After Upswing Against Providence, It's Onto Northeastern

There's a family tradition at Joanna Bernabei-McNamee's Thanksgiving table centered around breaking the wishbone of the turkey. It's the same tradition as millions of other homes across the United States, where two people grab opposite ends of the bone and yank until it snaps. According to urban legend, the person with the bigger piece gets a wish granted, but, like birthday candles, they can't tell anyone what they wished for.

If the head coach of the Boston College women's basketball program wins this year, she might ask for a couple of things from the mystical turkey spirits. She might ask for enough wins to qualify for the NCAA Tournament, and she might ask for a banner in Conte Forum signifying an ACC championship, a regional win or a Final Four appearance. She might go the whole way with it and hope she gets to hang the first national championship banner in school history.

Whatever her wish, Bernabei-McNamee knows it will only truly come true if her team can remain dedicated and determined to execute on their talents, a facet that sometimes requires a harsh reality check. Last week, BC received that reality check when it lost to Boston University, 69-65, before it rebounded with an 85-73 win over Providence College to enter this week with a 3-1 overall record.

"[BU] was a disappointing loss," she admitted in her weekly media session on Monday. "It was a game on our schedule that I felt we should have been able to win, but the cards just weren't in our hands for that game. But I thought we had good bounce-back, and the resilience of our team was really good going into Providence. We had a big third quarter, and that was finally something for us."

On paper, the BU loss made little sense given the box score and the pregame mismatch between the roster. BC made 28 field goals to BU's 25 and held an advantage in second chance points, fast break points, points in the paint and points off turnovers while simultaneously outrebounding the Terriers on the offensive window by a 12-8 margin. The only discrepant number came on the defensive window, but BU's seven extra defensive rebounds were offset by more turnovers, less steals and less assists.

Yet the game still ended with the Eagles solemnly walking off the court in possession of their first defeat. It didn't sit well with the team, and after giving it the night, they began the process of moving forward by walking the thin line between anger and frustration. They were frustrated that they lost the game, but the importance of not letting it drift into red-hot anger came from the experience and boxed-in discipline that became apparent in the film room less than 24 hours later.

"Watching film and dissecting it [forced us] to relive it," Bernabei-McNamee said, "and it just got us more and more frustrated. I'm the kind of coach that when I rewatch and break down film, I can't wait to show [the clips] to the team, and that's not always in a negative light. I wanted them to feel my frustration and get back at it by getting better and improving, and I think they felt the same way. So we had a good 30 minutes dedicated to BU where we looked at all of the things we could have done better, but then we had to move on and start preparing for Providence.

"Channeling that comes through our discipline," she added. "The clips that we showed them were about not remembering our scout and not paying attention to running out a kid that isn't a shooter while letting a driver drive past us. We showed a lot of screens that weren't set for each other and it's imperative to what we do. At the end of the day, we talked about controlling the things that we can control, and I think they really got that in the day's preparation for Providence."

It required patience, including during the game against the Friars, where the Eagles fell behind by three at the end of the first quarter. PC extended the lead to four by halftime against a BC team that shot just 10-for-22 from the field, but a porridge half of shooting three-pointers broke out in the third quarter in a big way when the Eagles connected on 5-of-6 from beyond the arc as part of a 30-point quarter. Having flipped the court into an eight-point lead, they clamped down in the fourth and walked away with a hard-fought 12-point win over a former Big East rival.

"You hate to say we were unlucky in the first half against Providence," Bernabei-McNamee said, "but balls were going in-and-out, and the bounces just never came [to us on the glass]. I thought our pursuit of the basketball and tracking of offensive rebounds wasn't great, but after watching it on film, it wasn't terrible. It was almost like [the boards] were falling into our opponent's hands even though we were there and shoving, but that's the beautiful thing about basketball. It's anybody's game on any given night.

"I thought that in the first half against Providence, we did everything defensively," she explained. "We were disciplined and did everything right, but we still weren't making shots. I think that's contagious, and when you're missing shots as a team, it's contagious [throughout the roster]. But when we started hitting shots in the third quarter, that's also the momentum. Basketball is a game of momentum and runs, and we got an offensive run on our side [against PC] where we never had one during the BU game."

Five players finished the PC game in double figures, and the scoring balanced away from Taylor Soule, who scored 25 points but was the only player to reach double figures against BU. Marnelle Garraud had a huge bounce-back game with 17 points, six assists, five rebounds, two steals and only one turnover, and she hit four three-pointers to pull ahead of both Cameron Swartz and Maria Gakdeng's 15 points apiece. All three had five boards, and Jaelyn Batts made her first start of the year with an additional five rebounds, while Makayla Dickens added 14 points and four boards off the bench.

It helped the assist numbers flow, and five players finished the game with multiple dishes while six of the eight players with 10 minutes or more on the floor finished with one turnover or less. Providence, meanwhile, could only match the numbers with Janai Crooms, who fell one assist short of a triple-double after scoring 17 points with 10 boards. She finished one point less than Kylee Sheppard's 18, but the duo went a combined 12-for-28 shooting during a game in which they played more than 30 minutes.

"I think [the team] really understood that in the two days prepping for Providence, the ball was in our court," Bernabei-McNamee said. "These non-conference games, we have to make sure that we go into them fully prepared but also disciplined and with confidence."

The PC game restored the team's mojo in time for a busy week at home around the Thanksgiving holiday with games against Northeastern and Albany on Wednesday and Sunday. Both teams have vested interests in beating the Eagles, with Northeastern being the third Boston team, the fourth Massachusetts-based school and the fifth consecutive team in New England to start the season, while the Great Danes are the most recent program coached by Bernabei-McNamee before she accepted the position at BC.

She won 45 games in the New York state capital and took Albany to its then-sixth consecutive national tournament before advancing to the WNIT in her second season, but Boston College has never played the America East program in its history. The same can't be said for Northeastern, which hasn't played BC since the 2015-2016 season but holds a 13-16 record against its intracity rival.

It's been nearly 20 years, though, since the Huskies defeated BC, and the last five games - all BC wins - have been decided by an average of 16 points with the high-water marks offering a 26-point and 27-point win for the Eagles in the first and last meetings of the streak.

"[Playing a team with Northeastern's speed] allows us to play the bench a little bit more," Bernabei-McNamee said. "I'll go a little deeper into our rotation because we can go deep. The speed of another team should never bother us because we should be able to rotate players in and out and match it, if not be faster than them. So I'm hoping it fires up our younger players, and they're ready to play.

"Defensively, we also love to play fast," she added, "so we'll work a lot on transition defense and making sure we're where we need to be. It was nice against Providence to see our zone for the first time this year because we didn't even run it at all last year, and I thought they did a nice job with it. That'll be something we'll be able to tinker with, and we can look a little bit at our full court pressing. With these non-conference games, we're forced to get in everything we need to be fully prepared for conference play. So I think we're going to see some different defensive looks this week."

BC will host Northeastern at 2 p.m. on Wednesday before taking a break through the rest of the week for Thanksgiving. The Eagles then return to the court on Sunday to play Albany at 12 p.m. tip-off. Both games are slated for Conte Forum with broadcast available on the ACC Network Extra streaming through ESPN's online and mobile app platforms.

After Upswing Against Providence, It's Onto Northeastern

Players Mentioned

Maria Gakdeng

Marnelle Garraud

Taylor Soule

Cameron Swartz

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