In the America East conference, in which five of nine teams have six league wins, the Boston University women’s basketball team (14-13, 6-8 America East) has a chance to distance itself from the pack when it takes on the University of New Hampshire (8-17, 3-10) tomorrow.
The Terriers had an opportunity to take sole possession of third place in the conference Wednesday against the University of Hartford, but two key defensive stops in the final two minutes by Hartford’s Danielle Hood and MaryLynne Schafer left BU coming up short, 64-60.
BU will have a much better chance to get its seventh conference win Saturday, when it takes on the last-place Wildcats. UNH has lost its last three games, and its only three conference wins have come against Binghamton University, the University at Albany and the University of Maine. The Terriers have already beaten both Maine and Albany and have a better overall record than Binghamton (10-16). BU coach Kelly Greenberg knows the Terriers will have an advantage, but they know they can’t take the last-place Wildcats lightly.
“I think we’ve been playing pretty well, so I think we have some momentum going into the game,” Greenberg said. “I think our guard matchups are an advantage, but we can never feel totally confident going onto another team’s floor. We just have to go out there and execute our game plan on both sides of the floor.”
In their last match up Jan. 23, The Terriers beat UNH, 67-57, behind a breakout performance from sophomore guard Amarachi Umez-Eronini, who had a career-high and team-high 14 points (3-of-3 from the field, 8-of-10 from the line) in 25 minutes in the win. Junior tri-captain Cheri Raffo added 13 points of her own and was the only other Terrier to score in double-digits.
“I really hope [Amarachi] has another big game,” Greenberg said. “They had been playing zone against all their opponents, and then played us man, which is where Amarachi plays well.”
The only UNH offensive threat the Terriers had to worry about was senior forward Danielle Clark, who scored nearly half of the Wildcats’ points last game (26 points on 11-of-20 shooting).
“[Clark] does a nice job of seeing how people play her one-on-one. She can shoot 3, she can post up and she has a variety of ways to score,” Greenberg said. “We are going to mix it up by having different people on her and not let her get comfortable.”
Though Clark (14.2 ppg) is its main offensive threat, UNH executes its offense best when scoring is distributed evenly. So while it’s important to keep Clark in check, it is just as important to make sure the role players do not step up their game.
“We kept their other players in check in our first game. We can’t get too crazy about shutting down just one player,” Greenberg said. “Our scouting report is going to be focused on Clark, but if that means someone scores 26 on us and we win, I’m fine with that.”
Clark may be the focus of the scouting report, but BU’s main focus is starting to shift to the America East Tournament. The Terriers have two games left to improve their seeding, with the last contest of the season at home against Binghamton on Feb. 28.