It seemed over. Melissa Kowalski had just hit a three-pointer from the corner to give Northeastern University its largest lead of the game, with the score at 50-36 and 5:56 to play. Boston University had gone the last 4 minutes without a field goal, and had managed just 3 assists for the whole game. After scoring just 13 points in the first half, a 14-point deficit seemed too much to overcome.
The Terriers, however, didn’t get that memo. A pair of free throws by sophomore Adrienne Norris and a couple of field goals by junior Katie Terhune closed the gap to 50-42 with 4:15 to play. Terrier assistant coach Kathryn Otwell could feel the momentum turning and she leaned over to America East Rookie of the Year Katie Meinhardt to tell her what was next.
“Coach Otwell looks over at me with 4 minutes left in the game,” said Meinhardt. “And says, ‘We’re going to win this game.’ And I was like ‘Yeah we are.'”
The predictions turned out to be true, as BU (14-14) grabbed an improbable 55-53 victory over Northeastern (8-20) on Thursday afternoon to advance to the semifinals of the America East tournament at Chase Family Arena in Hartford.
Meinhardt made sure the victory prediction came true in regulation. With the score tied at 53 and 20 seconds remaining, Northeastern’s Maralene Zwarich in-bounded the ball to Joi Jefferson in the frontcourt. She dumped it off to her teammate, Aisha Williams, with who was standing in the backcourt. The resulting backcourt violation gave BU the ball back with 17 seconds to play.
The ball was in-bounded to Meinhardt who had the 5’ 4″ Williams playing her. She dribbled in on the right baseline and found herself with an open 8-foot jumper that she nailed with 10 seconds left. The shot capped a 19-3 run and sent BU head coach Margaret McKeon jumping into the stands and Terhune leaping into the arms of assistant coach Glenn Senecal as the team stormed the court in celebration.
“I just decided go to the basket and shoot over her,” said Meinhardt. “It felt like the right thing to do, I was just kind of playing on instincts.”
The final 6 minutes in which the Terriers managed to have more assists (4) than the first 34 minutes, helped erase the memories of poor play that seemed to plague the Terriers for most of the game. They hit just 2 of their first 20 shots from the field and shot 17.9 percent (5-28) from the floor in the first half.
“I said, we’re either going to shoot ourselves out of this game, or we can be patient and go inside and then eventually move back out to taking shots,” said McKeon.
“It felt like we were on a roller-coaster,” said McKeon. “We gutted it out. I just thought our kids wanted it more, and we made plays to get it done.”
First Team All America East selection Katie Terhune led BU with a game-high 18 points. Meinhardt added 14 points and Norris 11 points. Sophomore Larissa Parr scored 10 points to go with a game-high 9 rebounds.
Melissa Kowalski scored 17 points to lead the Huskies. Francesca Vanin scored 11 points and grabbed 8 rebounds for Northeastern.
BU will play the University of Vermont (21-7) in the semifinals on Friday night at 8:30 p.m. after the Catamounts dispatched Binghamton University, 69-58.
The Terriers have lost to the Catamounts in their last 15 meetings dating back to 1996, but after Thursday’s game they feel like anything is possible.
“If I’m Vermont, I’m scared,” said McKeon. “These kids played an exciting game and the bottom line is they didn’t play their best basketball, but they did play with a lot of fire and desire to win the game, and I think that says a lot.”
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.
