Boston College Athletics
Photo by: Meg Kelly
December 01, 2023 | Women's Basketball, #ForBoston Files
A unique day in Kentucky fell against BC's hoopsters.
Division III basketball plays a little different from its flashier Division I counterpart. Games are a little grittier, and teams travel on road trips with buses and vans before coming home in the middle of the night. Nobody has a scholarship, and there aren't any national television contracts, and the lack of fancy video boards, bright lighting and showy graphics challenge players to dedicate thankless hours to playing for the love of the game.
Gymnasiums are smaller, but they offer electric atmospheres on par with the biggest, gaudiest Division I arenas. Smaller crowds carry the ability to generate louder noise in buildings with low-hung ceilings, and the concrete walls box the court into a guttural reverberation of chants and cheers that hit an octave occasionally swallowed by the massive D-I buildings.
Tough teams survive to win bare-knuckle basketball games in Division III gyms, which is why the buzzer-beating, 83-81 loss to Kentucky on Thursday stung Boston College head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee so badly after watching her team arguably outmuscle and outplay the Wildcats for the better part of 40 minutes.
"We just needed more stops," Bernabei-McNamee said. "We needed to block out a little bit better and not let them get second opportunities, and if you take those things away, there were only a couple of undisciplined fouls at some untimely minutes that cost us a couple of points. We ran some good [plays] and got some good looks, and even our last play was an opportunity to get a last-chance effort in [the basket], so it's a tough loss.
"Credit to Kentucky for playing hard, playing well and scoring more points than they've been scoring. I thought we were the better team, and I go into most games thinking that."
Normal circumstances would have placed this game within the cozy confines of Memorial Coliseum, but the world famous arena that once housed Adolph Rupp's national championship teams closed for the year after Kentucky announced an ambitious renovation plan that immediately moved women's basketball, gymnastics, volleyball and a STUNT competitive cheerleading team to men's basketball's Rupp Arena. A glittery, 20,000-seat cathedral, it had been the home for the occasional women's basketball game over the years, but there had never been a time crunch of hosting five different teams at the same time of year.
Alternative accommodations were a necessity, and women's basketball found a different home at Transylvania University's Clive Beck Center for its opening night game against East Tennessee State with three additional games. Thursday night was the second of those games, and it followed both a home game against Austin Peay that was held at Division II's Georgetown University and a Thanksgiving break where Kentucky lost its games at the Paradise Jam in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Those gyms were both significantly bigger than the 1,200-seat Beck Center, but the home of the Pioneers offered 900-plus fans an opportunity to create a unique atmosphere with an incredibly loud sound barrier that bounced off the walls lining the narrow baseline.
"It was a fun atmosphere," Bernabei-McNamee said. "It was loud, and they had a band in this little gym. When you add the band, the acoustics were bouncing, and it was just a good atmosphere. There might not have been a ton of people there, but it was hard to hear."
It added a layer to BC's first matchup against an SEC opponent since joining the ACC nearly 20 years ago, and the back-and-forth battle paid homage to both the Eagles' rough-and-tumble Big East roots and the temporary, humble home normally reserved for a Division III powerhouse. Neither team allowed the other to grab a lead larger than BC's six-point advantage in the third quarter, and neither team managed more than a six-point run in either direction.
There were a dozen different lead changes and a dozen different tied points during the game, and BC's three different two-possession leads in the fourth quarter evaporated into a four-point Kentucky lead after Ajae Petty's second-chance put-back with 1:50 remaining. T'Yana Todd promptly responded with a three-pointer on the next possession, and a block by Andrea Daley staggered the Wildcats into two misses before a defensive rebound with 34 seconds on the clock.
Bernabei-McNamee promptly called a timeout, and a designed play to Dontavia Waggoner sent the senior to the free throw line with 10 seconds remaining. One of two shots later, the back-end miss fell into the hands of Eniya Russell, who broke containment coming out of a timeout after Kentucky advanced the ball into the frontcourt. A last opportunity with less than a second left fell out of Teya Sidberry's fingertips and touched off a raucous celebration for the home side.
Both Waggoner and Todd led a parade of double-digit scorers with 16 points, and three others, including Sidberry, Daley and a resurgent JoJo Lacey, scored at least 14 points for a shortened BC rotation. Kayla Ivey continued her resurgent play with nine assists out of the backcourt, and Lacey and Waggoner contributed nine and seven rebounds, respectively, for a team that finished statistically tied or ahead in every major category except for the three more made free throws on five more attempts by Kentucky - arguably the slimmest of differences.
"We made some really nice offensive plays [over the game]," Bernabei-McNamee said, "but we never got momentum rolling because we'd come down on defense and let them come back into the game. We talked about it in the locker room that we weren't as locked into the defensive end as we needed to be, that we needed to double their post and only really did it one time. We scored enough points to win, but we just didn't get enough stops."
BC returns to the court on Sunday when the Eagles host UMass-Lowell for their Team Impact Day. Game time is slated for 1 p.m. with television coverage available on ACC Network Extra. The game kicks off a five-game homestand between now and the end of the calendar year that will also conclude the non-conference portion of the schedule.
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Gymnasiums are smaller, but they offer electric atmospheres on par with the biggest, gaudiest Division I arenas. Smaller crowds carry the ability to generate louder noise in buildings with low-hung ceilings, and the concrete walls box the court into a guttural reverberation of chants and cheers that hit an octave occasionally swallowed by the massive D-I buildings.
Tough teams survive to win bare-knuckle basketball games in Division III gyms, which is why the buzzer-beating, 83-81 loss to Kentucky on Thursday stung Boston College head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee so badly after watching her team arguably outmuscle and outplay the Wildcats for the better part of 40 minutes.
"We just needed more stops," Bernabei-McNamee said. "We needed to block out a little bit better and not let them get second opportunities, and if you take those things away, there were only a couple of undisciplined fouls at some untimely minutes that cost us a couple of points. We ran some good [plays] and got some good looks, and even our last play was an opportunity to get a last-chance effort in [the basket], so it's a tough loss.
"Credit to Kentucky for playing hard, playing well and scoring more points than they've been scoring. I thought we were the better team, and I go into most games thinking that."
Normal circumstances would have placed this game within the cozy confines of Memorial Coliseum, but the world famous arena that once housed Adolph Rupp's national championship teams closed for the year after Kentucky announced an ambitious renovation plan that immediately moved women's basketball, gymnastics, volleyball and a STUNT competitive cheerleading team to men's basketball's Rupp Arena. A glittery, 20,000-seat cathedral, it had been the home for the occasional women's basketball game over the years, but there had never been a time crunch of hosting five different teams at the same time of year.
Alternative accommodations were a necessity, and women's basketball found a different home at Transylvania University's Clive Beck Center for its opening night game against East Tennessee State with three additional games. Thursday night was the second of those games, and it followed both a home game against Austin Peay that was held at Division II's Georgetown University and a Thanksgiving break where Kentucky lost its games at the Paradise Jam in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Those gyms were both significantly bigger than the 1,200-seat Beck Center, but the home of the Pioneers offered 900-plus fans an opportunity to create a unique atmosphere with an incredibly loud sound barrier that bounced off the walls lining the narrow baseline.
"It was a fun atmosphere," Bernabei-McNamee said. "It was loud, and they had a band in this little gym. When you add the band, the acoustics were bouncing, and it was just a good atmosphere. There might not have been a ton of people there, but it was hard to hear."
It added a layer to BC's first matchup against an SEC opponent since joining the ACC nearly 20 years ago, and the back-and-forth battle paid homage to both the Eagles' rough-and-tumble Big East roots and the temporary, humble home normally reserved for a Division III powerhouse. Neither team allowed the other to grab a lead larger than BC's six-point advantage in the third quarter, and neither team managed more than a six-point run in either direction.
There were a dozen different lead changes and a dozen different tied points during the game, and BC's three different two-possession leads in the fourth quarter evaporated into a four-point Kentucky lead after Ajae Petty's second-chance put-back with 1:50 remaining. T'Yana Todd promptly responded with a three-pointer on the next possession, and a block by Andrea Daley staggered the Wildcats into two misses before a defensive rebound with 34 seconds on the clock.
Bernabei-McNamee promptly called a timeout, and a designed play to Dontavia Waggoner sent the senior to the free throw line with 10 seconds remaining. One of two shots later, the back-end miss fell into the hands of Eniya Russell, who broke containment coming out of a timeout after Kentucky advanced the ball into the frontcourt. A last opportunity with less than a second left fell out of Teya Sidberry's fingertips and touched off a raucous celebration for the home side.
Both Waggoner and Todd led a parade of double-digit scorers with 16 points, and three others, including Sidberry, Daley and a resurgent JoJo Lacey, scored at least 14 points for a shortened BC rotation. Kayla Ivey continued her resurgent play with nine assists out of the backcourt, and Lacey and Waggoner contributed nine and seven rebounds, respectively, for a team that finished statistically tied or ahead in every major category except for the three more made free throws on five more attempts by Kentucky - arguably the slimmest of differences.
"We made some really nice offensive plays [over the game]," Bernabei-McNamee said, "but we never got momentum rolling because we'd come down on defense and let them come back into the game. We talked about it in the locker room that we weren't as locked into the defensive end as we needed to be, that we needed to double their post and only really did it one time. We scored enough points to win, but we just didn't get enough stops."
BC returns to the court on Sunday when the Eagles host UMass-Lowell for their Team Impact Day. Game time is slated for 1 p.m. with television coverage available on ACC Network Extra. The game kicks off a five-game homestand between now and the end of the calendar year that will also conclude the non-conference portion of the schedule.
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Players Mentioned
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/ Women's Basketball
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/ Women's Basketball
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/ Women's Basketball
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/ Women's BasketballWednesday, October 28
Wednesday, October 28
Wednesday, October 28
Wednesday, October 28
