BU women’s basketball put up a desperate fight against Army and still lost
The Terriers played with the energy and focus they'd lacked throughout conference play, but it wasn't enough to defeat the league-leading Black Knights.
BOSTON — As Army collected the offensive rebound that sealed her team’s fate, Melissa Graves stood next to the scorer’s table, arms crossed, and shook her head. She then turned to her assistant coaches and, deflated, threw her arms up. There was nothing left she could do.
She had tried everything. There is desperate, and then there’s having your team run a full cardio workout directly out of the halftime locker room to prevent another second-half collapse, which is what the Boston University women’s basketball team found itself doing on this Saturday afternoon.
BU arrived back at Case Gym further below .500 in league play than it had ever been under Graves. Army on Saturday meant the Terriers were a third of the way through their conference slate. On a two-game skid and sitting at 1-4 in conference — while the Black Knights were 4-1, in a four-way tie for the league lead — BU basically had to win.
And the Terriers acted like it, playing their best defensive first half of the season, then surviving the third quarter — the pre-half cardio seemed to be a success — with the kind of energy and enthusiasm a young team had lacked to this point.
There was an obvious sense of desperation, and BU probably played its best game of the conference schedule.
And still — Army 59, BU 52.
“We felt pretty defeated after, because we were so close again,” Graves said postgame. “And we’re so close. We’re so close.”
She was noticeably happier in the press room than she was in media availability after either of the prior two losses, and for good reason. BU was better on Saturday. It did compete with one of the premier teams in the league. The Terriers did give it almost everything they had — from a raucous bench powering a spirited effort on the court to Graves protesting damn near every whistle (she took a technical foul in the third quarter) to earn even the slightest extra inch.
Army, in the end, was just better.
“It’s not like we’re getting blown out by these teams,” Graves said postgame. “We show that we can do it, it’s just doing it for a full 40.”
The Black Knights (13-4, 5-1 PL) outscored BU, 21-6, in the fourth quarter, breaking through with a bevy of 3s they had waited the whole game to finally see fall. Meanwhile, the Terriers became stagnant at the other end — Graves said they relied too much on senior captain and leading-scorer Alex Giannaros instead of just running their offense — and couldn’t keep up with Army in the final minutes.
It was only a fatal flaw in an otherwise impressive performance and a significant sign of progress, but there are no moral victories left for BU.
The Terriers are 7-10 and 1-5 in PL, now four games behind the top of the league. In Graves’ three prior seasons, BU’s combined conference record was a staggering 39-15.
“It’s kept me humble,” Giannaros said. “This is something, obviously, we’ve never had to deal with.”
Graves, who warned that BU was running out of time to turn the ship around at the start of this three-game skid, was asked Saturday how much time is left now.
“It’s not a fact of like, ‘Hey, don’t worry. We’ll have another one, don’t worry,’” she said. “We do talk about urgency a lot. We do talk about turning a corner.”
It was a smart answer, but the reality is that BU seemed to treat Saturday as a must-win and still lost. That makes Wednesday morning’s matchup with Navy — also tied at the top of the league — a must-win, too, as for the two or three games after that. The Terriers need to go on a run, but through 17 games, they have won even twice in a row only once.
The other issue is that BU still committed too many turnovers (15) and allowed too many offensive rebounds (11) on Saturday. Graves correctly pointed out that the Terriers cut their turnover total in half after the break, but that’s something she was holding onto over a month ago. BU simply isn’t improving enough in that area.
Army finished with 15 more field goal attempts than BU, and the Terriers’ total shot attempt margin this season is now a whopping negative-151, a number they cannot seriously compete in the conference with.
Ultimately — despite BU’s obvious steps forward Saturday, this was still a game that, on paper, Army deserved to win. The intangibles like energy and focus were far, far better, but the Terriers’ problems also run much deeper.
Still, Graves remains defiant about her team’s potential.
“If we can play in these really good spurts and we can do it for longer, we can compete for a championship,” she said.
It is interesting that Graves continues to speak that way about her team, given the roster’s youth and inexperience relative to the rest of a loaded conference. It would be totally acceptable for Graves to lower the expectations for her group, but she nevertheless doesn’t sound like a coach viewing this as a transitional season, even as losses are now piling up.
Then again, championships are the standard she’s created during her time at BU.
“I just talked to them after the game — you cannot give up. You have to keep working hard, it’s got to be about continuing the process,” Graves said. “Because what’s your alternative right now?”
Part of working hard is working smart, and after banging its head into the same walls all season, BU started changing things on Saturday. Graves said the halftime workout was an idea brought to her by Giannaros and her two co-captains, and it appeared to work — after being outscored by 18 points in the third quarter on Wednesday, BU lost the frame by 2 on Saturday.
Problem is — the third quarter is only the tip of the iceberg.
“We’re gonna try different things and see what’s working,” Graves said. “And with a young team, sometimes we’re asking and they don’t know yet what they need. So trying to grow with them and teach them those things.”
They finally found some answers on Saturday, but there’s a lot more work left to do and not much time left to do it.