Women’s Hoops Back To Earth After High-Flying Start

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

After going into a 16-day break for final exams with a gaudy 6-2 record, the Boston University women’s basketball team came back down to Earth with a 2-5 performance over the holidays.

Granted, two of the losses were to Saint Joseph’s University and Tulane University, both of whom are in the top 40 in the Division I Ratings Percentage Index rankings. But the slump also includes an even more disappointing 1-3 start in America East conference play.

The most recent of those losses came this past weekend, when the Terriers (8-7, 1-3 America East) lost road games to America East and Division I newcomers State University of New York at Binghamton (64-40 on Friday) and SUNY-Stony Brook (67-60 on Sunday).

“Those were two disappointing games in the sense of how we played and how we went about things,” said coach Margaret McKeon. “I think we’re talented enough to beat teams like that, and I think we’re talented enough to beat anyone in this conference.”

The Terriers are rebounding the ball significantly better than they were at this time last year. But they’ve still been maddeningly inconsistent on offense and have been prone to turnovers and foul trouble.

“My major concern since conference play started has been our foul problems,” McKeon said. “We’re putting people at the foul line 30 times a game. That hurts us because we’re an up-tempo team. When we put people at the line, it slows the game down way too much for our style of play.

“We have to score in the high 60s-70 points to win in the conference. People are still understanding their roles of where they’re going to get shots and who we have to get shots for.”

The Terriers don’t have much time to fix these problems. Cross-town rival Northeastern University will visit the Roof at 1 p.m. Sunday in a game which the Terriers must win to stay within shouting distance of front-runner University of Vermont in the America East race.

Until very recently, one of the often-used criticisms of the women’s college game is that it is too much of a two-horse race, between the University of Tennessee and the University of Connecticut.

While those two schools certainly get most of the recognition, and deservedly so, the rest of the country is closing the gap.

The women’s game took another step in that direction on Jan. 5, when CBS aired a women’s college basketball tripleheader. ESPN airs the final four rounds of the women’s NCAA Tournament each year and a handful of regular-season games, while CBS has aired the annual Tennessee-Connecticut showdown for the past three years, but this was the first time other women’s teams had been seen on national network television.

The first game of the day featured Pennsylvania State University and Vanderbilt University (Vanderbilt won, 77-65). The second game of the day showed unranked Michigan State University upsetting seventh-ranked University of Georgia, 70-49. The nightcap, of course, featured the top-ranked Huskies and second-ranked Lady Vols, with Connecticut winning, 86-72.

“Women’s basketball has really expanded in the past five or six years,” McKeon said. “Even after we went to the field of 64 [in 1994], you only had those top 10 teams or so really separate themselves from the pack. Now we have about 25 really good teams where anyone can get beat on any night. That’s why it’s great to get other teams [on network television].”

McKeon announced her incoming freshmen for next year last night. The Class of 2006 signees include 5’9″ guard Katie Meinhardt, 5’9″ guard Rachael Vanderwal and 6’2″ forward Shannon Petranoff.

Meinhardt, out of St. Ignatius High School in San Francisco, was a 2001 second-team All-Bay Area selection last year. Vanderwal, McKeon’s first Canadian recruit, played on the 2001 Ontario Provincial Championship team. Petranoff plays her high school ball at Cranston West High School in Rhode Island and was named a 2001 East Region Honorable Mention All-American by Street ‘ Smith magazine.