The Boston University women’s basketball team will look to avenge last month’s 59-55 loss to Binghamton University tonight at Case Gymnasium.
Both teams are in desperate need of a turnaround victory, as the Terriers have lost their last two games while Binghamton is a hideous 1-9 on the road.
Despite their road woes, the Bearcats (7-14, 5-3 America East) sit a half-game ahead of BU (12-10, 5-4) for fourth place in the conference. A week ago, the Terriers were part of a four-way tie for second, but back-to-back losses to the University at Albany (76-50) and first-place University of Hartford (61-54) have dropped them to fifth.
Junior point guard Christine Kinneary’s career-high 20 points last Saturday wasn’t enough for BU, which was forced to play catch-up for the majority of the second half and wasn’t able to pull closer than four points of the lead in the final six minutes. Hartford standout Danielle Hood, arguably the best player in the conference, netted a game-high 23 points for the winners.
Binghamton moved into fourth with an exciting 73-69 win over the University of Vermont on Saturday. The Bearcats led by 17 with 8:50 left, but the Catamounts stormed back, and closed the gap to two with 28 seconds left.
Senior center Laine Kurpniece, who led Binghamton with 18 points in the win, was fouled with 26 seconds left and made one of two free throws to make it a three-point game. Vermont’s May Kostopoulos had an open look at a game-tying 3, but her shot was off the mark.
Junior forward Laura Franceski, the Bearcats’ leading rebounder, recorded a double-double with 12 points and 11 rebounds in Binghamton’s Jan. 12 win over the Terriers. She will be BU’s primary focus tonight.
“[Franceski’s] athletic and she has good size,” said BU coach Kelly Greenberg. “She’s someone we really need to contain. I don’t think we’re going to keep her from getting rebounds, but we need to make sure we know where she is. We can’t think we’re going to out-jump her because she’s one of the most athletic players in the conference. We just have to back into her and limit her second chances as much as possible.”
Another player the Terriers must account for every time down the court is sophomore Erica Carter, who led all scorers with 14 points in their last meeting. She ranks third in America East in 3-point shooting at 38.6 percent.
“We definitely have to know where she is,” Greenberg said of Carter. “If she’s going to make a shot, we want to make sure it’s contested because if she’s open, she’ll make it.”
Greenberg said she wants her team to run the floor and not be forced into a half-court offense.
“In the first game, they did a good job of not letting us run,” she said. “Hopefully if we take care of the defensive boards, which we didn’t do last time, we’ll be able to run a little more.”
BU will get a huge boost on the defensive boards if center Kasey Devine is able to play. The senior has battled flu-like symptoms recently and sat out the Hartford loss, but she practiced yesterday for the first time in a week and is expected to play tonight.
