The Boston University women’s basketball team may have found its primary scoring threat for the rest of the season in an 87-58 blowout over Brown University last night ‘-‘- sophomore guard Alex Young.
Young unloaded a career-high 33 points on the Bears (2-5). She racked up 15 points from behind the arc (5-of-6) and made all eight of her free-throw attempts to help the Terriers (3-3) earn their second consecutive victory.
BU coach Kelly Greenberg knows if the game is on the line, she can count on Young to come through.
‘We definitely designed a play last week against Northeastern [University] ‘-‘- we ran a play for Alex to get a 3 and she knocked it down,’ Greenberg said. ‘It’s kind of funny because right now I feel like we could give it to a couple people ‘-‘- there’s no question tonight Alex was the hot hand.’
The Terriers had been shooting just 70 percent from the free-throw line this season, but improved that number by knocking down almost 85 percent of their attempts from the charity stripe. Starters Young, freshman Chantell Alford and senior captain Aly Hinton shot 93 percent from the line.
‘We definitely have been shooting more free-throws at practice in game situations,’ Greenberg said. ‘Alex went to the line a lot and she’s really, really upped her free-throw percentage at practice even. I was really pleased with our free-throw percentage and I love that we’re getting [to the line] quite a bit as well.’
On the defensive side of the ball, BU held the Bears to just 28 percent shooting from the field in the first half and 36 percent for the game. It was the second time this season the Terriers held their opponent to under 60 points.
Alford stood out for BU defensively, recording four blocks and two steals. Before she suffered a face injury against the University of Rhode Island on Nov. 18, Alford had racked up two blocks and two steals in the first 11 minutes of the game.
‘We really missed [Alford] at St. John’s [University last week],’ Greenberg said. ‘She’s got great size for a guard. She’s strong . . . She’s got a great feel for the game. She knows how and when to help a teammate and then she also knows when to just really stifle the girl she’s playing. I just think she’s going to get better and better.’
Greenberg likes to dig deep into her bench when BU has a comfortable lead and she had that luxury last night. Junior guard Kat Briggs led the bench with eight points, but Greenberg liked what she saw from all seven players who came off the pine.
‘You feel like you’re in a position to reward [players who come off the bench],’ Greenberg said. ‘When you are in a game situation and maybe we haven’t been playing some people, you get to see how they would respond against someone else, and I was pretty happy with some people tonight ‘-‘- even if the stats don’t show it.’
The Terriers ended Brown’s hopes for its third win of the year early by jumping out to a 21-3 lead eight minutes into the game. BU never took their foot off the gas pedal and led by as many as 35 points in the second half.
‘I’m really happy, especially with the way we started off the game,’ Greenberg said. ‘We just really took it to them, got our defense going right away. It felt like mentally we took them out of the game within the first six, seven minutes.’
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