On what started as an ordinary Saturday afternoon in March, the Boston University basketball program found itself smack in the middle of March Madness.
That Saturday afternoon, when the final seconds ticked off the clock and the BU women’s basketball team held on to upset the University of Maine in the America East Championship, head coach Margaret McKeon and her players achieved a goal four years in the making. Conference champions, the Terriers were on their way to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history.
Just a few hours earlier, in the men’s title game, the University of Vermont’s David Hehn hit an off-balance jumper while falling out of bounds to put the Catamounts one point in front of BU with less than 10 seconds remaining. After a Chaz Carr three-pointer bounced off the back of the rim, the Terriers’ aspirations of making the NCAA Tournament for the second straight season were crushed in an instant.
As euphoric as the women may have felt in victory, the men appeared equally dejected in defeat.
But even the sharp contrast of emotions – the women’s elation and men’s heartbreak – proved how far along the BU basketball program has come in the past four years. In 2003, the women advanced to the NCAA Tournament and the men were one defensive stop away from back-to-back trips to the Big Dance. Four years prior, there was neither elation nor heartbreak for BU on Championship Saturday, as the teams combined to go 14-40, and both were eliminated in the first round of the conference tournament.
The face of the program has drastically changed in four seasons, as the men and the women have enjoyed a steady rise to the top of the America East. It’s a place that each team worked hard to get to, and with the commitment of both coaches and players, neither appears ready to surrender its spot any time soon.
THE REBUILDING McKeon and men’s head coach Dennis Wolff had different, yet similar, tasks in front of them before the 1999-2000 campaign. Wolff was entering his sixth season at the helm for the men’s team, while McKeon had just been hired to take over on the women’s side.
In Wolff’s first four seasons, the men’s team made three conference championship game appearances and advanced to the 1997 NCAA Tournament. It was the 1998-1999 season, however, in which Wolff and his players hit a bump in the road. The Terriers won only nine of 27 games and fell to the bottom of the America East.
McKeon took over a women’s squad that had gone 5-22 the year prior. The first-time head coach had spent her previous four years as an assistant at George Washington University. In three of those four seasons, the Colonials advanced to the NCAA Tournament.
While Wolff and McKeon were at different junctures in their careers, both coaches had to undertake similar steps to retool their teams.
Wolff said the 18-loss season in 1999 was the offshoot of players’ behavioral problems. After the season, the head coach and his staff decided to raise his recruiting standards.
‘I think, more than anything, we just tried to do a better job in the recruiting process of identifying character kids,’ Wolff said. ‘We had poor seasons with kids with tremendous character. For whatever the reason, we made the mistakes that sometimes happen in recruiting and then we were able to really sit down as a group and say ‘OK, we know we need to get talented guys, but we also need to get the type of guys that we have now.”
BU had a few ‘character’ players, but Wolff wanted more of them. The 1999-2000 freshman class featured Jason Grochowalski, Paul Seymour and Matt Turner players the coaches hoped would catalyze the program’s resurgence.
While Seymour shined as a freshman and was named the conference’s Rookie of the Year, Grochowalski red-shirted the season with a shoulder injury, and Turner lost his eligibility in the second semester for academic reasons. Transfers Billy Collins and Stijn Dhondt were required to sit out for the year. After a 9-18 season in 1999, the Terriers appeared to take another step back with a 7-22 record in 2000.
Wolff, however, considering his squad was missing several players that season, thought the 2000 team was better than its record.
‘The first down year, the year that we won nine games, should not have been a down year. That was the only year since I’ve been here that I felt, based on what we had, we had a totally disappointing season. That was the year that when it was over, everyone was glad it was over. The following year when we won seven games, I didn’t feel that way at all. We ended up without five scholarship players, but that was the year, even though the record didn’t show it, we began to start playing well.’
Collins, a graduating senior and a three-year team member, said the Terriers had the makings of a competitive team when he sat out the 1999-2000 season.
‘I remember watching them when I had to sit out,’ Collins said. ‘Even though they only won seven games, the team always played hard.’
With a renewed focus on bringing in talented, ‘character’ players and a commitment to playing hard every time out on the court, the men’s team began its climb back to the top of the conference.
Similar to Wolff’s approach, McKeon immediately recognized that the success of the women’s program would rest on her staff’s ability to recruit a specific type of player to excel in the America East.
‘When I first arrived, my first step was identifying the conference and what type of style of basketball it would take to win,’ McKeon said. ‘The people that were at the top of the league were [The University of] Maine and [The University of] Vermont, and Delaware was on the rise. They weren’t very athletic, but they were skilled basketball players. We just had to get better basketball players than the other schools and we had to teach the fundamentals.’
McKeon and her staff promised potential recruits that they would be able to make an immediate impact on a rebuilding team.
‘We had five scholarships, so that was great because in my first recruiting class, I could go out and get five players. I knew we could build quickly because there were a lot of scholarships out there to have. Then we went into the recruiting process and I said, ‘We have to get skilled basketball players who can definitely get it done on the academic end and were good, solid kids that wanted to come in and be an impact.’ We sold it as, ‘You can come in and make an impact right off your freshman year. If you want playing time, you’ll have the opportunity to play.”
After a slight improvement in 2000 with three more wins than the previous season and an 8-21 record, McKeon set out to recruit her first class at BU.
‘With that first recruiting class, it was key to get good, solid, foundation-type kids who believed in myself and believed that we could get this done and wanted to work toward that and were willing to put everything into it. And I thought we did that. I think we got a diamond in the rough in Katie Terhune, obviously.’
Terhune, a member of McKeon’s first recruiting class, has become one of the league’s best players. After her junior season in 2003, Terhune sits in third place on the Terriers career points list and is 402 points away from becoming the leading scorer in program history.
Other players in Terhune’s class, such as Marisa Moseley and Courtney Jones, helped put McKeon’s stamp on the women’s program.
In 2001, Terhune and company helped the team improve for the second straight season and finish 10-19. The Terriers also won their first-round playoff game against Hofstra University.
McKeon and her staff had a four-year success plan when they took control of the program in 1999. Alison Argentieri, a graduating senior and a four-year team member, began her career at BU at the same time as McKeon. The point guard said she and the new staff had no trouble establishing an early relationship.
‘Coach McKeon’s first day of practice was my first day of practice,’ Argentieri said. ‘Right from the start we clicked.’
Able to establish trusting relationships with existing players and future recruits, McKeon and her staff, as well as the players, believed that success was just four years away.
Four years ago, the foundation was laid for the future success of both the men’s and the women’s team. All they needed was time to develop and mature and they would soon be champions.
THE RISE After a couple years assembling a solid collection of players to rebuild their teams, Wolff and McKeon watched those players enjoy the fruits of their labors with championship seasons.
In 2001, the men’s team improved its record to an even 14-14, but Wolff said the team was still ‘not quite right’ at that time. With Collins out for part of the season with a foot injury, the team had yet to come together the way Wolff envisioned.
Collins, though, remembered the conclusion of the 2001 season as a harbinger of better things to come. Trailing Maine, 60-50, with close to two minutes left in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament, BU went on a 16-6 run to force the Black Bears into overtime. Matt Turner, who scored 35 points in the game, powered the late Terrier comeback, draining four three-pointers in the final 81 seconds of regulation. Despite Turner’s efforts, BU eventually lost, 87-83, but Collins said the loss was critical to the team’s improvement.
‘It just showed how much heart the team had,’ Collins said about the loss. ‘To see the team stick together the way we did, even though we lost, it was just a great moment.’
The positive effects of that loss carried over to the following season, which would be the culmination of more than two years of hard work coupled with a little championship luck. The Terriers started the 2001-02 season with the same goal they had at the start of every season: the NCAA Tournament.
To achieve that goal in 2001-2002, Wolff’s staff brought in two freshmen able to contribute from game one. First-year players Chaz Carr and Rashad Bell were both members of the America East All-Rookie team, and Carr’s stellar play earned him a spot on the America East Second Team.
BU breezed through the conference regular season, winning 13 of 16 games and finishing tied for first place with Vermont. The Catamounts were responsible for two of the Terriers’ three league losses and would be the one team to stand in BU’s path to the NCAA Tournament.
But as is the case with most championship teams, bounces went the Terriers’ way and everything seemed to fall perfectly into place. Take, for example, the America East Tournament semifinals.
Against the University of Hartford in the semifinal, the Terriers were tied with the Hawks with less than a second to play. With eight-tenths of a second left on the clock, Kevin Fitzgerald sent a one-handed baseball-pass the length of the court to Stijn Dhondt, who received the pass and fired from behind the arc in one smooth motion. The clock hit zero as the ball caromed off the backboard and through the net, sending BU to a 63-60 victory and giving the team a chance to play for an NCAA Tournament bid.
As if the Terriers didn’t have enough luck in their win over Hartford, there was a little leftover magic in the other semi between Vermont and Maine, as the Black Bears upset the top-seeded Catamounts in overtime, 61-59, and eliminated BU’s biggest tournament threat.
The 2002 America East Championship was played in a jam-packed ‘Roof’ before a live ESPN audience. More of a celebration than a competition, the Terriers dominated the game and stomped Maine, 66-40, to win the championship and earn an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in five seasons.
After winning a total of 16 games in 1999 and 2000, the Terriers had come all the way back to win 22 games in 2002 to be champions once again. Collins, the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, said he appreciated how far the Terriers had come.
‘Each year the team just got hungrier and wanted to succeed and get out from the bottom of the America East,’ Collins said. ‘It was great to have been in the tournament. It was the greatest feeling I’ve ever had in my life.’
This past season, returning most of the players from the 2002 championship team, BU entered the year with high expectations.
The season featured another 13-win total in the conference and a second-straight regular season championship. The Terriers even held their own against some of the top programs in the country, beating Florida State University and hanging with Stanford University and the University of Arizona.
And while Hehn and the Catamounts denied the Terriers a second-straight trip to the NCAA Tournament, BU was rewarded for its 20-win season with a spot in the National Invitational Tournament.
‘To have the type of season we had and have it all come down to that one game is a tough thing and it’s a lot of pressure on the kids,’ Wolff said. ‘By anyone’s standards, this was a successful season, but at the same time we didn’t really get what we wanted. What I’ve come to appreciate at this level is that it’s a very fine line between being where we are now and slipping back, and then it’s also a fine line between having a very good season and having a great season. A bounce in the Stanford game, a bounce in that Vermont game, a bounce against St. John’s could have changed everything. It’s just the way college basketball plays out.’
Regardless of how the ball bounced in 2003, the men’s team continued to prove itself as a force in the America East.
While the men returned to glory in 2002 and 2003 with NCAA and NIT berths, the women’s team had never advanced to the postseason. The Terriers continued to follow the four-year track that McKeon had laid out in 1999, and the head coach knew the Terriers were headed in the right direction.
‘I dreamed about days of winning a championship and cutting down the net,’ McKeon said. ‘I had a vision that that’s what was going to happen here.’
After winning 10 games in 2001, McKeon and her staff continued to work tirelessly at recruiting the best available players. Adrienne Norris and Larissa Parr, both top-25 recruits, were brought in before the 2001-2002 season.
‘Every year after we got that first recruiting class, we said, ‘We have to get better than the last class.’ And every year, we’ve strived on that.’
With McKeon’s first class in its second year and the additions of Norris and Parr, the Terriers enjoyed their first winning season in seven years. BU was 17-11 in 2002 and finished second in the conference.
While the year was a huge leap forward for the program, the young team stumbled in the conference tournament, when it was upset by seventh-seeded Stony Brook University, 63-46.
But even with the early playoff exit, a new sense of order and tradition had been established in BU women’s basketball.
‘I thought it was just growing pains that we had to go through,’ McKeon said. ‘We were always missing something, and we maxed out [in 2002]. The year before, I still believe we could have won a first-round game in the tournament, and that didn’t happen, but for the most part we got everything out of that group. And the year before we got everything out of that group, so that’s been a good thing.’
Unfazed by the Stony Brook loss, McKeon still believed that a championship was on the horizon.
‘I sat down with [Argentieri] in her sophomore and junior years and said, ‘You’re going to win a championship before you leave here,” McKeon said.
Who knows if Argentieri believed her coach’s prophecy in 2002, but sure enough, it came to fruition in 2003.
This season the team was slow out of the gate, losing eight of its first 11 games, but it was able to regroup and finish the regular season with 10 conference wins and a third-place finish.
In the quarterfinals, the Terriers used a 19-3 run to come back from a 14-point deficit against Northeastern University in the final six minutes. In the semifinals, the team snapped a 15-game losing streak to Vermont, when the Terriers topped the Catamounts for the first time since 1996. And in the finals, BU handed top-seeded Maine its first conference loss of the season en route to winning the championship. The Black Bears were 18-0 in the conference before the championship game.
A legendary run to the program’s first NCAA Tournament validated McKeon’s faith in her plan, her staff and most of all her players.
‘There’s nothing like the NCAA Tournament,’ McKeon said. ‘It was always stressed that we want to win a championship. I always stressed to the team about making an impact and always being the first. ‘You’re going to be the foundation that sets the tone for Boston University. You leave a legacy.”
THE REIGN After championship seasons, both Wolff and McKeon acknowledged that their players appreciated what it took to win a championship. Understanding that struggle, both know what it will take to maintain their success.
‘The kids had more to do with it than anybody else,’ Wolff said. ‘They’re the ones who put in the long hours over the summers. They’re the ones that did it. We tried to orchestrate it, but they’re the ones that deserve the majority of the credit. I think that they recognize how far we’ve come. When you go from winning seven games to winning 42 in two years, it’s a big difference.’
With one championship won, McKeon said her team would enter next season with loftier goals.
‘I think now it’s kind of a standard we’ve set for one another,’ McKeon said. ‘This is where we want to be, and we know how much we had to work to get through last season, so there isn’t an unknown. If we work that much harder, put a little more extra time into it, it could prepare us even more so for something beyond the first-round.’
Sometime next season, a 2003 women’s championship banner will find its place in the rafters alongside the 2002 men’s banner. The future of BU basketball will be driven by prior success and what it took to achieve that success.
‘What we need to continue to do is to get the type of players that we have,’ Wolff said. ‘I think it comes down to continuing to recruit and for the guys continuing to stay as motivated as they continue to be.’
McKeon echoed Wolff’s philosophy.
‘If we can continue to try to be better than last year in our recruiting end of things and still fill the pieces to the puzzle, then we can be real successful for a long period of time,’ McKeon said.
‘We’ve put ourselves in a position where hopefully people can recognize Boston University women’s basketball for being identified with a winner and a hard-worker,’ she added.
Wolff also said the athletic department’s renewed commitment to the program will only further BU basketball’s success.
‘I think that there’s been a significant commitment to the basketball program, and my sense is that [the administration is] even more committed now than it’s ever been. I think they recognize the importance of the athletic program, and men’s basketball can help serve a purpose in rallying the students and trying to improve the campus life.’
Both Argentieri and Collins had only positive things to say about their careers at BU.
‘It’s just been a growing process on and off of the court,’ Argentieri said. ‘My experience has made me a better player and a better person. I’m going out on a good note, and how I always wished I would.’
Collins remembered his coaching staff.
‘It’s the greatest staff of coaches that I’ve ever had,’ the senior said. ‘To get the type of players in here that they have and to get them to gel the way they have was incredible. It’s been a huge transition for the team.’
That huge transition has turned the basketball program into a force to be reckoned with on the national stage – and it has made an ordinary Saturday in March into Championship Saturday.