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First-Round Upset Ends Women’s Hoops Season Early

The Boston University women’s basketball team’s best season in almost a decade came to a very disappointing end with a 63-46 loss to the State University of New York at Stony Brook in Thursday’s America East tournament quarterfinals in West Hartford, Conn.

The Terriers (17-11) claimed the tournament’s second seed, their highest conference tournament seed since 1990, by rallying to win at the University of New Hampshire in overtime, 68-64, on March 1 and then watching the University of Hartford stun the University of Maine the next day in Orono, 72-58.

Everything had fallen into place for the Terriers in order for them to get the No. 2 seed and avoid prohibitive favorite University of Vermont until the championship game. Better yet, Hartford shocked everybody by upsetting the Catamounts in the second round, 60-59, supposedly leaving the door open for the Terriers to join their male counterparts in the NCAA Tournament.

But there was just one problem: The Terriers were already long gone from the tournament, ousted in the first round by the seventh-seeded Seawolves, who were playing in their first-ever Division I conference tournament game.

The Seawolves got a dominant 25-point, 12-rebound performance from All-Conference first-team member Sherry Jordan, while the Terriers were out of synch from the start and could never get on track offensively.

Less than 24 hours after sophomore guard Katie Terhune was named first-team All Conference and freshman forward Adrienne Norris was named to the league’s All-Rookie team, the Terriers committed 29 turnovers and shot only 31.3 percent (15-of-48) from the field. BU committed 16 turnovers in the first half, which Stony Brook closed on a 18-4 run to take a 33-20 halftime lead.

Terhune, the America East’s leading scorer at 18.9 points per game, was held scoreless in the first 20 minutes and finished with only nine points on 3-for-10 shooting. It was only the fourth time this season that Terhune was held to single digits, yet she was BU’s leading scorer on Thursday, a fact which perfectly summed up her team’s offensive ineptitude.

The Terriers made an attempt to get back into the game right after halftime, opening the second stanza on a 13-4 run to get within 37-33 with 13:32 still remaining. But Stony Brook ended any doubt with a 26-5 run over the next 10 minutes.

If the Terriers can take any consolation from Thursday’s loss, it will be the fact they were hardly the only favorite to fall this weekend, as the America East tournament truly lived up to the name “March Madness.” Fifth-seeded and tournament host Hartford, which endured an up-and-down season filled with injuries and inconsistent play, knocked out the heavily-favored Catamounts in the semifinals, then capped its incredible run with a thrilling 50-47 win over Stony Brook in the championship game on Saturday. The Hawks, coached by former University of Connecticut star Jen Rizzotti, earned their first NCAA berth ever and will take on the University of Oklahoma this weekend in Norman, Okla.

Stony Brook, in only its second Division I campaign, advanced to the title game by eliminating sixth-seeded New Hampshire, which upset another favorite in third-seeded SUNY-Binghamton and conference Player of the Year Sarah Cartmill. But while the BU men will take on the University of Cincinnati in Pittsburgh on Friday, the BU women will only be able to watch the remainder of March Madness on television and wonder about what might have been.

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