Another poor start, another furious fight back for BU women’s basketball at UMass Lowell
The Terriers trailed at the break after one of their worst offensive first halves of the year. Then they roared back.
LOWELL, Mass. — At some point, Boston University women’s basketball will need to figure out why this keeps happening. Why these Terriers are still turning the ball over at an extraordinary rate, why they continue to fail to collect rebounds, why they keep forgetting how to play their offense.
“We just weren’t moving the ball,” said head coach Melissa Graves, who runs an offense built on ball movement.
Most pressing of all — BU will need to find out why all of it always happens in the first half.
But let’s take a moment — after yet another lights-out second half, this one at UMass Lowell (2-9) — to appreciate what this group is. And that’s one that just shakes off whatever gets into them, time and time again. Proceedings at the Costello Athletic Center on Thursday night were no different.
22 first-half points, 11 first-half turnovers and a visibly frustrated head coach, on the road versus a struggling opponent? No stress.
Here’s a bucket on each of the first seven possessions of the third quarter.
Here’s 40 points in the second half, and only four turnovers.
Here’s 10 second-half offensive rebounds.
Here’s senior captain Alex Giannaros, dusting off the most field goals she’s ever missed in a collegiate game to sink the dagger for BU on a tough drive to the cup with a minute to play.
Like clockwork.
“It’s been shocking,” sophomore co-captain Audrey Ericksen said. “The past couple games in the first half, we’ve given up so many offensive rebounds, given up a lot of turnovers. And then we’ll switch it for the second half, and it’s a huge point differential.”
The Terriers (5-4) have trailed at the half in six of their nine games this season, and that doesn’t even include a home win over Maine, when Graves was incensed at her team’s effort in the first quarter.
BU looks every bit like a roster built almost entirely on underclassmen at one moment, then looks wise and resilient far beyond its years the next. The craziest part? It’s only taking 10 minutes in the halftime locker room — or, in the case of the Maine win, one huddle between quarters — for the Terriers to flip the switch. Whatever was said at the intermission in Lowell — “Just to refocus on the goals that we have (limiting turnovers and collecting rebounds),” Graves said, and Ericksen added, “We had some words from people, just motivational” — BU was lightyears better in every facet in the second half.
Though Giannaros (preseason All-Patriot League, 15 points per game) couldn’t buy a bucket if she wanted to, the Terriers, who haven’t rebounded at all this year, found a way to score off her misses throughout the second half. In a furious third quarter, BU collected six of Giannaros’ misses — twice collecting two of them on the same possession — for six second-chance points. And early in the fourth quarter, Ericksen rebounded another missed 3 from Giannaros, eventually finding freshman forward Allison Schwertner, who finished with a layup (plus the foul) at the rim to give BU a lead it never relinquished.
“I just think it’s an attitude thing,” said Ericksen, who finished with nine points and six rebounds. Graves said she was “phenomenal out there, rebounding wise.”
Same goes for Schwertner, the reigning Patriot League Rookie of the Week, who posted 13 points, 12 rebounds and 2 assists for her first career double-double. And sophomore forward SiSi Bentley, who made her first career start due to injuries elsewhere, was everywhere on the glass, collecting seven rebounds, four of them offensive.
“It’s what she does,” Ericksen said of Bentley’s performance. “She’s always been that way…and she will give it her all no matter what.”
Giannaros looked stunned by some of her misses — midway through the fourth, when she dusted a defender with a sweet baseline move but missed the wide-open jumper, she threw her hands up in disbelief.
But on her very next field goal attempt, with the entire River Hawk bench and Costello crowd chanting “defense,” she used a simple ball screen from Schwertner to drive to the cup, finishing with a mid-air hesitation to make it a four-point game with 1:09 to play.
The team X account noted: “AG always gets hers.”
“She’s a dog,” Ericksen said. “No matter what her percentage is, we are going to give her the ball. She puts more work in than anybody else on this team. She deserves to take that final shot.”
“I had to move Alex to the point towards the end, because I know she’s going to take care of the basketball,” Graves added. “And then I can just run her off some ball-screen stuff.”
Starting point guard Aoibhe Gormley missed the game with what the team called a “lower body injury,” so fellow sophomore Bella McLaughlin (10 points, 2 assists, 2 steals) assumed the brunt of those duties, and to great effect. But she left the game in the fourth quarter with an ankle injury — Graves said the team hopes it’s not serious — so Giannaros, in the midst of one of the worst shooting performances of her 1,000-plus-point career, had to move.
“This time of year is always hard. A lot of them are stressed right now with finals, they’re anxious for Christmas break, we’ve been playing for a while now,” Graves said. “So to get a road win, no matter how pretty or ugly it was, it’s important for us. We were resilient in the second half, we adjusted, and we did things down the stretch we needed to.”