The Boston University women’s basketball team’s magical 2008-09 campaign came to a close last night when Boston College defeated the Terriers, 68-53, in the second round of the Women’s National Invitational Tournament at Conte Forum.
The Eagles (21-11) overmatched BU (25-8) with their size, outrebounding the Terriers by a 57-to-23 margin. BC had one less offensive rebound (22) than BU had total rebounds.
‘I just think, after a while, they just wore us down on the offensive rebounding,’ BU coach Kelly Greenberg said. ‘Toward the end of the first half, they got three in a row for easy buckets. In all honesty, I think we did a lot of good things with our gameplan, but the rebounding just really killed us. They more than doubled us on the boards, I’m sure. It’s tough to win a game when they’re getting so many more attempts because of their second-shot opportunities.” ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘
Senior guard Kristi Dini started the game on a 4-for-5 tear from 3-point territory and scored 12 of her 17 points in the first half. Dini cooled off considerably in the second frame, though, going just 1-for-5 on 3s.
‘Once I hit a few, they really pressured me and made sure I wasn’t touching the ball,’ Dini said. ‘I was trying to come off ball screens . . . They were really pressuring me, even when I put the ball on the floor.”
Dini wasn’t the only Terrier to struggle shooting late in the game. As a team, BU shot 46.2 percent from the field in the first half, but saw that number plummet to just 14.8 percent in the second half. Similarly, they shot a red-hot 58.3 percent from beyond the arc in the first half, and only 18.2 percent in the second.
‘Boston College made some adjustments,’ Greenberg said. ‘They switched on our double screens, they didn’t let [Dini] get any easy catches, and if she did catch it, they really stayed up on her, daring her to put the ball on the floor. We knew they were going to be big inside, so our inside game against their [man-to-man defense] would be a bit difficult . . . They made some halftime adjustments that really bothered and got to Dini a lot better in the second half, which really limited her touches.”
The Eagles, who averaged 19.5 turnovers per game on the season, turned the ball over nine times in the first half, resulting in 11 BU points, and the Terriers took a 34-31 lead into the break.’
BC coach Sylvia Crawley made sure her team tightened its perimeter defense and managed to completely shut down BU’s high-powered offense, which averaged 72.9 points per game, in the second half.’
BC’s twin towers ‘-‘- 6-foot-4 sophomore Stefanie Murphy and 6-foot-6 sophomore Carolyn Swords ‘-‘- scored 18 of their 27 total points in the second half, and both players recorded double-doubles with 11 and 10 boards, respectively. Murphy scored all 11 of her points in the second frame.
‘I never dreamed [the rebound margin] would be this many rebounds,’ Greenberg said. ‘You do know when a team is going to be bigger, but really just the two girls [Murphy and Swords] were bigger than us. I just think we did a lot of ball watching. We did a lot of rim running ‘-‘- running at the rim instead of taking some space so we can rebound. There have been games this year that we haven’t rebounded very well. So, that’s been a key for us all year. The games that we’ve rebounded, we can really run.’
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