Photo by: Joe Sullivan
Welcome to January, the Gateway to March
January 14, 2022 | Women's Basketball, #ForBoston Files
BC handled business against Pittsburgh and moved onto the NCAA bubble with Louisville looming.
The entire attitude around college basketball season changes in January. It starts a transition and moves out of the carefree fun of the non-conference fall months, eventually landing in the thick of league play by the time the new year kicks into gear. It crystallizes the season in time for February's critical run and offers nightly fights for positioning as postseason dreams start seeping into matchups.
It serves as a reminder to programs that losses can dismantle the dancing dreams before they ever really begin, and every game, even those that don't feel as important, are injections of life for tournament resumes. By itself, one win or one loss is a story. Strung together, they are the backbone of the selection committee.
For the first half of the season, Boston College was on the outside of that entire conversation. The Eagles started the year with a 7-2 record, but not even the highest-rated shooting percentage in the nation pushed them into postseason contention. Their resume was perceived as weaker, as if those wins against the mid-major local teams were entirely too expected, and the two losses to Boston University and VCU damaged a no-win situation. Even after the North Carolina game, in which BC led before a fourth quarter collapse, the experts seemed content to classify the team as an almost-ran with intriguing potential.
One month later, BC finds itself in a very different conversation. The Eagles, left outside the postseason talk through November and December, are now ESPN's First Team Out and the proverbial squad knocking once again on the door of tournament Conte ruin. They reside on the edge of the bubble as winners of four straight and holders of a 12-4 overall record, and with No. 3 Louisville looming on the horizon, a rematch for the ages comes after the team once left behind handled business in Pittsburgh with a 75-64 win.
"A road win is a road win," head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee said. "We'll take them any day in the ACC. It wasn't the prettiest finish, and I didn't think it was the prettiest start. We had a slow start and a slow finish, but at the end of the day, they were good enough to pull out a win. It was a little bit sloppy, but I'd rather get that stuff out of our system so that come Sunday, we're ready to go battle Louisville."
Determining the postseason field is a year-long debate, but BC earned its way into the discussion by beating its ACC sorority sisters. A decisive win over Syracuse helped launch the conversation, and the road wins over Clemson and Pitt inserted the Eagles into the tier jockeying for the at-large bids.
Life alongside those teams - the Dukes, the Georgia Techs and the Virginia Techs - is almost harder because every game is measured against the same caliber teams from other leagues. Every result then has the potential to build or dismantle a resume, and those results - and the opponents they come against - are summarily compared to others, like Gonzaga and UMass, which BC defeated earlier this season.
Winning games pushes that conversation forward, but the Pitt game underscored the difficulty in beating every opponent on a nightly basis. On paper, the Panthers were winless in the league after losing to Louisville, Georgia Tech and NC State, but all three of those teams were ranked. Both Louisville and NC State were top-10 teams, and the Cardinals, having lost only once this year, were the No. 3 team in the nation, a number they still hold.
They challenged BC by pulling the trigger in the early goings, and at the end of the first quarter, Pitt was outshooting the Eagles with a 43 percent percentage. It didn't hold through the second and third quarters, but in the fourth, after BC grabbed a commanding lead, Pitt made things interesting by shooting 8-for-15 from the floor.
BC, meanwhile, maintained a consistent presence throughout the game and by shooting 44 percent from the floor. Maria Gakdeng led all scorers with 14 points on 7-of-8 shooting, a number matched by Cameron Swartz's 6-for-16 from the floor. Taylor Soule added 12 points, but her productivity was bolstered by both her ability to get to the free throw line and her proclivity to create opportunities for her teammates.
"We ran some [plays]," Bernabei-McNamee said, "but they gambled quite a bit in their zone [defense]. I thought our players did a really nice job of really reading the gaps and moving the ball and finding those times where they could thread the needle to get the ball where we wanted it to be."
Beating Pitt required a four-quarter effort, and while the Eagles are continuing their quest to improve and alleviate another 20-turnover game, they are also moving up the radar through an ultra-competitive conference. Their third win of the season matched them against Notre Dame and gave them a half-game lead over Duke, a team currently considered a lock for the tournament as a nationally-ranked squad.
They remain a game half-game behind the Fighting Irish and a full game behind a three-way tie between Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech and North Carolina. Only Virginia Tech isn't ranked nationally out of those teams, which trail Louisville and NC State, two of the best teams in the nation.
"I knew coming to BC that the ACC had challenges in every game, every night," freshman Maria Gakdeng said. "Just getting ready [for play] over the last six months that I've been [at BC], just working every day, is really important. It's paying off, but this next game, we believe that if we stay disciplined, we can go in and win."
Holding seventh place in the ACC is worthy of a spot at the postseason table, but the Eagles have been here before. They were at the table two years ago when COVID-19 ended the season, and they expected to hear their names called on Selection Monday. They were not, however, a lock that year, and their bubble nearly burst when 11th-ranked Gonzaga lost to Portland, 70-69. The Pilots later beat San Diego for the West Coast Conference championship and essentially stole a second bid for the league from a team like BC, which was hoping for an at-large.
The bubble life is just that thin and highlights exactly how the only way to guarantee a bid in March is to win games in January. Sunday's opportunity is undeniable against Louisville; a home game at Conte Forum against the third-ranked team in the nation, a team that beat UConn this year, offers a chance to push forward into hallowed ground, and even though there's tons of basketball left to play, the opportunity to play basketball later into the spring can receive a giant boost from a game played under the icy conditions of the first month of the calendar.
"They got a little torn up with COVID protocols and those kinds of things," Bernabei-McNamee said, "so their last few games, I don't think, is going to be indicative of what we're going to see. They're going to be back in full force on Sunday, but I think all of our players understand one of the biggest draws to playing at Boston College is the idea of getting to play in the ACC. Iron sharpens iron, and I think they're all chomping at the bit to go show what they're made of against the No. 3 team in the country. That's what's great against ACC. We aren't beating each other up. We're sharpening each other, and on Sunday, I think our team is going to be ready, and I hope we have a lot of fight because that's the greatest thing about basketball. It can be anybody's game on any given night."
"I remember being a freshman and coming into [the ACC]," senior Makayla Dickens said. "It was super competitive. We were playing against some of the top players in the country that were most likely going pro. I remember we played at Notre Dame, and the entire starting five went pro. So having that opportunity is a blessing. It's fun, and it's excited to be able to have the opportunity to show it's possible to beat them."
BC and Louisville will tip off on Sunday at 12 p.m. from Conte Forum in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The game can be seen on national television on the ACC Network with online streaming available through ESPN's online streaming platforms.
It serves as a reminder to programs that losses can dismantle the dancing dreams before they ever really begin, and every game, even those that don't feel as important, are injections of life for tournament resumes. By itself, one win or one loss is a story. Strung together, they are the backbone of the selection committee.
For the first half of the season, Boston College was on the outside of that entire conversation. The Eagles started the year with a 7-2 record, but not even the highest-rated shooting percentage in the nation pushed them into postseason contention. Their resume was perceived as weaker, as if those wins against the mid-major local teams were entirely too expected, and the two losses to Boston University and VCU damaged a no-win situation. Even after the North Carolina game, in which BC led before a fourth quarter collapse, the experts seemed content to classify the team as an almost-ran with intriguing potential.
One month later, BC finds itself in a very different conversation. The Eagles, left outside the postseason talk through November and December, are now ESPN's First Team Out and the proverbial squad knocking once again on the door of tournament Conte ruin. They reside on the edge of the bubble as winners of four straight and holders of a 12-4 overall record, and with No. 3 Louisville looming on the horizon, a rematch for the ages comes after the team once left behind handled business in Pittsburgh with a 75-64 win.
"A road win is a road win," head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee said. "We'll take them any day in the ACC. It wasn't the prettiest finish, and I didn't think it was the prettiest start. We had a slow start and a slow finish, but at the end of the day, they were good enough to pull out a win. It was a little bit sloppy, but I'd rather get that stuff out of our system so that come Sunday, we're ready to go battle Louisville."
Determining the postseason field is a year-long debate, but BC earned its way into the discussion by beating its ACC sorority sisters. A decisive win over Syracuse helped launch the conversation, and the road wins over Clemson and Pitt inserted the Eagles into the tier jockeying for the at-large bids.
Life alongside those teams - the Dukes, the Georgia Techs and the Virginia Techs - is almost harder because every game is measured against the same caliber teams from other leagues. Every result then has the potential to build or dismantle a resume, and those results - and the opponents they come against - are summarily compared to others, like Gonzaga and UMass, which BC defeated earlier this season.
Winning games pushes that conversation forward, but the Pitt game underscored the difficulty in beating every opponent on a nightly basis. On paper, the Panthers were winless in the league after losing to Louisville, Georgia Tech and NC State, but all three of those teams were ranked. Both Louisville and NC State were top-10 teams, and the Cardinals, having lost only once this year, were the No. 3 team in the nation, a number they still hold.
They challenged BC by pulling the trigger in the early goings, and at the end of the first quarter, Pitt was outshooting the Eagles with a 43 percent percentage. It didn't hold through the second and third quarters, but in the fourth, after BC grabbed a commanding lead, Pitt made things interesting by shooting 8-for-15 from the floor.
BC, meanwhile, maintained a consistent presence throughout the game and by shooting 44 percent from the floor. Maria Gakdeng led all scorers with 14 points on 7-of-8 shooting, a number matched by Cameron Swartz's 6-for-16 from the floor. Taylor Soule added 12 points, but her productivity was bolstered by both her ability to get to the free throw line and her proclivity to create opportunities for her teammates.
"We ran some [plays]," Bernabei-McNamee said, "but they gambled quite a bit in their zone [defense]. I thought our players did a really nice job of really reading the gaps and moving the ball and finding those times where they could thread the needle to get the ball where we wanted it to be."
Beating Pitt required a four-quarter effort, and while the Eagles are continuing their quest to improve and alleviate another 20-turnover game, they are also moving up the radar through an ultra-competitive conference. Their third win of the season matched them against Notre Dame and gave them a half-game lead over Duke, a team currently considered a lock for the tournament as a nationally-ranked squad.
They remain a game half-game behind the Fighting Irish and a full game behind a three-way tie between Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech and North Carolina. Only Virginia Tech isn't ranked nationally out of those teams, which trail Louisville and NC State, two of the best teams in the nation.
"I knew coming to BC that the ACC had challenges in every game, every night," freshman Maria Gakdeng said. "Just getting ready [for play] over the last six months that I've been [at BC], just working every day, is really important. It's paying off, but this next game, we believe that if we stay disciplined, we can go in and win."
Holding seventh place in the ACC is worthy of a spot at the postseason table, but the Eagles have been here before. They were at the table two years ago when COVID-19 ended the season, and they expected to hear their names called on Selection Monday. They were not, however, a lock that year, and their bubble nearly burst when 11th-ranked Gonzaga lost to Portland, 70-69. The Pilots later beat San Diego for the West Coast Conference championship and essentially stole a second bid for the league from a team like BC, which was hoping for an at-large.
The bubble life is just that thin and highlights exactly how the only way to guarantee a bid in March is to win games in January. Sunday's opportunity is undeniable against Louisville; a home game at Conte Forum against the third-ranked team in the nation, a team that beat UConn this year, offers a chance to push forward into hallowed ground, and even though there's tons of basketball left to play, the opportunity to play basketball later into the spring can receive a giant boost from a game played under the icy conditions of the first month of the calendar.
"They got a little torn up with COVID protocols and those kinds of things," Bernabei-McNamee said, "so their last few games, I don't think, is going to be indicative of what we're going to see. They're going to be back in full force on Sunday, but I think all of our players understand one of the biggest draws to playing at Boston College is the idea of getting to play in the ACC. Iron sharpens iron, and I think they're all chomping at the bit to go show what they're made of against the No. 3 team in the country. That's what's great against ACC. We aren't beating each other up. We're sharpening each other, and on Sunday, I think our team is going to be ready, and I hope we have a lot of fight because that's the greatest thing about basketball. It can be anybody's game on any given night."
"I remember being a freshman and coming into [the ACC]," senior Makayla Dickens said. "It was super competitive. We were playing against some of the top players in the country that were most likely going pro. I remember we played at Notre Dame, and the entire starting five went pro. So having that opportunity is a blessing. It's fun, and it's excited to be able to have the opportunity to show it's possible to beat them."
BC and Louisville will tip off on Sunday at 12 p.m. from Conte Forum in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The game can be seen on national television on the ACC Network with online streaming available through ESPN's online streaming platforms.
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