It was never a question of if Katie Terhune would score her 1,000th career point. It was a question of when it would happen.
The junior guard kept the crowd at Case Gymnasium in suspense most of the game Tuesday night, waiting until 7:33 left in the second half to sink a three-pointer as the Boston University women’s basketball team (1-3) plodded its way to a 69-51 victory over Central Connecticut State University (1-3).
Terhune became the second Terrier to reach 1,000 points during BU Coach Margaret McKeon’s four years here as head coach, and Terhune is the first she has recruited. She joins Alison Dixon (’01) who is second on BU’s all-time list with 1,648 points, behind Debbie Miller’s (’81) 1,869 points.
Terhune finished with a game-high 22 points on 7-for-19 shooting from the field (4-for-11 from beyond the arc). On a night that placed her among 12 other women in BU history, Terhune struggled to make her shots for most of the game. She missed a few lay-ups and endured a cold spell starting with 4:01 to play in the first half until her thousandth point in the second half when she went 0-for-6 from the field, hitting only a pair of free-throws.
She shrugged off her spurt of poor shooting as just a regular drought, and nothing related to any extra pressure as she neared the 1,000-point mark.
‘I didn’t even know [about the milestone]. I wasn’t thinking about it,’ Terhune said. ‘I was a little off today, but that had nothing to do with it.’
A quick start by the Terriers and Terhune left the outcome of the game never in doubt. A shot from the wing by Terhune with 11:15 left in the first half gave BU a 20-6 edge, and Terhune had seven points in the first nine minutes. Halfway to the 14 points needed to reach the feat, Terhune looked as though she might add the next seven points with ease in the first half.
But the Blue Devils didn’t want Terhune to have her big night against them, and they started double-teaming her when she had the ball. This left Terhune with almost no open looks the rest of the half. On the occasions when she wasn’t double-teamed, Terhune took the ball to the basket with ease but didn’t come up with the desired results.
The second half was a different story. Terhune was getting open shots from the corner and just not sinking them as many shots spun out of the rim. This led McKeon to shout from the sideline for Terhune to keep shooting despite her struggles.
With less than eight minutes to play in the game, and Terhune still stuck at 997 points, it began to look like she might not score the three points she needed last night.
When Terhune hit the three-point shot from the corner to give her the millennium mark, McKeon put her arms up with a sigh of both relief and excitement. Terhune, meanwhile, routinely turned to run up the court, not even acknowledging the momentous basket.
With the milestone behind her, Terhune began to resemble the shooter that scored the first 997 points. She sunk two more three-pointers from the corner as well as a shot from 15 feet, leaving the game to applause from the 181 people on hand to witness her accomplishment.
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.
