The Boston University women’s basketball team has a major chip on its shoulder when it comes to playing the University of Vermont.
Throughout the last decade, the Catamounts (9-10, 3-8 America East) have dominated the Terriers, sweeping their opponents to the south on numerous occasions. But after the America East Tournament semifinals last season, things started to change.
When the Terriers (now 13-7, 8-3) downed Vermont 68-57 to move on to the conference championship last March, it snapped a 15-game losing streak against the Catamounts. Then, merely weeks ago on Jan. 18, BU ended a 14-game skid in regular season play to Vermont with a 91-65 drubbing at Case Gymnasium.
Now, when the Terriers travel to Burlington on Saturday in search of their seventh straight win (eight straight is the program record), they will be looking to dispel all claims that the Catamounts have their number.
BU hasn’t taken a game at Patrick Gym since winning 68-43 way back on Jan. 11, 1989, a span of 14 contests. And BU coach Margaret McKeon said despite the fact that this game is just as important as the next, this weekend’s matchup definitely holds added significance.
“The one thing is, since I’ve been at BU, we haven’t won at Vermont,” McKeon said. “I’m really looking forward to passing the torch, as they say, and I don’t think it will be passed until we beat Vermont on a consistent basis.
“We have to take care of business on Saturday for more reasons than one, not only because we have to keep winning basketball games, but it’s a place that we haven’t won at yet,” she added. “The seniors haven’t won there. As a coach I haven’t won there yet either.”
And Saturday’s contest may be the Terriers best chance to do so. The Catamounts, despite being picked to finish third in the league at the beginning of the season, have struggled all year to find their footing amid some intense conference play. With only three wins against America East teams, Vermont sits at second to last in the standings.
Despite sporting the league’s second-best offense at 65.5 points per game, the Catamounts have also dropped games to the likes of Stony Brook University (5-15 overall) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, whose only win this season came against Vermont.
First-year Head Coach Sharon Dawley certainly didn’t have this in mind when she took over the program before this winter. The team has posted 20-win seasons each of the past two years, and in 2001-2002, the Cats even took the regular season championship with a 14-2 mark in conference play. While everyone in northern Vermont may be scratching their heads, did the Terriers expect the Cats to struggle so much?
“Not at all,” said junior forward Larissa Parr. “They’ve always been a really good team. They have good players, they’re just not coming together. We didn’t expect it at all.
“We’re still worried about the game, though,” she added, “because playing at Vermont is really hard. They might not have played well earlier [when we played them this season], but they could still come out strong and play like we have expected them to the whole year.”
While the squad as a whole hasn’t lived up to expectations, Vermont’s star forward Aaron Yantzi certainly has. The senior leads the conference in both scoring (20.1 points per game) and rebounding (10.4 boards per contest). The Terriers all but shut down the Waterloo, Ontario native last time out, however, holding her to only 13 points on 4-8 shooting. And the game plan won’t be any different this time, McKeon said.
“We’ll double her, we’ll make sure we crowd her every time she catches the ball,” she said. “But the best thing we did to stop Yantzi was put her on the bench. We kind of attacked her on the offensive end and made her have to play some solid defense, and she got into some foul trouble early on. That really helped us.”
If the Terriers do hope to continue their roll through the conference, they’ll have to put their last game behind them (a sloppy 59-40 win at UMBC) and their next game (a Feb. 18 matchup with first-place University of Maine) out of sight. Then, and only then, will this streak start to take off and became “huge,” as Parr described it.
Well, kind of.
“Well I wouldn’t call it huge … This streak isn’t amazing, but it’s good for us,” Parr said, correcting herself. “We’ve been taking it one game at a time, and we just hope to add to it now.”
Adding one more certainly wouldn’t hurt, either. But, of course, it’s a big one.