The Boston University women’s basketball team had an up-and-down Thanksgiving break, kicking off the holiday weekend with a thrilling 71-68 comeback win over Northeastern University before dropping a pair of contests to No. 18 Ohio State University and Central Michigan University by scores of 72-47 and 84-72, respectively, at the Buckeye Classic in Columbus, Ohio.
Almost exactly a year after then-sophomore Aly Hinton’s career-high 35 points helped the Terriers (3-3) knock off Northeastern (0-4) at Case Gymnasium in a fast-paced thriller, BU and the Huskies picked up last Tuesday’s contest right where they left off last November ‘-‘- with scoring, scoring and more scoring.
NU’s Ashlee Feldman knocked down 11 points in the game’s first eight minutes, and, at the halfway point of the opening stanza, BU found itself trailing the Huskies, 22-16. The Terriers battled back, and Hinton’s trey with 0:14 left in the first half sent the squads to their respective locker rooms with the Huskies holding a 37-33 lead.
Northeastern missed three field goals and two foul shots in the second half’s first 90 seconds but soon found its rhythm, and when junior Kendra Walton drained a 3-pointer with 12:39 left in the game, the Huskies held a 49-38 lead.
BU again battled its way back into the game, and when senior co-captain Christine Kinneary put in a layup with 5:24 left on the clock, the Terriers held a 57-56 lead.
Senior co-captain Jesyka Burks-Wiley knocked down nine of her game-high 23 points in the game’s final five minutes, and after Hinton knocked down two free throws with six seconds left, BU had its third win of the season.
The festive times, however, would end there for the squad, as the Terriers were welcomed in a not-so-warm fashion by the Buckeyes (6-1) Saturday. BU entered the games with upset aspirations ‘-‘- and justifiably so. When OSU visited Commonwealth Avenue last fall, the Terriers played basket-for-basket with the Buckeyes through the game’s first 32 minutes, trailing by one point before OSU ended the game on a 22-8 run.
Ohio State established early that it would have no part of BU’s Cinderella bid, jumping out to a 25-8 lead that wouldn’t shrink to less than 15 points for the rest of the game.
Senior Kristi Dini, coming off a 16-point outing against Northeastern, scored a team-high 17 points ‘-‘- including five buckets from beyond the arc ‘-‘- but her effort wasn’t nearly enough to handle the Buckeyes, who benefited from four double-digit scorers and a 13-rebound performance by freshman Jantel Lavender.
‘Ohio State just jumped out to a big lead on us,’ BU coach Kelly Greenberg said. ‘It was a big margin at the half, and I thought our players came out and did a great job in the second half. We played two smart zones and things went well in the second half.’
Sunday’s tournament finale with Central Michigan (5-2) began much the same way as BU’s other games over break, as the Chippewas jumped out to a 16-8 lead in the game’s early going. BU spent the rest of the first half battling back, tying the game with a minute left in the first before a couple of CMU layups gave the Chips a 38-34 lead at the half.
‘That’s kind of been our thing on the road right now,’ Greenberg said of the team’s first-half deficit. ‘It’s something that we are going to fix.’
That was as close as the game would get, as CMU, led by senior Latisha Luckett’s 24-point performance, held a double-digit lead for almost the entire second half.
Though the results may have been less than extraordinary at the Buckeye Classic for the Terriers, Greenberg still came away from the games with some positives. In particular, she acknowledged the play of Kinneary, freshman Caroline Stewart and sophomore Kat Briggs. For Briggs and Stewart, the recognition means good things, as both will find themselves battling for playing time as the season continues.
Kinneary, who scored 18 points and registered five assists in Sunday’s loss to Central Michigan, was named to the Classic’s all-tournament team in the post-championship ceremony.
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.
