The Boston University women’s basketball team found the perfect formula for getting back to its winning ways — a red-hot Katie Terhune and a smothering defense.
The product was a 76-61 road win at Northeastern University last night. It was the Terriers’ first win at Northeastern since Jan. 24, 1996, and it completed their first regular season sweep of their cross-town rivals since 1991.
After being held to 13 points per game through the Terriers’ last three contests, Terhune erupted for 26 points on 11-for-19 shooting. She scored 18 points in the first half with four three-pointers as the Terriers took the lead for good midway through the first stanza and pulled away in the second half for the easy victory. Marisa Moseley also delivered a solid performance, scoring eight of her 14 points in the second half, pulling down five rebounds and collecting three steals.
But the other part of the equation for the Terriers (14-9, 7-5 America East) was their relentless defense, which forced the Huskies into 26 turnovers by pressing them the length of the court. Even better for BU was that it converted the turnovers into 37 points, while dishing a season-high 22 assists and only 14 turnovers, including several in the final minutes when the Terriers had the game well in hand.
Both teams traded runs in the first nine minutes of the contest. After Adrienne Norris gave the Terriers a 7-3 lead, Northeastern scored eight unanswered points to take its last lead of the game at 11-7 with 12:18 left before halftime. Six of the points came on back-to-back three-pointers by Joi Jefferson and Melissa Kowalski, as Northeastern hit 10-of-21 three-point attempts to stay in the game for most of the night.
But the Terriers responded when Terhune drained her first basket of the evening on her fifth attempt. It ignited Terhune to an 18-point first half and the Terriers to 10 unanswered points to finally give them control of the contest.
As she did in last year’s visit to Northeastern, Dia Dufault drained a three right before the halftime buzzer to give the Terriers a 35-26 edge at the break. Genny Caruso hit a three on Northeastern’s first possession of the second half to get her team within 35-29, but the Huskies got no closer.
Terhune drove to the basket and converted a layup to push the lead back to eight, and the Terriers slowly pulled away from there, leading by as many as 21 points late in the contest.
Aisha Williams led Northeastern with 14 points, while Caruso and Jefferson each added 13. Northeastern shot 20-of-44 from the field (45.5 percent), while the Terriers connected on 29-of-59 attempts (49.2 percent), including 16-of-27 (59.3 percent) in the second half. The Terriers won the rebounding battle, 34-32, and will return to the court tomorrow at the State University of New York at Albany.
Despite being at the bottom of the conference standings most of the season, the Great Danes have given some of the league’s better teams fits. They led first-place University of Vermont by 10 points at halftime on Saturday before losing, and they took the Terriers to overtime on Jan. 24 at The Roof before losing 77-71.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
