Rutgers women’s hoops dropped its second in a row in Big Ten play, falling to Illinois 80-62 on the road, Wednesday night to drop to 4-7 on the season and 0-2 in the Big Ten. After trading buckets with the Illini for a better part of the game’s opening six minutes, Illinois would outscore Rutgers 29-13 for the remainder of the first half, building a 40-22 lead.

Rutgers would fall behind by as many as 23 points when Adalia McKenzie and Makira Cook hit back-to-back three pointers to start the third quarter, pushing Illinois out to a 45-22 lead.

Rutgers couldn’t recover trailing by double-digits the rest of the night.

Kaylene Smikle had another standout performance for the Scarlet Knights, scoring 22-points on 6-of-18 shooting. She leads the team in points scored this year with 163, or 14.8 points per game. Smikle is also averaging 4.1 rebounds per game, and leads the Scarlet Knights in steals with 19.

Awe Sidibe had 13 points and Chyna Cornwell had 10 points to close out the lead scorers for Rutgers.

Rutgers will face Hampton on Saturday at 2 p.m. from Jersey Mike’s Arena.

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