% from behind the arc.

"I don't know if I can say the result was because we have been off," Batchelor said. "I thought one thing was that they were pretty good and we couldn't make a shot early on. That sort of compounds it. Then we kind of lost ourselves emotionally and mentally. You would think with three graduate students and six returners you would think we'd be a little more solid in that respect, but I thought this was a real test to our resiliency and I thought the first half we failed."

The team did get outscored just 43-31 in the second half, but were already mired in a deep funk by then. The Hawks shot 30% in the second half, but the hosts just continued to roll and even increased their clip behind the arc to 43%.

"I thought in the second half we did a much better job of playing mentally the way that we needed to play, but it was a learning experience for us more than anything," Batchelor said. "We will be a better team because of this and because of the way this happened.

"I'm looking forward to using this as a means to get better."

Graduate students Amanda Carney (Old Bridge, New Jersey) and Angelique Taylor (Wachapreague, Virginia) led the team with 11 points apiece. Carney added four rebounds and Taylor had three. Classmate Bairesha Gill-Miles (Lexington, Kentucky) led the Hawks on the glass with dix rebounds and chipped in eight points.

All 13 active members of the roster played at least four minutes.

"I told them in the locker room that there were very few things I saw them do wrong and there were very few things I saw us do right," Batchelor said. "I told them it was an embarrassment based on what we do as far as preparation and working every day in practice to then go out and look like we don't practice.

"Let see how we use this to get better?"

The Shore will next host Claflin on Saturday (Nov. 13) at 2 p.m. in the first part of a Homecoming doubleheader with the men.