The Boston University women’s basketball team (15-12, 11-5 Patriot League) fell to Lafayette College (10-16, 6-10 PL) 58-52 on Wednesday night in Easton, Pennsylvania.
With assistant coach Brianna Finch filling in for pregnant head coach Melissa Graves behind the bench, the Terriers sought to avenge Saturday’s loss to a struggling Colgate team.
BU has now lost three of its last four games, with only two games remaining on the schedule before the Patriot League tournament.
“We never really gotten to quite the offensive flow that we’re capable of,” Finch said postgame. “They were able to affect us that way.”
Entering the game, the Terriers were tied for first in the conference with the College of the Holy Cross. Now, they’ve dropped into second place and hold the same conference record as American University and Bucknell University.
Junior guard Sydney Johnson opened up the scoring with a three-pointer on the first possession. However, BU struggled offensively after that sequence. After Johnson’s basket, the Terriers didn’t score for more than five minutes.
Freshman guard Alex Giannaros scored a triple to break the scoring drought and make it a 9-6 Lafayette lead.
Towards the end of the first quarter, Johnson intercepted a pass on the defensive end and layed it in on the other end. Johnson’s play turned the momentum on a quarter that had been primarily dominated by the Leopards. However, Lafayette still led by three points at the end of the opening period.
“We got some really good looks, some shots didn’t fall that I thought were good shots. Got a little bit in the hole,” Finch said. “And you know, from there we kind of had to battle back a little bit and just could never really turn the corner.”
Junior guard Jessica Booth and sophomore guard Makayla Andrews each scored nine points in the second quarter for Lafayette, leading the Leopards to a four-point advantage at halftime.
Andrews and Booth both shined Wednesday night, scoring 18 and 15 points respectively.
“They hit some tough shots,” Finch said of Booth and Andrews. “I thought we did a pretty good job defending personnel and taking away, you know, open shots to their shooters and trying to limit some drives for their more athletic kids off the bounce. Unfortunately, we fouled a little bit too much. Put them on a free throw line and that hurt us.”
The Leopards would extend the lead to ten points in the third quarter before sophomore forward Caitlin Weimar scored two layups at the end of the third quarter to cut the Leopards’ advantage down to six.
Senior forward Naomi Ganpo’s “and-one” stretched the Lafayette lead to 11 in the fourth quarter.
After utilizing a full-court press later in the final quarter, Johnson and junior forward Maren Durant both scored to cut the deficit to six with 3:38 to play in the game.
With just under two minutes to go and losing by five, the Terriers forced a shot clock violation.
On the ensuing offensive possession, Giannaros missed a three-pointer and then sophomore guard Sophie Beneventine fouled senior guard and forward Makaila Wilson picking up her fifth foul of the game.
Trailing by four with under one minute to go, the Terriers stopped the Leopards, but couldn’t find a way to score on the offensive end.
In the loss, BU shot 1-of-6 from the free-throw line and 5-of-20 from the three-point line.
The Terriers play next on Saturday at 2 p.m. at Case Gym when they face Bucknell. Then, BU will travel to Worcester to play another Patriot League contender, Holy Cross, on Wednesday at 6 p.m.
“We’re gonna take it one at a time obviously, for us right now,” she said. “Hopefully we can take care of business and then we’ll move on from there.”
