The Binghamton women’s basketball team traveled to play Fairleigh Dickinson in its first matchup away from home this season. BU led 15-9 early, but after a flurry of turnovers was unable to ever get the lead back, losing 63-40.

“When you go on the road you have to have a mentality of just playing your hearts out and really grinding it out and that really wasn’t the case tonight,” said Binghamton head coach Bethann Shapiro Ord.

BU conceded turnovers on three straight possessions that gave the Knights opportunities to take a 19-15 lead at the end of the first quarter. Though Fairleigh Dickinson committed more turnovers throughout the game, they were able to exploit those opportunities more than Binghamton. The Knights outscored BU 22-14 in points off turnovers.

“We turned them over, but we were not able to score on them,” Shapiro Ord said.

With a minute remaining in the second quarter, freshman forward Genevieve Coleman made a jump shot to make it 34-21. Those points were the first scored by a Bearcat (3-3) that did not come from junior guard Denai Bowman or junior forward Birna Benonysdottir. The two juniors took all but four of Binghamton’s first-quarter shots, combining for 15 total in the first while scoring all but four of the team’s first-half points. The Knights (3-4) took advantage of the Bearcats’ offensive struggles outscoring them 17-8 in the second quarter to take a 36-25 lead into the break. In the second quarter, Fairleigh Dickinson shot 57.1 percent from the field compared to the Bearcats’ 26.7 percent.

“We stopped doing what we do, everything we prepared for,” Shapiro Ord said. “We didn’t cut, we didn’t execute our offense, we didn’t spread the floor, our spacing wasn’t great and we weren’t going toward the basket where they were.”

In the third quarter, the Knights were able to extend their lead as Binghamton converted on only three of their 13 field goal attempts. In the quarter alone, Fairleigh Dickinson almost tripled BU’s rebound tally, 14-5. Throughout the game, the Knights outscored BU 36-22 in the paint while being out-rebounded 37-27.

“We weren’t boxing out, we worked on it all week, and all the stuff we worked on we just for whatever reason didn’t carry it over to the game,” Shapiro Ord said. “And you can’t get out-rebounded by that many and think you’re gonna have a chance to limit.”

In the final quarter, the Bearcats recorded more turnovers than points. Until a Coleman layup with 47 seconds to go, BU had not made a single field goal, finishing 1-15 from the field and 0-7 from the 3-point line during the final frame. Outside of Bowman and Benonysdottir, no Binghamton athlete scored more than four points and the team finished with a 27.3 field goal percentage.

“The whole game like we just weren’t knocking down shots,” Shapiro Ord said. “They weren’t falling, but we weren’t taking rhythm shots. We were taking shots too early in our offense that weren’t great shots.”

Early on, Benonysdottir made a 3-pointer to make it a 13-9 game. The team then went on to miss its next 18 attempts, finishing 1-20 from beyond the arch. The Knights shot 25 percent from three compared to Binghamton’s five percent.

“Nothing was going in, but we were shooting too quick,” Shapiro Ord said. “We weren’t letting our offense come to us, trying to get two sides … We were settling for shots and we should have gotten good chunk rate shots.”

The Bearcats return to action against Lehigh University on Saturday, Dec. 4. Tipoff is scheduled for 2 p.m. at Stabler Arena in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.