Instant takeaways from the BU women's basketball team's 72-36 loss to UAlbany
The Terriers were outclassed by one of the best mid-major teams in the Northeast.
BOSTON — Certain hills are going to be tough to climb for this Boston University women’s basketball team, and UAlbany on Tuesday night at Case Gym was one of them.
The Great Danes (8-1) entered receiving votes in the latest Mid-Major Top 25. Four of their five starters are graduate students. BU, which has been impressive to start the year, simply can’t match that level of experience — its roster is 75 percent freshman and sophomores and has only one fully healthy upperclassman in the rotation.
Frustratingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, BU (5-5) was outclassed on Tuesday, falling 72-36.
BU jumped out to a 13-8 lead in the first quarter, then surrendered an extended 36-5 run over 18 in-game minutes. UAlbany cruised from there.
Here are three takeaways from the loss:
Turnovers and poor defensive rebounding plagued BU (again).
BU enters each game with the goal of committing less than 13 turnovers, which it heroically achieved for the first time this season in last Thursday’s win at Le Moyne. But on Tuesday, the Terriers returned to their struggles taking care of the ball, committing 11 in the first half and 20 overall.
BU only scored six points in the second quarter — tied for the lowest it’s scored in a quarter this season — in large part because it gave away too many possessions. There were errant passes, travels in the post, you name it. And, ultimately, BU’s 36-19 halftime hole was too deep to dig out of.
The Terriers are now averaging 18.6 turnovers per game.
It was the same story on the defensive glass, as the Great Danes corralled 11 offensive rebounds in the first half for seven second-chance points. UAlbany finished with 16 and 12, respectively. Facing such a formidable opponent, BU simply couldn’t afford to hand UAlbany extra possessions — the Great Danes finished with 14 more field goal attempts than the Terriers.
After Tuesday, BU’s allowing 9.25 offensive rebounds a game.
“It is something we need to just fix, and it’s something we stress in practice, and we’ll continue to do it,” head coach Melissa Graves said after BU’s win over Rider on Dec. 1.
Nine days later, the story hasn’t changed.
BU struggled to keep up with UAlbany’s offensive pace.
The Great Danes ran the floor after virtually every BU miss, and for the most part, the Terriers couldn’t keep up. It was evident from the very first possession, when UAlbany graduate forward Kayla Cooper (19.4 points per game coming in, 15 on Tuesday) found an easy layup in transition.
The Great Danes pushed the pace through graduate guard Jessica Tomasetti (12 points), who scurried up and down the floor and was a nuisance for BU all night. There was a telling moment late in the first half when, as the Great Danes had just two seconds to get the ball past midcourt (to avoid a 10-second violation) from an inbound under their own basket, Tomasetti received a pass on a running start and blew by her defender to cross halfcourt in time.
BU succumbed to this test, but there’s value in that (and more tests await).
UAlbany, frankly, is just better than BU right now — which is fine. The Terriers are young, inexperienced and mostly brand new to playing with each other.
One of the beauties of the non-conference slate is that wins and losses don’t really matter. The Patriot League is a one-bid league; the Terriers’ only path to the NCAA Tournament starts in January, when conference games begin. Tough opponents are the point of non-conference play — it is why Graves scheduled a matchup with No. 2 UConn on the road for BU’s second game of the season, and why Tuesday’s bout with UAlbany (which made the WNIT last year) was useful.
The Terriers will certainly stand to benefit from playing this level of opponent during Patriot League play. Also — tougher tests await to conclude the non-conference schedule.
BU gets UMass Lowell on the road on Thursday, then travels to Harvard (receiving votes in the AP Top 25 poll), which has Harmoni Turner (one of the best players in the country), on Dec. 21. To conclude non-conference on Dec. 29, the Terriers have a date with fellow Ivy Leaguers Yale on the road.