The Boston University women’s basketball team will head to the nation’s capital to take on Patriot League foe American University Wednesday night.
These two squads last met Jan. 13 in Case Gym, and the Terriers (2-20, 2-9 Patriot League) notched their first win of the season, 63-59.
BU is arguably playing its most competitive basketball of the season right now. Junior guard Sarah Hope’s Thurdsay buzzer-beater lifted BU over the United States Naval Academy. Two days later, BU was tied late with Lafayette College, but the Leopards (5-16, 3-8 Patriot League) denied head coach Katy Steding of what would’ve been her first winning streak at the helm of the program.
Junior forward Meghan Green scored 18 points in BU’s loss to Lafayette. She was complemented by Hope and sophomore guard Corrine Williams, who scored 14 and 10 points, respectively. Hope went 4-8 behind the arc, and the Terriers as a team shot 8-18 from range in what was one of their best 3-point shooting nights of the season.
One of the biggest factors in that matchup was that BU got outscored 18-6 on second-chance points and conceded 15 offensive rebounds to Lafayette. Both of those games were wire-to-wire contests, and second-chance points also kept Navy in its game against BU.
“We were playing quite a bit of zone in the last couple of games,” Steding said. “You have some flippage there with boxing out. You shouldn’t, but you do. We want to make sure that we are getting the girls to box out on every possession, and we’ve been making that a point of emphasis in practice this week.”
Meanwhile, American (5-17, 3-8 Patriot League) sits one game ahead of BU in the conference standings.
No player on the Eagles averages more than 10 points per game, but their offense is led by an upperclassmen trio of Michelle Holmes, Lauren Crisler and Ari Booth. Freshman Cecily Carl is third on the team in points and has the highest shooting percentage of any Eagle who plays more than five minutes per game.
“They’re balanced because they look for matchups that they can exploit,” Steding said. “I thought we played them pretty well last time with our matchup zone. There are some things that we’re doing to augment that, some couple little loopholes that we’re throwing in there, so hopefully that will have some wrinkles that they haven’t seen yet.”
In their last matchup, the Terriers were powered by a 10-0 run to start the game. However, American never went away, battling back all night. The Eagles scored on five straight possessions to tie the game at 31 heading into the half.
BU rebuilt its lead back to seven points with just more than a minute to play, but the Eagles stuck around. BU held on in the end, but that contest nonetheless proved these teams are evenly matched.
“In the games that we’ve won, one of the things that we did well was we held the [opposing] team down in terms of point production,” Steding said. “We want to push the tempo a little bit more. That helps us be more aggressive.”
In the Jan. 13 meeting, four BU players scored more than 10 points. Steding is confident that the Terriers can win if they can replicate that offensive performance.
“If we can be scoring with four people in double digits, then I feel like we’ve got a really good opportunity [to win],” Steding said. “American is pretty tough at their place. They’ve really improved in the last few games, so we want to take our game down there and ramp it up.”
