Last night, the Boston University women’s basketball team extended its program-record winning streak to nine games with a 78-48 thumping at the University at Albany.
The win over the Great Danes (2-18, 1-7 America East) kept BU (14-6, 8-0) atop the conference standings, where they hold a half game lead over last year’s conference champion, the University of Hartford.
The game also marked yet another historic milestone for a Terrier senior. Already this season, senior co-captain Jesyka Burks-Wiley has scored her 1,000th career point and pulled down her 500th rebound, making her the eighth Terrier to earn a membership card to the 1,000-500 club.
Last night, fellow senior Christine Kinneary took her turn in the spotlight. With 5:31 left in the game, Kinneary assisted on a 2-point make by sophomore Kerry Cashman. The helper was the 478th of the Plainedge, N.Y. native’s career, and moved her atop BU’s all-time assist list, passing 1981-alumna Debbie Miller.
Kinneary might want to celebrate being in the BU basketball limelight while she can, as yet another Terrier is closing in on a record-breaking mark. Senior Kristi Dini’s 157 career 3-pointers places her third on BU’s all-time list, just two treys behind Kelly Jo Gallagher (’98) and 15 long-distance makes behind Katie Terhune’s (’04) program record.
If Dini were to put her name atop the BU 3-point leaderboard, she would have to break Becky Bonner’s (’04) mark of 72 3-balls in a season. Dini currently has 58 treys on the season, but went 0-for-4 from deep in last night’s contest.
BU opened the game on a 14-0 scoring run, but Albany charged back with a 6-0 run of its own, and eventually cut the lead to five midway through the first half. But after a pair free throws by Burks-Wiley with 3:06 remaining in the opening stanza, BU’s lead stood at 11 (28-17), and the Great Danes wouldn’t get within single digits of the lead again.
Senior Amarachi Umez-Eronini (17 points, nine rebounds) and junior Aly Hinton (16 points, 5 rebounds) led the Terriers on the offensive end. The pair bolstered an offensive lineup that shot 46 percent from the field ‘-‘- including 36.4 percent from 3-land.
The overmatched Great Danes mustered a meager 29.6-percent clip from the field, and junior Britney McGee’s two 3-balls were the only treys Albany would make all night.
The statistic of the night ‘-‘- aside from Kinneary’s record-breaking assist ‘-‘- was BU’s performance from the free-throw line. The Terriers converted 28 of 37 opportunities from the charity stripe, including a 9-of-10 performance by Umez-Eronini.
BU coach Kelly Greenberg has talked often with the media about the Terriers’ performance from ‘-‘- and ability to get to ‘-‘- the free-throw line. The fifth-year coach has said that getting to the line is important, not just because it’s a chance at easy points, but also because it means her players are playing aggressively in the paint.
‘I always hope that we have a team that gets to the free-throw line,’ Greenberg said before a Jan. 28th battle with the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. ‘It does make such a big difference because it also means you’re getting the ball inside.’
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