Instant takeaways from the BU women's basketball team's 70-67 win at American
BU trailed by as many as 15 points in another poor first half, but the Terriers roared back to earn their first Patriot League victory of the season.
The Boston University women’s basketball team got off to a slow start and fell behind by as many as 15 points in the first half. But the Terriers launched a comeback to come away with a 70-67 victory over American (0-14, 0-3 Patriot League) to earn their first conference win of the season.
Here are four takeaways from the Patriot League victory…
The AGs showed up.
Alex Giannaros and Aoibhe Gormley. Giannaros is no stranger to big-time performances. The senior guard was named to the All-Patriot League first team last season after all. But she had a team-high 21 points on 7-of-17 shooting and the Terriers needed all of those baskets.
Gormley, who came off the bench for just the second time this season, responded with one of her best performances of the season. She notched a team-high six assists (and should have had more if not for missed layups) while pushing the pace and conducting a potent transition offense. BU was most successful when playing fast and Gormley was at the center of it all.
With 38.6 seconds remaining, up by two, Gormley came away with a crucial steal.
SiSi Bentley entered the starting lineup and had a career-high.
Sophomore forward SiSi Bentley notched her fourth start of the season and replaced Gormley in BU’s typical starting five. However, it was the two of them working together that helped result in Bentley’s career-high in points.
Bentley had a career-high 15 points on 7-of-14 shooting, running the floor and finishing layups in transition. She scored her first two baskets on transition layups assisted by Gormley. Bentley also netted a huge putback layup, after missing the initial attempt, on Gormley’s drive and dump down pass early in the fourth quarter to cut BU’s deficit to one.
Bentley’s previous career-high was 11 points at New Hampshire on Nov. 16.
BU allowed a first-half high for the third consecutive game.
At halftime, BU (7-7, 1-2 PL) trailed 36-28. Those 36 points for American were the most it has scored in the first half this season. It is now the third consecutive game BU has allowed that to happen. In the Patriot League opener against Lafayette, the Leopards scored 41 in the opening frame, tied for a season-high. Army scored a high-mark 42 first-half points on Sunday.
American shot 40 percent (14-for-35) in the first half, compared to their season-long mark of 35 percent. BU also allowed the Eagles to snag 10 offensive rebounds.
The Terriers have made a habit of starting slow, and it was the same story on Wednesday.
The Terriers missed a collection of layups once again.
The Terriers missed a series of layups in the conference opener against Lafayette and did the same at American. In the first quarter, they only made 3 of 10 layups, and the majority were relatively open and uncontested.
After the conference opening loss to Lafayette on Jan. 2, Graves said, “We missed a lot of layups today, some easy baskets that I thought would even put us ahead at times, or at least close the lead that they had. Uncontrollable things there.”
However, after another poor showing, it begs the question of whether those missed layups are truly uncontrollable.