With 17:41 left to play in last night’s game at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, the Boston University women’s basketball team seemed set for an easy victory. The Terriers had momentum on their side when a 3-pointer by freshman guard Mo Moran capped a 15-3 run and put the team up, 41-18. The tally in the win column was all but written in ink.
Unfortunately for BU, UMBC still had a little bit to say on the matter. A lot more, in fact.
The Retrievers responded with a 19-0 run over the game’s next four minutes and rode that newfound momentum to an eventual 58-57 win over the Terriers last night in Baltimore.
The loss for the Terriers (14-13, 10-5) comes a month to the day after they fell to the same Retrievers (13-15, 7-8) squad at home in yet another nail-biter, 65-63.
UMBC gained its first lead of the second half when sophomore guard Katie Brooks hit a jumper in the lane with 5:59 left to go in the period to put the Retrievers ahead 52-51. A basket by Moran gave BU back the lead with just over two minutes left to play. From there, senior guard Carlee Cassidy, playing in her final regular season home game of her UMBC career, gave the Retrievers back the lead for good with a layup and two free throws.
But BU certainly had the pendulum swing back its way in the game’s waning minutes.
After Cassidy hit the layup to give the Retrievers a one-point lead with 1:45 to go, freshman guard Chantell Alford missed a 3-pointer that would have given the Terriers a two-point lead. Eleven seconds later, Moran missed a potential go-ahead layup. A foul by sophomore guard Alex Young allowed Cassidy to add to the lead at the free-throw line, where she hit two freebies that were quickly erased by sophomore forward Caroline Stewart’s lay-up.
Despite all that, the Terriers still had their best opportunity to finally put the game in their corner after junior guard Michele Brokans bricked the front end of a one-and-one. Senior forward Aly Hinton quickly grabbed the rebound. On the next possession, both Hinton and Alford missed potential game-winning jumpshots&-Hinton’s desperation miss came with only one second left on the game clock.
Not only did Cassidy fuel the Retrievers’ final push in the game’s final few minutes, she was the main cog in UMBC’s entire second-half comeback. In the final period, Cassidy scored 16 of her game-high 25 points on 5-of-8 shooting, and she did not sit for a single second in the contest.
On the BU side, Alford (14 points), Moran (11 points), Stewart (10 points) and Young (10) reached double figures. Stewart also grabbed a career-high 14 rebounds for her second double-double of the season.
The Terriers led 35-16 at the half, after going 6-of-11 from behind the arc and 14-of-29 from the floor during those first 20 minutes. In fact, BU rode an 11-0 run of its own over the half’s remaining 4:28 and extended the lead to a game-high 23 in the second half before UMBC began its epic comeback.
After the team’s first loss to UMBC, BU coach Kelly Greenberg stated her disgust for losses to supposedly lesser teams such as UMBC.
“We’re really disappointed,” Greenberg said. “We can’t lose to teams like this. If we want to be [successful] in this conference, we have to take care of business. It’s a really bad loss for BU basketball today. Really bad.”
Greenberg was not available for comment after Wednesday night’s game.
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