The Boston University women’s basketball team knew it was facing off against a turnover-prone University of New Hampshire squad in its season finale at Case Gymnasium.
However, no one could have expected the success BU would have, as the Terriers capitalized on a bevy of Wildcat errors to prevail, 79-65.
UNH (8-20, 3-12 America East) came into the game with the conference’s last seed and worst turnover ratio. On the season, the Wildcats had committed 494 turnovers while forcing only 395 from the opposition.
On Sunday afternoon, they outdid themselves with 14 first-half turnovers to BU’s none.
It was the first time all season that the Terriers (15-13, 11-5) went a whole half without turning over the ball. BU coach Kelly Greenberg saw this as a positive sign for BU’s postseason chances.
“Whenever you don’t turn it over a whole heck of a lot, it’s very nice,” Greenberg said. “It means you’re getting a good shot every single time down the court. Obviously, the 18 assists are very nice. Unselfish basketball, that’s who we think we are and we preach that and play it every day. We don’t care who gets the points as long as we’re getting the points. And we don’t care who gets the rebounds as long as we’re rebounding.”
But the Terriers nearly let their advantage go for naught. After BU started the game shooting 9-of-15, a five-minute drought caused the lead to shrink to 22-18.
Like she has all year, freshman forward Chantell Alford had something to say about that &- her 3-pointer at 7:16 restored the Terriers’ confidence, and UNH presented little threat to BU’s lead the rest of the way.
With the third seed in the AE Tournament already clinched, Greenberg was impressed with her players’ effort in what technically amounted to a meaningless game.
“I thought the girls did a really nice job before the game even started. They were really firing each other up,” Greenberg said. “You can come out in a game like this and just be like “We know we’re playing [University of Maryland-Baltimore County at 2:30 on Friday’ and just kind of walk through it. That’s not who we are, we didn’t want to do that. We wanted to make sure that we value playing the great game of basketball that it is. I thought all of our girls did that and I’m very happy for them that they took that approach.”
Sophomore guard Alex Young finished off her regular season on a high note, posting 27 points to lead the Terriers. Alford added 13 points along with a game-high nine assists, while sophomore forward Caroline Stewart recorded her second straight double-double, adding 10 rebounds to her 13 points.
UNH forward Candace Williams dominated in the first half with 11 points and eight rebounds. But that was all the scoring she would do for the night.
“Starting off in the second half, our defense was tremendous,” Greenberg said. “We talked a lot about shutting down Williams at halftime, and we shut her down in the second half.”
Senior Day at Case marked the last time forwards Aly Hinton and Maggie McKemie would play on the floor they have come to know so well over the last four years. A pregame ceremony honored the two seniors.
“It’s definitely sad leaving. I love this gym and I love playing here in front of the crowd,” Hinton said after the game. “It’s a great day, we have a banquet later, and it’s a fun day for everybody. But it’s definitely sad.”
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
