Towards the end of the first quarter, junior guard DJ McCarty’s left shoe flung into the statistics table at courtside. As McCarty came back to the bench shortly after, head women’s basketball coach Keitha Adams told her “Let’s go, lace em’ up!” 

Mental mistakes like these would lead to the Shockers giving up a season-high 27 turnovers in a loss to East Carolina 66-57 in Charles Koch Arena on Jan. 21.

“We had some unforced turnovers,” Adams said. “We lost our composure and if we take good care of the ball, I really like our chance in winning this game but you’re gonna have a hard time winning against anybody when you throw the thing away 27 times, it’s 54 points possible.”

Coming into Saturday’s matchup, East Carolina was the top-ranked defense in the American Athletic Conference, holding teams to 53.2 points per game on average. The Pirates scored 40 of their 66 points off of turnovers.

“East Carolina does a good job with their defense,” Adams said. “Out of timeouts, they really trapped us and we didn’t handle that well. They really extended pressure to max out our rhythm a little bit.”

The teams battled back and forth throughout the game with 11 lead changes and nine ties.

The Pirates and the Shockers each had three scorers in double-digits. The Shockers trio of senior Trajata Colbert, graduate student Curtessia Dean and McCarty scored 17, 13 and 11 points respectively.

“[The mistakes] were just us,” Colbert said. “When we made a mistake, you really be hard on yourself and I feel like instead of just going on to the next play, we really got in our heads and we didn’t bounce back.”

The Shockers will have a week of rest before traveling to Cincinnati for their second match-up with the Bearcats on Jan. 28. Tip-off is at 1:00 p.m. at Fifth Third Arena and will broadcast on ESPN+ and on KNSS 98.7 FM/1240 AM.