Instant takeaways from BU women's basketball's 60-48 season-opening victory over Northeastern

Senior captain Alex Giannaros scored 23 points, and made five 3-pointers, to lead the Terriers to a runaway win in the second half.

Photo by Matt Woolverton/BU Athletics.

BOSTON — Three takeaways from the Boston University women’s basketball team’s 60-48 victory over Northeastern in the season opener at Case Gym…

Alex Giannaros was as good as advertised.

Senior captain Alex Giannaros was the clear headliner. The new-look Terrier team struggled to create offensively outside of Giannaros, who finished with 23 points on 8-of-12 shooting and made five 3-pointers.

On the game’s opening play, BU struggled to penetrate inside or create any space on the perimeter. Enter Giannaros, who caught a pass with under five seconds remaining on the shot clock. She crossed up her defender and drained a straightaway 3 as the buzzer sounded. She snapped a two-minute scoring drought later in the first quarter with a heavily-contested baseline jumper. In the second quarter, Giannaros hit another heavily contested 3 from the right wing, BU’s first field goal in over five minutes. Giannaros played for 16 minutes and 28 seconds in the first half, and in the 3:32 that she sat, BU scored just two points — a SiSi Bentley layup with 1.6 seconds left in the half. 

In the third quarter, Northeastern cut the BU lead to eight. All of a sudden the gap was back to 15, as Giannaros went on a personal 7-0 run, hitting a stepback midrange, a stepback 3, and a layup in transition. Whenever BU needed an answer, Giannaros showed up. 

BU struggled to score in the paint.

The Terriers only scored 20 of their 59 points in the paint, a stark contrast to last season’s team with Caitlin Weimar inside. There is no replacement for Weimar. Junior forward Anete Adler was sidelined in the opener, as she continues to rehab from a torn ACL suffered in December last season, which didn’t help either. But BU’s guards and wings struggled to make layups when they got inside. When, or if, Giannaros is not as automatic as she was tonight, BU can’t afford to leave those points off the board. 

Melissa Graves will run with a 9-person rotation in close games.

BU head coach Graves went with Aoibhe Gormley (sophomore), Giannaros, Audrey Ericksen (sophomore), Inez Gallegos (freshman), and Allison Schwertner (freshman) to start the opener.

Off the bench, Graves called on sophomores Bella McLaughlin, Inés Monteagudo, and SiSi Bentley, and freshman forward Channing Warren. 

The first nine all entered the game within the first six minutes of action. 13 total players ended up seeing the floor, but the last four only checked in late in the second half as BU led by double digits.

Gallegos (6 points, 1 steal, 1 block) and Schwertner (7 points, 3 rebounds, 1 steal, 1 block) were especially impressive. Schwertner didn’t allow anything easy inside and found her moments to attack. Gallegos played similarly to the role Audrey Ericksen brought BU a year ago, with versatile defense at the 4. 

McLaughlin looked explosive off the bench and showed good vision. When Adler is ready to return, she will likely replace Warren, but that nine-person rotation looks locked in for the foreseeable future.