BALTIMORE, Md. (Jan. 1, 2015)-After playing eight of their last nine games on the road, the Lady Bear's basketball team finally returned to Baltimore for a non-conference game against crosstown rival the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). While it wasn't the friendly confines of Hill Field House, being back in Baltimore would be enough, as the Lady Bears defeated UMBC, 54-46 in a New Year's night contest on Thursday night at RAC Arena.

Braennan Farrar scored a game-high 15 points and Danielle Robinson added 11 for the Lady Bears, while Dinah Jones pulled down a game-high and career-tying 15 rebounds. Zuri White hauled in 12 rebounds and scored nine points, as Morgan State held a 55-45 rebounding advantage over UMBC.

"We're back to our level of play and we had a chance to win the same type of game in two of our last three games," said Morgan State head coach Donald Beasley. "I'm happy for the kids. We needed a win. It was a ugly, but you'll take an ugly win when you are struggling."

The Lady Bears (3-10) earned their second consecutive victory over UMBC and improved to 11-12 all-time against the Retrievers. More importantly, the win ended a season-long eight-game losing skid for Morgan State.

The last time Morgan State and UMBC met was in the 2012-13 season opener at Morgan State, a win by the Lady Bears. Morgan State entered that contest on a 10-game losing skid, before defeating the Retrievers.

The Lady Bears broke a 33 all tie with a 12-2 spurt during the second half to take a 42-35 lead with 5:52 to play. UMBC scored the next four points to pull within, 42-40, but that would be as close as the Retrievers would get. Morgan State would score the next six points in part of a 12-6 run to conclude the game.

Morgan State, which was playing its sixth straight game without leading scorer Tracey Carrington, trailed by as much as five points (14-9) in the first half, before closing out the period on a 15-6 run to take a 24-20 halftime lead.

"It's going to be hard to replace Tracey's [Carrington] 20 points," said Beasley. "The kids play good defense and we've been playing good defense all year. We need to find out who can put up a couple extra points.

"We shot 30 free throws and we're going to try to get to the free throw line and make up for some scoring. It was an ugly win, but we're going to take it and keep on rolling."

The Lady Bears finished the game shooting 74 percent (23-of-31) from the free throw line and shot 14-of-60 (23 percent) from the floor. The Retrievers shot 16-of-62 from the floor for 25 percent and was 11-of-18 (61 percent) from the free throw line.

UMBC (5-8) was led by Liz McNaughton, who finished with 12 points. Amanda Hagaman and Capree Garner both scored eight points and Dana Lewis finished with a team-high nine rebounds.

The Lady Bears return home to host Brown on Sunday, Jan. 4 at 2 p.m. at Hill Field House. The Brown Bears (4-8) are coming off an 80-68 win over Howard on Tuesday, Dec. 30 in the consolation game of the Cyclone Challenge in Iowa. Brown is 2-0 against Morgan State, including last season's 63-53 victory in the consolation game of the Brown Bear Classic.