"Funergetic" Eagles Coin Season-Long Message With Win
January 08, 2022 | Women's Basketball, #ForBoston Files
Makayla Dickens might have just built the team's motto for the rest of 2022.
Makayla Dickens knew she was caught.
She was describing the efforts of the Boston College women's basketball team in the wake of a dominating, 95-71 win over Syracuse, but she chose the wrong word. A look of momentary panic crossed her face, largely because she knew her coach sat next to her and wouldn't ever let her live down what she said. It would be there the next day after practice and the day after that, and if she wasn't careful, head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee would remind her of what she said… Every. Single. Day.
"I think everyone just enjoyed having fun with everybody," Dickens said. "You can see it on the court. I feel like we're building our team chemistry in a super 'fungetic' way."
"Fungetic" immediately became "funergetic," and as Bernabei-McNamee and Dickens laughed at the podium, a clear message delivered itself to the college basketball universe: BC knew how to enjoy winning, and it loved having fun. The Eagles had cracked their own code, and if they could continue to successfully merge the energy and work with the fun and love for the game, they could subsequently emerge as an entirely-too dangerous team for the second half of the season.
"It was close to a complete game," Bernabei-McNamee said of the Syracuse game. "I don't know if it was a complete game, but we did a nice job of bringing the energy. It's getting there. We're getting there, and I think that's the one thing that I was happy with. We had some turnovers, but it never got in our head. We talk all the time about moving onto the next play on offense or defense, and I was really proud of the way that we did that."
The performance included a career offensive day for freshman Maria Gakdeng, whose offensive breakout included 21 points on 9-of-12 shooting in under 20 minutes against the Orange. She fell one rebound short of a double-double but grabbed four offensive boards on a day when BC grabbed 14-of-51 rebounds on the offensive window.
She led the parade of four Eagles in double figures that included Marnelle Garraud's 17 points and Dickens' 15 points off the bench. Both saw between 25 and 30 minutes on the floor in a throwback performance that included a 6-for-10 shooting day for both players. They went a combined 8-for-15 from beyond the arc and limited their fouls while adding 10 assists, seven of which came from Dickens, who received a commemorative basketball before the game for her 1,000th career point.
"A lot of people think that to go against a zone, you have to shoot them out of the zone," Garraud said, "but we emphasize that we can shoot and also work inside with steals and mismatches. That was our game plan, to work the halow but find shooters when they double down on [the zone]."
"I thought [Dickens] did a nice job, too," Bernabei-McNamee added. "When they started to cover her a little bit, she made some really nice backdoor cuts that were just sweet [moves]."
Syracuse, meanwhile, struggled to gain traction against BC's high octane defense and only hit 11 field goals in the first two quarters. Dontavia Waggoner came off the bench to record eight defensive rebounds and nine overall boards in under 13 minutes, and she led a list of six players with at least three grabs on the defensive glass. In total, BC had 37 rebounds on the defensive end, two more than what Syracuse grabbed over the entire game on offense and defense combined.
"It was really exciting," Gakdeng said. "Going back to our first ACC game against [North Carolina], we were really close to winning, but we couldn't clinch the win. So we emphasized just sharing the ball, and winning this game was really important to us."
Gaining the win erased any temporary Jekyll-and-Hyde perception built by the up-and-down results by the Eagles over the first half of the season. The UNC game stung particularly tough after they led by 16 in the fourth quarter, but a rising complaint saw BC as a team that bullied smaller competition without a marquee win beyond Providence and UMass. The losses to UNC and Louisville didn't necessarily hurt given those two teams' resumes, but the defeats absorbed from Boston University and VCU meant something had to break eventually.
The decisive win over Syracuse cracked and ended that conversation. The Orange lost big to UNC with only seven players and dropped games to Notre Dame, nationally-ranked South Florida and Minnesota, but they countered those results with a decisive, 40-point win over Clemson and a 97-91 win over Ohio State.Â
The Eagles nearly gained a measure of history and were within striking distance of scoring 100 points in a league game for the first time in ACC history and the first time since a 101-75 win over St. John's in February, 1991. The 95 points were the most since the UNC win two years ago that cemented the springboard that would have led to the NCAA Tournament, all while improving BC to 26-2 when scoring 80 or more points under Bernabei-McNamee.
"I think we have a really good team," Bernabei-McNamee said. "I tell them that all the time, and as I said after the UNC game, it's up to them to start believing and really showing me that we're a good team. In my opinion, there isn't a limit to what we can do, and as long as we stick together and play for each other and play as hard as we can each time we're out on the court. We didn't necessarily always play smart, but we played hard and played together. Moving forward, that's what we're going to take from this game.
"The grittiness was there," she said. "You saw that on the boards. You saw that with the way we moved the ball. We just have to clean up a little bit of our poise and our IQ with some pressure in the backcourt or maybe some lackadaisical passes in the frontcourt, but I think we're a good team. I think games like this help them believe it."
The Eagles now remain in ACC play, as they will for the remainder of the season, when they play Clemson on Sunday. Game time is slated for 12 p.m. and can be seen on the ACC's Regional Sports Network coverage, broadcast locally in Boston on NESN.
She was describing the efforts of the Boston College women's basketball team in the wake of a dominating, 95-71 win over Syracuse, but she chose the wrong word. A look of momentary panic crossed her face, largely because she knew her coach sat next to her and wouldn't ever let her live down what she said. It would be there the next day after practice and the day after that, and if she wasn't careful, head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee would remind her of what she said… Every. Single. Day.
"I think everyone just enjoyed having fun with everybody," Dickens said. "You can see it on the court. I feel like we're building our team chemistry in a super 'fungetic' way."
"Fungetic" immediately became "funergetic," and as Bernabei-McNamee and Dickens laughed at the podium, a clear message delivered itself to the college basketball universe: BC knew how to enjoy winning, and it loved having fun. The Eagles had cracked their own code, and if they could continue to successfully merge the energy and work with the fun and love for the game, they could subsequently emerge as an entirely-too dangerous team for the second half of the season.
"It was close to a complete game," Bernabei-McNamee said of the Syracuse game. "I don't know if it was a complete game, but we did a nice job of bringing the energy. It's getting there. We're getting there, and I think that's the one thing that I was happy with. We had some turnovers, but it never got in our head. We talk all the time about moving onto the next play on offense or defense, and I was really proud of the way that we did that."
The performance included a career offensive day for freshman Maria Gakdeng, whose offensive breakout included 21 points on 9-of-12 shooting in under 20 minutes against the Orange. She fell one rebound short of a double-double but grabbed four offensive boards on a day when BC grabbed 14-of-51 rebounds on the offensive window.
She led the parade of four Eagles in double figures that included Marnelle Garraud's 17 points and Dickens' 15 points off the bench. Both saw between 25 and 30 minutes on the floor in a throwback performance that included a 6-for-10 shooting day for both players. They went a combined 8-for-15 from beyond the arc and limited their fouls while adding 10 assists, seven of which came from Dickens, who received a commemorative basketball before the game for her 1,000th career point.
"A lot of people think that to go against a zone, you have to shoot them out of the zone," Garraud said, "but we emphasize that we can shoot and also work inside with steals and mismatches. That was our game plan, to work the halow but find shooters when they double down on [the zone]."
"I thought [Dickens] did a nice job, too," Bernabei-McNamee added. "When they started to cover her a little bit, she made some really nice backdoor cuts that were just sweet [moves]."
Syracuse, meanwhile, struggled to gain traction against BC's high octane defense and only hit 11 field goals in the first two quarters. Dontavia Waggoner came off the bench to record eight defensive rebounds and nine overall boards in under 13 minutes, and she led a list of six players with at least three grabs on the defensive glass. In total, BC had 37 rebounds on the defensive end, two more than what Syracuse grabbed over the entire game on offense and defense combined.
"It was really exciting," Gakdeng said. "Going back to our first ACC game against [North Carolina], we were really close to winning, but we couldn't clinch the win. So we emphasized just sharing the ball, and winning this game was really important to us."
Gaining the win erased any temporary Jekyll-and-Hyde perception built by the up-and-down results by the Eagles over the first half of the season. The UNC game stung particularly tough after they led by 16 in the fourth quarter, but a rising complaint saw BC as a team that bullied smaller competition without a marquee win beyond Providence and UMass. The losses to UNC and Louisville didn't necessarily hurt given those two teams' resumes, but the defeats absorbed from Boston University and VCU meant something had to break eventually.
The decisive win over Syracuse cracked and ended that conversation. The Orange lost big to UNC with only seven players and dropped games to Notre Dame, nationally-ranked South Florida and Minnesota, but they countered those results with a decisive, 40-point win over Clemson and a 97-91 win over Ohio State.Â
The Eagles nearly gained a measure of history and were within striking distance of scoring 100 points in a league game for the first time in ACC history and the first time since a 101-75 win over St. John's in February, 1991. The 95 points were the most since the UNC win two years ago that cemented the springboard that would have led to the NCAA Tournament, all while improving BC to 26-2 when scoring 80 or more points under Bernabei-McNamee.
"I think we have a really good team," Bernabei-McNamee said. "I tell them that all the time, and as I said after the UNC game, it's up to them to start believing and really showing me that we're a good team. In my opinion, there isn't a limit to what we can do, and as long as we stick together and play for each other and play as hard as we can each time we're out on the court. We didn't necessarily always play smart, but we played hard and played together. Moving forward, that's what we're going to take from this game.
"The grittiness was there," she said. "You saw that on the boards. You saw that with the way we moved the ball. We just have to clean up a little bit of our poise and our IQ with some pressure in the backcourt or maybe some lackadaisical passes in the frontcourt, but I think we're a good team. I think games like this help them believe it."
The Eagles now remain in ACC play, as they will for the remainder of the season, when they play Clemson on Sunday. Game time is slated for 12 p.m. and can be seen on the ACC's Regional Sports Network coverage, broadcast locally in Boston on NESN.
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