Posted: Saturday, March 20, 11:59 p.m.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.– For coach Joe McKeown, the way the GW women’s basketball team lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Saturday was unacceptable. Despite trailing by only six at halftime, the eight-seeded Colonials fell to No. 9 seed DePaul 83-46 in front of 2,247 at the Tallahassee-Leon County Civic Center.

“I was embarrassed today in the second half, and I’ll be the first one to say that.” he said after the loss Saturday. “Because my responsibilities for this team, for us to look that ragged in the second half-we were just completely out of sync. And so I’m not satisfied, I’m not happy with the season. I think the past two weeks we’ve been struggling. I can’t pinpoint it but I’m very frustrated right now.”

The Colonials (22-8) did not have an answer for cousins Charlene and Khara Smith, who combined to score 40 points for DePaul (23-6). Charlene Smith, a junior guard, had 24 points while Conference USA Player of the Year Khara Smith, a sophomore, had 16.

GW’s match-up zone did not slow down the Blue Demons, whose 85 points per game made them the highest scoring team in the country during the regular season. DePaul shot over 56 percent from the field Saturday, taking mainly high percentage shots to outscore the Colonials 44-28 in the paint, and McKeown said no amount of timeouts could stop the Blue Demons’ momentum.

“I called all my timeouts in the first half,” McKeown said. “Dean Smith always said, ‘Keep ’em in your pocket,’ but my pockets were empty.”

GW’s big three, seniors Cathy Joens and Ugo Oha and junior Anna Montanana, came up empty on offense, combining for just 29 points on 10-for-31 shooting. The trio came into the game averaging a combined 46 points per game.

Montanana caught a bad break Thursday, injuring her groin during practice. She did not practice Friday and McKeown said the injury might have been a factor in her performance.

“Montanana is a great player for us…(her injury) hurt us,” he said. “She goes one-for-six and scores two points and she’s someone we can usually depend on for 13, 14 points. She was struggling, but she would’ve had to score 40 today to make up for us.”

Joens also struggled in her final performance in a GW uniform, as DePaul guard Jenni Dant helped keep GW’s leading scorer in check for most of the game. The Atlantic 10 co-Player of the Year from Irvine, Ca. scored 12 points on 4-for-12 shooting.

DePaul head coach Doug Bruno praised Dant’s defense after the game.

“Those defensive efforts aren’t what people like to write about,” he said. “Joens is a player who is able to put up 12 to 14 to 20 points in nanoseconds.”

Oha faired better than Joens, scoring 15 points on 5-for-13 shooting, but had only two points and no field goals in the second half. The A-10 Defensive Player of the Year said the loss was not easy for the Colonials to take but said season was still a success.

“I think everybody has high expectations going in,” Oha said. “It’s a little disappointing to lose like that in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. But you gotta put a lot of things into perspective. Like coach said, we had four 20-win seasons, and not a lot of teams have even made the tournament.”

No. 16 seed Colgate University, making a rare appearance in the tournament, fell to top-seeded University of Tennessee 77-54 in Saturday’s early game. By the time GW and DePaul took the floor, most of the fans left in the arena were Lady Volunteers supporters waiting to see which squad their team would play in the next round.

DePaul established itself as Tennessee’s second round opponent by early in the second half, but the game was very much in contention before halftime.

Both teams struggled early on offense, as the Colonials did not hit their first field goal until over five minutes into the game. With the score tied 13-13, the Blue Demons went on a 14-6 run to go up 29-19 with 3:42 left before the break. GW responded with a 7-3 run to go into the locker room down 32-26.

But the Blue Demons opened the second half on a 14-4 run to go up 46-30 with 15:12 to go and GW could not stop the bleeding.

“You gotta play with a sense of urgency,” McKeown said. “You gotta play like you’re down by 20 the whole game and we didn’t do that.”