Saturday afternoon’s matchup between the Boston University women’s basketball team and Lehigh University was a tale of two halves, and the latter relied on 3-point shooting en route to a 72-48 victory.
On the road to begin the second half of their conference schedule, the Terriers (1-19, 1-8 Patriot League) came out looking slow. In the first five minutes of play, BU was held to just one field goal, while Lehigh (13-7, 6-3 Patriot League) made three shots.
Once they got past that lull, it looked as though the Terriers were going to keep up with a Mountain Hawk offense that averages 68 points per game, second best in the Patriot League.
Junior guard Sarah Hope gave BU its first lead of the game when she drained 3-pointers on back-to-back possessions. Hope ultimately went 3-of-4 from downtown, moving her into seventh place on BU’s all-time 3-point list.
“Sarah’s a very talented shooter, and everyone in the league knows that,” said BU head coach Katy Steding. “So the fact that we were able to find her and get her open a couple times to create the shot for herself [was good]. She’s a talented player, and she does a lot for us.”
BU and Lehigh alternated leads in the first half, showing little differences in the teams’ effectiveness. While the Terriers were up 27-24 with less than two minutes left in the half, two quick Mountain Hawk buckets and a free throw gave them a 30-27 lead at halftime.
Despite trailing for much of the contest, Steding said she was happy with her team’s resilience against a tough conference opponent.
“I was really proud of them,” Steding said. “We’ve been working on trying to get back-to-back shots or stopping a scoring drive. That’s been a focus of ours lately, and I think that’s really been paying off. But there were just a couple times where they had an answer and then we came back and we had an answer.”
The second half unfolded for BU in a drastically different fashion than the first. While the Terriers traded blows with Lehigh to start the half, BU would only shoot 8-of-31 from the floor and 4-of-6 from the charity stripe.
Conversely, the Mountain Hawks were clinical from range, as they went 7-of-19 from 3-point range and made seven of their eight free throws.
Steding said that the Mountain Hawks’ fatal run in the second half was due to their ability to exploit BU’s rotation defense and make “demoralizing” 3-pointers.
“It’s very confusing to a defense that rotates in a certain way when you allow penetration moves from the middle if you’re forcing baseline and vice versa,” she said. “And so I know we allowed that to happen too many times. We have to do a better job of making sure we’re in the right place and herding the ball in the right direction so that those situations don’t take advantage of us.”
Another struggle for BU was rebounding. After being more effective in that regard as of late, Lehigh grabbed 44 boards in comparison to BU’s 33. In particular, forward Lexi Martins grabbed 15 boards and was no match for BU’s own.
Looking forward, BU will try and get back in the win column when the United Naval Academy visits Case Gym Thursday night.
