The Boston University Women’s basketball team finished up a two-game road trip on Saturday, taking on Loyola University Maryland.
This game featured a nearly identical result to the Terriers’ matchup against Colgate University just three days prior. After taking a lead into half time, the Terriers (5-20, 2-12 Patriot League) fell to the Greyhounds (7-18, 5-9 Patriot League) by a score of 66-55.
For the third game in a row, the Terriers came out looking strong. After opening to the tune of a 7-2 run, Loyola guard Colleen Marshall drained two 3-pointers on consecutive possessions, expunging the Terrier lead. Both teams fought it out throughout the first half, with no team leading by more than five points in the game’s first 20 minutes.
There were only three lead changes in the first, though, as the Terriers maintained control of the lead for the majority of the half. After freshman forward Kara Sheftic tied it up with 6:21 left, both teams traded blows for the remainder of the half, and the Terriers would eventually take a 25-24 lead into the break. It was one of the Terriers’ better scoring efforts in a half, as they shot 47.6 percent from the floor in the first. Redshirt junior guard Troi Melton led the charge, scoring eight in the first half on her way to a team-leading 15 for the game.
BU coach Katy Steding said she was happy with her team’s effort in the first, but admitted the second half left much to be desired.
“I thought we were pretty solid [in the first half],” Steding said. “The tail end was us letting number [Marshall] go off for a lot. I thought we did a pretty good job cutting their action and everything like that, but you know it comes down to taking the right shots, and we did better with that in the first half than in the second, clearly.”
Unfortunately for the Terriers, just like their previous matchup against Colgate (5-20, 4-10 Patriot League) Wednesday, they didn’t show up to play the second half. Between Loyola’s barrage of 3-pointers, their points off turnovers and a stellar showing from Marshall, the Greyhounds simply outplayed the Terriers offensively in the second half. Just over two minutes into the second half, Loyola forward Steph Smith connected on a 3-pointer which would give the Greyhounds a lead they would fail to give up.
Loyola’s Marshall put on a show Saturday morning. In addition to being the only Greyhound to sink more than one field goal in the first half, she was the only one to sink more than three on the entire team. She was absolutely dominant from behind the arc, where she was constantly taking shots. Twenty-one of her 35 points, or 60 percent, were from deep. Without her stat line on the day, the Greyhounds were below average, just 11-for-38, only 29 percent from the floor and 3-for-15, an even worse 20 percent, from long range. She scored more points in both halves (17 in the first, 18 in the second) than any Terrier for the entire game.
The Terriers dominated the Greyhounds in the paint, though. They scored 24 to just 12 from Loyola. However, it just wasn’t enough. Marshall was able to sink five times as many threes in the first half as the Terriers did in the entire game. The Terriers were only able to get one to go from deep, a shot from freshman guard Corrine Williams that came with 5:22 left in the first half. On the day, they only had seven tries from beyond the arc. Their inability to find success from deep, coupled with their ability to allow points off turnovers (of which the Greyhounds had 21), were ultimately what caused the Terriers to drop their eighth of 10.
At the end of it all, Steding said she chalked up the loss to the team’s tendency to get complacent at times.
“We get a little bit comfortable,” she said. “We always have a stretch of four minutes or so … where we just kind of let them go on a tear. This game wasn’t very different from that. I think we stay with people for 35 minutes or so, but there’s a lull at some point that we just haven’t learned to fight through yet.”
