BU women's basketball suffers another close loss, this time to Bucknell
The Terriers' home loss to Bucknell felt awfully similar to the close defeats it continues to suffer in Patriot League play.
BOSTON — Stop us if you’ve heard any of this before:
The Boston University women’s basketball team, facing an above-.500 league opponent at Case Gym, gave its opponent everything it could handle.
BU trailed by as few as two possessions in the final minutes. The Terriers, generally, played pretty well, but a five-or-so-minute stretch sometime during the first three quarters meant they had to chase the game. They chased it as hard as they could and were rewarded with a legitimate chance to reach the finish line by the end.
BU head coach Melissa Graves, overall, was pleased with her team’s effort.
BU still lost.
The Terriers’ 67-63 defeat to Bucknell on Wednesday night was — checks notes — the sixth time BU’s entered the fourth quarter against a quality Patriot League team with a legitimate chance to win and the fifth time it lost.
After Jan. 22nd’s loss to Navy — the second of the four oh-so-close losses — sophomore guard Aoibhe Gormley was asked how it felt to play well against a good team and still lose. Her voice cracked as she answered. She looked upset enough to be on the verge of tears.
“Yeah,” she said then, “it’s pretty frustrating.”
She was asked an adjacent question on Wednesday, and this time, she could only let out a wry smile.
“Coach just talked about it postgame,” Gormley said. “We’re, like, a couple possessions away from a completely different record.”
Instead, the Terriers are 2-10 in conference, nine games behind first place and five behind the cutline for a first-round bye in the tournament. They only have six games left. For all realistic purposes, the Terriers have nothing tangible left to play for in the regular season besides the right to host that first-round playoff game. And that’s not exactly what a program that’s made back-to-back conference title games — one that wears practice shirts with the phrase “Run it Back,” printed on — envisioned before the season.
Of course, when the tournament does begin, everything will reset and BU will suddenly be four wins from March Madness. That’s the eternal light at the end of the tunnel.
“Just keep looking forward to March,” Gormley said.
And, yes, the Terriers will enter that tournament with proof it can hang with the conference’s best teams, the ones it will need to beat to pull off a miracle. And, yes, BU will even have an actual win versus one of those teams — against Holy Cross at home on Jan. 27 — to hold onto as well.
Gormley said on Wednesday that BU needs to “keep knowing anything can happen.”
And to the Terriers’ credit, they certainly don’t seem to be giving up. The group’s energy and general mood in warmups were the same as usual, as was its effort during the game itself. BU fell behind by double digits at multiple points, including by 11 early in the first quarter, and fought all the way, eventually cutting Bucknell’s lead to four with under two minutes to go.
“I can’t say it wasn’t our effort, or how hard we played,” Graves said. “I thought we played really hard.”
There were also periods of legitimately good basketball. BU shot 57 percent in the second half and scored 40 points. Four different Terriers finished with at least 10 points, powered by Gormley (16 points, 4-of-5 shooting, 8 of 8 from the line, 6 rebounds), who played probably her best game of the year. BU only committed 11 turnovers and took just six fewer shots than the Bison — which are good numbers for these Terriers — and outscored Bucknell, 32-28, in the paint.
And perhaps most impressively, BU held star Bucknell forward Ashley Sofilkanich — the PL’s leading scorer who entered at 20.5 points per game — to only five points through 37 minutes.
BU’s two bigs — freshman Allison Schwertner (10 points, 6 rebounds) and junior Anete Adler (13 points, 5-of-6 shooting) — undeniably outplayed Sofilkanich.
“Our post players were great. They were really dominant inside,” Graves said.
And yet, despite all of that — Bucknell 67, BU 63.
Per usual, Graves blamed “mental lapses,” specifically ones on defense in the first half. BU flew out of the gates at the other end, scoring 14 points in the first six minutes, but its defense was so leaky at the other end that Bucknell had no problems keeping up.
Once BU started guarding, the Terriers’ offense took its turn falling apart, failing to score for over eight minutes and only making three field goals in the final 14 minutes of the half.
After halftime, BU’s offense woke up, but the Terriers couldn’t get stops in the third quarter and traded buckets. They mounted one last surge in the fourth quarter, only for Sofilkanich — who they’d done so well against all game — to erupt for six points in the final two minutes. Four of them were from free throws.
“We just had some silly fouls,” Graves said. “We fouled her when we shouldn’t have.”
And that, ultimately, was the difference. That’s it.
“We just need to lock in for a full 40 to the game plan,” Gormley said.
The problem, of course, is that BU’s said that many times before.