Last week’s back-to-back wins for Boston College women’s basketball provided some much-needed momentum as the Eagles headed into their final regular-season game versus Syracuse.
The offense piled together 179 points in those victories, the most across two games for the Eagles since its second and third games of the season.
But the Eagles only scored 10 points in the first quarter of their Sunday afternoon game. And then, the Eagles matched that with another 10-point quarter the next frame.
“I make keys, they’re usually things we can control, things like rebounding and disciplined defense and not fouling and things like that,” BC head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee said. “And I think we missed the mark on basically all of those things in the first half.”
This slow start forced play-from-behind basketball the remainder of the game for BC (15–16, 6–12 Atlantic Coast) as it dropped its regular season finale 82–57 to the Orange (12–17, 6–12) on Sunday afternoon.
Andrea Daley kicked off the scoring with a layup for both teams 24 seconds into the game. Teya Sidberry’s free throws with 4:47 remaining in the first frame would be the Eagles’ next points.
Sidberry amped it up in the second half, ending with 20 points on 7-for-13 shooting. She was just one rebound shy of her third double-double in four games.
“Teya is one of those players I can always, always count on to go as hard as she can,” Bernabei-McNamee said. “Always. It’s like her superpower.”
Tatum Greene began the Eagles’ second-quarter scoring just under three minutes in, but Syracuse had already compiled a 13-point lead at that point. And when the halftime buzzer hit, that lead had been extended to 25.
“This team does care, but that’s why we’re so disappointed at halftime,” Bernabei-McNamee said. “We looked like a team that maybe didn’t care when we were out there. And we just can’t have that happen.”
Although her team shot just 32 percent from the field, Bernabei-McNamee believed other aspects also contributed to this loss.
“I think we were better just on the defensive boards, and our defense always creates easy offense for us,” she said when asked about the differences from last week’s win and Sunday. “…and I think that always gets us going where today we looked, like, frazzled on the offensive end.”
BC began matching the compete level in the third quarter, but it was too late to reverse the effects of a bad first half.
Both ACC squads traded bucket-for-bucket throughout the third frame. The second-half scoring ended at a tie, but the Orange just couldn’t be put in check to even put a scratch in BC’s 27-point by the start of the fourth.
Syracuse’s 50 points in the paint to BC’s 32, and its 27 points off turnover to BC’s nine, put the Eagles’ decision-making on shots in question.
“We kind of got out of sync of what we do best, right?” Bernabei-McNamee said. “We took very uncharacteristic shots, or shots that maybe aren’t in each of our players, like, wheelhouse.”
The final frame was the lone quarter won by BC as Sidberry led the way with nine points and five other Eagles adding a bucket of their own.
With postseason play starting up in the coming days, BC’s fate depends on how much fire it can come out with early, or its season will be over quicker than the first-half deficit it accumulated in Sunday’s loss.
“The way we played today was very, very disappointing, but maybe that’s the kick in the butt we needed heading into Greensboro,” Bernabei-McNamee said.
