On the road and missing their star player, Damascus stepped up and beat Reservoir, 46-26, on Monday night.

“I was very pleased,” Damascus coach Steve Pisarski said. “The girls played a really good game. It’s a Monday. We’re away from our normal schedule because of the time of this game, and the way Montgomery County buses work we had to drive here in cars, which we haven’t done all year. We’ve been on a bus for every game this year, so that was a little different than our normal thing.”

Reservoir (9-11) entered having won seven of its previous nine games, including an upset over Atholton on Friday. But against the Hornets (18-3), the Gators came out flat and scored nine points in the first half on just four made shots from the field.

“There’s no question we came out really flat, so you can make a lot of excuses,” Reservoir coach Deb Taylor said. “First Monday game of the season, non-conference game, coming off a huge win on Friday — there’s a lot of excuses you can make, but at the end of the day that’s what they were.”

Damascus quickly jumped out to a 16-0 lead, propelled by three consecutive 3-pointers midway through the first quarter by Stephanie DiLeo (8 points) and Kalynn Sefcik (10).

“Reservoir is a pretty good team,” Pisarski said. “We’re not a 16-nothing better team than them, but it also helped that we made a few shots.”

DiLeo stepped into the starting lineup this week in place of senior Tiana Stewart, who tore her ACL, ending her season.

“Stephanie is usually the first player off the bench; now she’s a starter,” Pisarski said. “But yeah, she’s coming in and replacing a Division I-level player, so it is hard for us to lose that and tonight everybody rallied around and made up for her loss.”