BC women get second wind
UNH is dispatched after intermission
Once again, the Boston College women's basketball team started strong in the second half to blow open a close game, this time using a 15-4 run after intermission to stretch a 5-point halftime edge into an easy 78-49 win over the University of New Hampshire yesterday at Conte Forum.
The No. 17 Eagles (7-1) have won six straight, their only loss coming to No. 12 Michigan State.
Three Eagles scored in double figures, accounting for 48 of the team's points, but the star of the game was senior Jessalyn Deveny, whose 23 points and nine rebounds (both game highs) put her in elite company at BC: players who have at least 1,000 points and 500 rebounds. Deveny, with 1,336 points and 504 rebounds, is ninth on the school's all-time scoring list, and at 5 feet 9 inches ("5-8 3/4," she insists) is the shortest in the group.
The Eagles staged a 14-0 run in the first half to take a 25-12 lead, but UNH (3-4) countered with a run of its own, sparked by a 3-pointer by senior guard Lindsay Adams, and were down by just 3, 29-26, with 51 seconds left in the half. Senior Clare Droesch (13 points) hit a jumper to give BC a 5-point lead at intermission, but the team knew it had to take charge for the next 20 minutes.
It did.
The opening five minutes of the second half were the Deveny-Droesch show, as the cocaptains scored 15 points (including a 3-pointer by Droesch), and the Wildcats were held to two free throws and one field goal. After Deveny's two free throws (she was 8 for 8 from the line), UNH's Emily Hardy hit a 3-pointer to make it 46-33 with 14:14 left, but the Wildcats would never get closer.
BC coach Cathy Inglese waited to bring in the bench players, even after the Eagles had built a 20-point lead.
"They [UNH] shoot a lot of threes, and if they start getting hot, it's really hard," Inglese said. "And we didn't play the first half how I wanted to, so I wanted us to get into a rhythm."
The erratic first-half play, she said, is something she wants to stop.
"It took us time to get our rhythm," Inglese said. "In the first half we were just rushing things. So in the second half, we said, `Let's be patient, let's slow it down.' Last year's team did this, too; sometimes we try so hard in the beginning to play hard, that sometimes we battle ourselves."
Deveny acknowledged that the team had to settle down if it wanted to stave off UNH.
"It was pretty obvious what we had to do," she said. "We were going a million miles an hour, not finding the best shot. Coach told us that we had to be more consistent with our execution."
Inglese said she was satisfied.
"Jess did a real good job in the second half as far as reading the screens and seeing what she needed to do," Inglese said. "She scores so many different ways, so she's a tough kid to guard, she's not a one-dimensional player."
UNH coach Sue Johnson, who was an assistant under Inglese at BC in 1995-96, said her team did a good job of keeping up with the Eagles for the first 20 minutes.
"The first half was very close," Johnson said. "But they started switching screens against our motion offense, and we didn't respond as well as we needed to. They lived at the free throw line in the second half and got some uncontested layups off of steals."
BC made 16 of 17 free throws and 15 of 21 shots from the floor (71.4 percent) in the second half. BC finished shooting 57.4 percent overall, to 32.7 percent for UNH.
Whitney Edwards and Ray Williams led the Wildcats with 8 points apiece. 