It was touted as a battle between two of America East’s elite scorers. Senior Jesyka Burks-Wiley, on the heels of a fourth consecutive conference Player of the Week performance, vs. junior Carlee Cassidy, the nation’s sixth-leading scorer and arguably the most dangerous shooter the America East has seen in years.
Sure, last night’s game was actually between the Boston University women’s basketball squad and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, but for America East fans, Burks-Wiley vs. Cassidy was the real matchup to watch.
Through the game’s first four and a half minutes, it looked like the matchup would even exceed expectations. The score sat tied at 10 apiece, and Burks-Wiley and Cassidy had scored every point, exchanging bucket for bucket, possession for possession. This was it ‘-‘- fans were about to witness a potentially historic, marquee matchup to remember.
And in a flash, the fat lady was warming her vocals, and UMBC coach Phil Stern was questioning out loud why he’d even bothered to make the 408-mile trip to Case.
With 1:40 left in the first half, senior Amarachi Umez-Eronini knocked down a pair of free throws, extending BU’s lead to 49-19.
So what happened?
‘Well, I saw a BU team that played great defense,’ BU coach Kelly Greenberg said about the Terriers’ 39-9 run. ‘[Cassidy] jumped out and scored 11 quick ones, but then we made an adjustment and shut her down the rest of the half.’
That adjustment made the difference in the second half, as Cassidy scored just six more points in the first stanza on 1-of-7 shooting, while struggling to find open space. The majority of the 5-foot-9 guard’s points at the beginning of the half came off screens.
‘[Cassidy] was coming off a lot of ball screens and splitting up a little bit, so we just started trapping her every time she came off the ball screen,’ Greenberg said.
‘We definitely gave [Cassidy] a few open looks to start the game,’ Kinneary said. ‘We really just tried to get up on her more. We talked about her a lot in preparation for the game.
‘We really wanted to focus on shutting her down and staying in her face and making every shot difficult.’
BU’s defense forced 14 UMBC turnovers in the first half, including seven in a three-minute period in the middle of the half. During the stretch, the Terriers outscored the Retrievers, 13-3, extending their lead to 31-14.
BU ended the game with 14 steals, including three by Kinneary and five by senior Kristi Dini. The Terriers scored 28 points off turnovers, and outscored UMBC, 12-2, on the fast break.
Only 24 points were scored by Retrievers not named Carlee Cassidy, as the BU defense stifled any and all UMBC adjustments, including a switch to a four-guard set reminiscent of the system the Retrievers employed last season.
In the end, Cassidy would attempt nearly half of UMBC’s shots (23 of 54) and would score 33 of the team’s 57 points. But, as Kinneary pointed out in the postgame press conference, a win is a win, and BU will take them any way it can.
‘If [Cassidy’s] going to score 30, and then the next girl isn’t going to score many points, and we get the win, we’ll take it,’ Kinneary said.
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