Inside a long-awaited victory for BU women’s basketball
Led by Anete Adler and late-game heroics from Alex Giannaros, the Terriers defeated their biggest rival to snap a five-game losing streak.
BOSTON — With 38 seconds left and trailing by a point, the Boston University women’s basketball team put the ball in Alex Giannaros’ hands. BU’s “everything person” — senior captain, leading scorer, preseason all-conference selection — had only made two shots and was enduring another rough game during the Terriers’ even rougher season.
You know it’s bad when even Alex Giannaros is struggling, and before Monday night at Case Gym — as BU free-falled to the bottom of the Patriot League — she was 9 for her last 36 shots.
Still, there’s only one woman BU is turning to in a moment like that.
“She was due for one,” sophomore co-captain Audrey Ericksen said later.
Giannaros got the switch she wanted and chose a stepback 3-pointer. Ericksen, who’d battled for critical rebounds all game, moved in for another.
“I went to crash,” she said, “but I saw it up in the air and had a feeling that was going in. She shoots those so many times.”
Ericksen’s hunch was right, and in the midst of the ensuing eruption, Giannaros let out an enormous roar near the ‘BU’ logo. As she was celebrating, Aoibhe Gormley flashed in front of her for a full-court press, and when Holy Cross botched a pass in the backcourt, the sophomore point guard was there for her second backcourt steal of the game. She recycled the ball back to Giannaros, who hunched over and took a foul in front of head coach Melissa Graves.
When the whistle blew, Giannaros spiked the ball into the floor and back into her hands. Gormley was near and, screaming, chest-bumped her teammate into Graves, who grabbed each of Giannaros’ shoulders and shook her.
A win — BU’s first in 21 days and six games — was within sight. So too was a statement over the Patriot League’s leading team. And, not lost on anyone even in the midst of such a frustrating season, a bit of revenge against dreaded Holy Cross, the team that’s beaten BU in two consecutive conference title games.
“Obviously,” Graves said postgame, “we have a history with them.”
Eventually, after two Giannaros free throws, a Crusader layup and another foul shot from Anete Adler, BU sealed the 52-49 win on a block from Giannaros.
On the sidelines, Graves — no stranger to outbursts of emotion after wins — clapped her hands together once, wearing a look of profound relief. Before this season, she hadn’t lost five games in a row since her first season as an assistant at Wake Forest. That was six years ago, and all she’s done since is gotten way more used to winning than one should in their first try as a head coach.
But now — 1-7 in the Patriot League entering Monday.
“Losing that many in a row starts to get to you,” she said postgame, in BU’s brand-new video room. “And some teams could maybe give up. But they haven’t. They continue to trust the process.”
At the final buzzer, BU’s bench exploded out onto the court, all bee-lining to one player. It was not Giannaros.
Anete Adler hopped towards her teammates, mouth agape. Channing Warren met her first, then fellow freshman forward Allison Schwertner completed the group hug. Adler, who only returned from a torn ACL that nearly made her quit the sport 16 games ago, had dropped a career-high 19 points and — quite literally — couldn’t be stopped by the conference’s best defense.
BU (8-12, 2-7 Patriot League) wouldn’t have won without her. Graves said postgame she recruited Adler during her final season at Wake in 2020-21, and two years later, with Graves needing to rebuild her roster after losing to Holy Cross in the title game and Adler in the portal after barely playing as a freshman at Rhode Island, the two reunited. Graves — a forward during her playing days who's been intentional about playing through the post at BU — had the Estonian playing her most confident basketball early last season. Then she blew out her knee last December.
Before Saturday, Adler had struggled in her return. But she scored a career-high 15 points against Bucknell, then manhandled Holy Cross’ Lindsay Berger — a thorn in the Terriers’ side the past two seasons — on Monday.
In a hallway below Case Gym after the game, assistant coach Jason Pellum ran into Adler on his way out. He slung both arms around the 6-foot-5 junior.
“Proud of you, kid,” he told her. “See what happens when you get out of your head?”
BU’s staff insists Adler can be one of the best forwards in the Patriot League. Their focus has been her confidence — Graves said Adler didn’t arrive at BU with enough of it, and when she finally found it last season, she immediately got hurt. Adler declined an on-camera interview with CBS Sports Network immediately after the game on Monday and admitted that if she hadn’t made critical layups down the stretch, she “would’ve been devastated, probably.”
“It’s been a long ride,” Adler said. “Getting that confidence has been a rocky road.”
She finished 9 of 12 from the field on Saturday, so dominant that, at one point, Holy Cross (14-6, 7-2 PL) double-teamed her in the same way it did for Caitlin Weimar last season, the 2023-24 Patriot League Player of the Year whom Adler is essentially replacing.
Graves said she gave Adler a “big hug” in the postgame locker room, and when she was asked what her emotions were after watching Adler dominate, she spoke for a minute and 20 seconds.
“She’s very hard on herself, but she’s put in the work,” Graves said. “She’s been doing extra stuff outside of practice, especially with the knee. I always knew she had the talent level… but it’s that work that she’s put in. I’m very, very proud of her.”
Graves coaches because of people like Adler. She loves that a school like BU forces everyone to have basketball-life balance, and the biggest point of emphasis within her program is to prepare the players for life outside of the sport. In an interview with Case In Point before the season, she expressed endless pride for Adler’s journey — not just because it made her a better forward, but because it will make her a stronger person later in life.
“Everything happens for a reason,” Graves said then. “You might need to get through this hard piece to get ready for the hard things in life.”
She probably didn't expect the Terriers’ “hard piece” to be this hard, and BU continues to speak and behave like a group that seriously didn’t see a 1-7 start in conference play coming. They had gotten so close to getting over the hump, too, losing two close games to Army and Navy at Case last week.
“We knew,” Ericksen said, “we were very, very close.”
In the concourse after the game, the director of the BU pep band — which had been the Terriers’ only consistent student support during the winter break — let out an exasperated, “I’m so happy.” Gormley, a ruthless competitor, raced up the stairs to the concourse from the locker room and screamed, “Wooo hoooo,” in the stairwell.
Graves had disappeared, last seen shuffling out of the gym with her daughter, Arya, in her arms. Graves’ firstborn eventually accompanied her in the postgame press conference. Four hours later, as men’s head coach Joe Jones walked out of the same video room after his postgame availability, he said, simply: “I’m so happy the women won, man.”
Graves’ BU was an astounding 39-15 in Patriot League play before this season. All of this losing is new, not just to the Terriers but everyone around them. One thing Graves insisted, however, following BU’s last loss at Case — when it felt like BU could go a decade without winning another game — was that her young team still believed.
When the Terriers returned home after another loss, this one to Bucknell, that hadn’t changed.
More reading on BU women’s basketball:
Instant takeaways from BU women's basketball's 52-49 victory over Holy Cross
Under Melissa Graves, a bigger purpose for BU women’s basketball
How Alex Giannaros grew into BU women's basketball's "everything person"
