Basketball, Sports

Efficient late shooting aids in women’s basketball win

The Boston University women’s basketball team won its second straight game when the team defeated Colgate University 72-68 at Case Gymnasium Wednesday night.

MICHELLE JAY/DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF Sophomore Clodagh Scannell recorded 21 points in the Terriers’ win Wednesday night.
MICHELLE JAY/DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF Sophomore Clodagh Scannell recorded 21 points in the Terriers’ win Wednesday night.

“Every win is going to be big for us at this point,” said BU coach Kelly Greenberg. “But to get back-to-back is big for us, and I’m going to go back to the second half of the [U.S. Naval Academy] game where we were just playing a lot better.”

The Terriers (10-16, 5-8 Patriot League) were led by a career-best performance from sophomore guard Clodagh Scannell, who had 21 points to go along with 10 rebounds. Senior forward Rashidat Agboola tied her season-high with 25 points and also added 11 rebounds for a double-double.

The game opened with jumper from Colgate forward Carole Harris that put up the Raiders 2-0. After that shot, the Terriers went on a 5-0 run, getting points from Agboola and senior guard Danielle Callahan.  The Raiders countered with a six-point run of their own that was capped off by a layup from forward Kelly Reid.

Colgate soon went up 13-7 and led until a 3-pointer from freshman guard Sarah Hope tied the game at 19-19 with 4:37 left to play in the frame.

With 44 seconds remaining in the first half and BU down by three, Scannell hit back-to-back trey balls to put the Terriers up three points heading into the break.

Before those two makes, Scannell had been 0-for-6 from behind the 3-point arc and was overall just 1-of-10 from the field.

With Scannell’s struggles, the Terrier offense relied on the play of Agboola. Her strong post play resulted in 10 points in the first 20 minutes.

To start the second half of play, BU was able to gain control of the game, going up 49-38 with 11:41 remaining.  After struggling from the 3-point line in the first half, Scannell went a perfect 5-for-5 from downtown in the second.

“To be honest with you, when we were taking all those threes in the first half at one timeout, I said, ‘Nobody is allowed to take a three unless it goes through Rashidat first,’” Greenberg said. “We got a little three-happy.”

The biggest lead of the night for either team came with 10:53 left in the game when junior forward Mollie McKendrick hit a jumper to put BU up by 13 points.

Following that shot, the Colgate worked back into the game, and a layup by guard Randyll Butler shrunk the Terrier lead to just five with 5:56left in the game.

With the Raiders making a comeback attempt and making it a close game, BU used its top performers in the game, Scannell and Agboola, to score the final 13 points of the contest.

After Harris cut the BU lead to four points with a layup make, the Terriers went to the line for crucial free throws.  Agboola was fouled and was able to hit both her attempts to push the lead back up to six to put the Raiders away for good.

“We’ve really been trying to get Rashidat more touches which has proven to be good for us,” Greenberg said.  “It’s one of the things we looked at a few games ago. We have been strong defensively all season but on offense we’ve hit skids and sometimes we feel that when we take Rashidat out we lose the whole tempo of our offense.”

The offense improved of the second half of the game, as the Terriers’ efficiency increased from 30.6 percent in the first to 56 percent in the second frame.  Greenberg said she believes that is to do in the quality of shots taken.

“We only took seven threes in the second half, we shot 20 in the first,” Greenberg said. “In our big win over Lafayette we only had 10 threes for the game so that was the biggest different in our percentage and that’s what we want to try and do.”

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