Fourth Year’s The Charm

The Boston University women’s basketball program reached its greatest heights under former head coach Christine Basile, posting six winning seasons (including a run of five-straight winning campaigns in the 1980s) and capturing the now-defunct Seaboard Conference championship in 1988 and 1989.

But, as the saying goes, everything that goes up must come down. And after experiencing so much success in the 1980s, things started going south for the Terriers, culminating with Basile’s departure after the 1998-99 campaign.

The last three holdovers from the Basile era — senior forwards Anne Nelson and Dia Dufault, and guard Annie Tomasini — play their final home game tonight when the Terriers host the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

“I think it finally hit us about a week ago at practice,” Nelson said. “Coach was talking about how we only have so many games left and how senior game was [tonight]. And we were like, ‘Oh my God, this is the end.'”

Despite the sadness that goes along with doing something that you love for the last time, Dufault, Nelson and Tomasini leave Boston University as winners in both the hearts of their fans and in the won-loss column. The latter must have seemed like an impossible dream at the end of their freshman season, when the program, in the words of Dufault, “hit rock bottom.”

Dufault came to BU from Malone, N.Y., a small town in the far reaches of upstate New York with only nine traffic lights. Her high school team, Franklin Academy, went 99-9 during her four years at the school, including a 26-1 mark her senior year. After getting offers from most of the other America East schools and a few in the Colonial Athletic Association, she chose to make her way to Boston to don the BU scarlet and white.

“Pretty much our whole conference [recruited me], and a few smaller Big East schools,” Dufault said. “I liked some schools in the [CAA] and a lot of the New York state schools. But I came to BU because of the city and great academics, and I thought I could play here.”

Tomasini, on the other hand, was born in Boston and played her high school ball at Boston Latin. But like Dufault, Tomasini was very used to winning, leading her team to a 36-6 combined record in her junior and senior seasons.

“I wanted to stay in the northeast,” Tomasini said of choosing BU. “I wanted an urban [setting] because it was where I felt most comfortable. I felt that [BU] was the best fit.”

Nelson came to BU from the suburbs of Philadelphia, a city known for producing great basketball talents such as NBA superstar Kobe Bryant and WNBA standout Dawn Staley. Her school, Germantown Academy, also boasted a winning tradition. In Nelson’s junior season, she helped lead Germantown to a 25-3 record and the Inter League championship.

“[Germantown Academy] has a pretty big basketball tradition,” Nelson said. “I was actually recruited by a lot of the same schools that Dia was. I wanted to come to the city with Boston college kids, and also the School of Management was another reason that I came here.”

By the time Dufault, Nelson and Tomasini arrived on campus in September 1998, the women’s basketball program had already been in decline for several years. After winning 16 games and reaching the North Atlantic Conference tournament final in 1990, the Terriers had posted only one winning record since then.

“We knew coming into the program that they hadn’t had that many wins the season or two before we came, and that there would be some rebuilding going on,” Nelson said.

The worst, however, was yet to come.

BU entered the 1998-99 campaign with two of the team’s top-12 all-time leading scorers in Alison Dixon (currently second on the list with 1,648 career points) and Jamie Nicholls (ninth with 1,052). If it wasn’t a great team, the team’s talent level certainly gave no indication of the disaster that was to follow.

After opening the season with a respectable 3-3 mark, the wheels came off the wagon in a hurry. The Terriers lost six games in a row, then another 11 straight after a win over Hofstra University. After a seven-point win at the University of Hartford, BU dropped its final two contests by scores of 64-46 and 87-67.

The final record: 5-22, the worst in the program’s history.

“I don’t think it was the level of talent on our team,” Nelson said of her nightmarish freshman season. “I think it was more that the head coach was really at the end of her time. She had done a great job for 15 years, and it was just time for her not to coach anymore. Our team wasn’t coming together and playing well. Once you get on that losing streak, it’s hard to get out of it.”

Possibly thinking along those same lines, Basile announced her retirement after the season, leaving the Terriers with no coach, no direction and the misfortune of being at the lowest point in its history.

“A lot of people in the athletic department were saying to us that it couldn’t get much worse,” Tomasini said.

Enter McKeon, a former All-Big East point guard at St. John’s University and an assistant coach at Atlantic 10 power George Washington University. As they got ready for their sophomore season, Nelson, Dufault and Tomasini were excited to have the young, energetic McKeon, who was in her first head coaching job.

“She came on her visit for interviewing,” Dufault said. “I remember seeing her being toured through the training room. My first impression was that she was a tough basketball woman and that she’d be better for us.”

The 1999-2000 season, McKeon’s first at the helm, resulted in an 8-21 record, only a three-victory improvement over the year before. But of BU’s 21 losses, 10 of them were by single digits, a sign that the program was close to breaking its losing mentality. That season also ended on a high note, with the Terriers winning their first America East tournament game in four years.

As juniors, Dufault, Nelson and Tomasini helped lead BU to a 10-19 record, its first double-digit win total since 1995-96. And in their senior season, with the help of arguably the program’s best recruiting class ever, the heartbreakingly close losses that defined their sophomore and junior seasons have turned into wins – and the first winning campaign of their careers.

“I’m really happy with the way that this season turned out,” Nelson said. “I think that it’s time that people are like, ‘BU is good.’ I’m glad that we experienced it finally.”

“[Finally being on a winning team] certainly feels a lot better,” Tomasini said. “A goal of ours that we set was to go out making a difference. I think that we might have done that by having our first winning season as seniors and hopefully starting a new era for the women’s basketball team.”

And when this breakthrough season finally concludes, the three seniors will prepare to head off into the working world with the rest of their classmates.

Dufault, a sociology major in the College of Arts and Sciences, is looking to go into the field of advertising.

Nelson, a marketing major in SMG, expects to go to graduate school to get her MBA in a few years.

Tomasini, a public policy major in CAS, isn’t really sure what she is going to do at this point. But, Tomasini said, “My resume is out there, and I just want to do something that makes me happy.”

But when Dufault, Nelson and Tomasini march at Commencement ceremonies in May, they’ll be taking some wonderful memories with them.

“We’re ready to face any challenges that come because we’ve endured so many things in four years that other students just really haven’t gone through yet,” Tomasini said. “And, more importantly, we’ve created friendships that I think will last much longer than any other friendships that you could possibly have in college. I think that that is going to help us in the long run.”