Clutching a 37-33 lead at halftime on Sunday afternoon, it seemed as though the Binghamton women’s basketball team would avenge its buzzer-beater defeat at the hands of Brown last season. After a dismal third period, though, BU (1-5) once again fell to the Bears (3-3), 83-72.

With BU ahead, 21-20, after the first 10 minutes of play, the two squads remained within points of each other for much of the second period. With less than two minutes left in the second, junior guard Imani Watkins went on a six-point run to put BU up by four heading into the locker room.

Coming out of the half, BU and Brown traded threes until the Bears cut Binghamton’s lead to just one point. Following this exchange, however, the period unraveled for the Bearcats, who were outscored, 22-10, in the frame.

“[Brown] came out after halftime and they knocked down shots,” said BU head coach Linda Cimino. “[Sophomore guard Shayna] Mehta found her way. She struggled in the first two quarters and then she came out and she knocked down seven of 11 from the field in the second half, so I think that was the biggest difference.”

Mehta tallied 13 points in the third quarter, helping the Bears to an eight-point lead by the end of the period. Her 29 points on the day were a game and season-high and a major reason BU gave up 83 points — the most they allowed since Princeton scored 96 in December 2014.

“It’s hard to win a basketball game when we give up 83 points, so we need to do a better job of taking care of the ball,” Cimino said.

Watkins once again led the Bearcats offensively, putting up 21 points. She now tops the America East (AE) Conference and is No. 11 among all Division I players with an average of 22 points per contest.

According to Watkins, BU’s struggles were due largely to its poor defensive performance.

“We had lapses in our defense,” Watkins said. “It’s a game of runs. They made a run, we didn’t respond.”

BU’s defense was without the assistance of junior forward Alyssa James, who played just six minutes in the first two periods in an attempt to remain out of foul trouble. The attempt proved futile, though, as she fouled out in the fourth quarter.

“Obviously you can’t be as aggressive defensively when you have kids in foul trouble,” Cimino said. “I think we had four kids in foul trouble the whole game today and that definitely deterred us from pressuring the ball, and that allowed them to get some open looks.”

The real difference on the day proved to be the number of times each team made it to the free-throw line. Brown and BU scored similarly from the field, but the Bears added on 23 points from the charity stripe while the Bearcats added just 10.

“Our goal every game is to make more free throws than the other team attempts,” Cimino said. “In the second half, obviously, at the end of the game, you try to foul to get the ball back and hope that they don’t make their free throws. They obviously knocked down their free throws. They were in the bonus every quarter today and that really hurt us.”

In a ceremony prior to Sunday’s game, Watkins was honored for recording the 1,000th point of her college career in BU’s loss to Sacred Heart last Wednesday. She is the 15th player in program history to reach this mark and the first to do so since the 2011-12 season.

The Bearcats are set to return to action on Friday against Fairleigh Dickinson. Tipoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. from Rothman Center in Hackensack, New Jersey.