The Boston University women’s basketball team is hoping revenge is sweet.
Last season ended with the Terriers (4-9, 1-1 AE) experiencing an upset by Stony Brook University (3-10, 1-1 AE) in the conference tournament quarterfinals. And you can be certain that this BU team doesn’t have too short of a memory. For the first time since last season, the two teams square off tonight at 7 p.m. on Long Island.
Finished with their non-conference schedule and two games into their conference schedule, the Terriers will enter the game with plenty of questions to be answered. The young team will need to correct its shooting woes and defensive lapses in order to gain its first conference road win of the season against the Seawolves.
BU comes into the game shooting a measly 38 percent from the field on the season, including hitting just 29.3 percent of shots from behind the 3-point arc. The numbers were consistently lower when BU faced tougher opponents. The Terriers shot 33.3 percent from the field against Stanford University, 28.8 percent against St. Joseph’s University, and 29.5 percent against Vanderbilt University.
If BU hopes to be victorious against good teams this year, it will have to start shooting well on a more consistent basis, including junior guard Katie Terhune. The Terriers’ leading scorer the last two seasons as well as this season, Terhune has the ability to create her own shots and make a shot from anywhere on the floor.
Terhune is averaging 17.5 points per game this season, but she has struggled to find her offensive game during all of BU’s losses. The Terriers are 4-0 in games when she scores 21 points or higher and 0-9 when she scores 20 points or less.
Late in many games, as well as during scoring droughts, the statistics prove that Terhune needs to become more involved in the offense and look to take more shots. She also shoots 81.5 percent from the free throw line, so a few more trips to the line would mean a lot more scoring. The pattern is simple. When Terhune scores, BU has a better chance to win.
One player who is helping shoulder some of the offensive load put on Terhune is freshman guard Katie Meinhardt. She is averaging 18.7 points in the last three games, including a team-high 21 points in the most recent game, a 75-61 road loss to preseason favorite and defending conference champion University of Vermont on Saturday. Meinhardt’s performance in that game and BU’s 87-68 win over the University at Albany earned her a share of the America East Rookie of the Week Award.
McKeon can only hope that freshman guard Rachael Vanderwal and junior guard Courtney Jones recover as successfully from injury as Meinhardt did from the preseason elbow injury that left her sidelined for the first four games of the season.
Vanderwal, who dazzled fans and her coach during preseason games, as well as the team’s first two games of the season, had been sidelined for 10 games with a stress fracture to her right ankle. She logged five minutes of action against Vermont on Saturday, struggling to find her new role on the team thanks to the recent emergence of Meinhardt as a steady point guard.
The return of Jones should give BU an extra boost, especially on defense. An ankle sprain has left her out of action for more than a month, depriving the Terriers of her defensive pressure on opposing teams’ point guards, which yield her more than two steals a game in limited action.
Jones’ presence will certainly help the Terriers spread zone defense, which even in her absence has caused fits for opposing teams. The Terriers are forcing their opponents to turn the ball over an average of 23.5 times a game. The success in forcing opponents to turn the ball over should continue tonight for BU as they face a Seawolves team that averages 27.5 turnovers a game.
Stony Brook graduated five players from last year’s team that caught magic in a bottle during the conference tournament, advancing all the way to the conference finals. One player who did not graduate, however, is junior Sherry Jordan. Jordan, named to the All-America East First Team last year, currently leads her team in points per game (13) and rebounds per game (7.3).
While a conference road win in tonight’s game doesn’t necessarily mean the Terriers have cured all their ills, it will probably be a little nicer knowing it was against the team that knocked them out last season.
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