"I can always count on Kayla to be our energy giver"

Elite-level basketball teams know a little something about building a depth chart. They all need players who are capable of stepping up into bigger roles while relishing the unsung or underappreciated portions of the game, and they all understand how the people are special in their undertakings. They win because of the proverbial players that nobody's ever heard about, and their signature games are unsurprising to teammates and coaches - even if they shock the occasional outsider or two.

Boston College women's basketball head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee loves recruiting players with that underdog mentality, but last week's public breakout was an exhibition of exactly why a player like Kayla Lezama fits perfectly into the Eagles' overall mold. A bench player capable of spelling starters, she locked down Siena for 13 points before lighting up Stonehill for an additional nine points, all while maintaining an intensity that already defined her defensive role through the Eagles' season's first half.

"From a coach's standpoint, I know I can always count on Kayla to be our energy giver," said Bernabei-McNamee after the team's 88-59 win over the Saints. "I know that when she gets on the floor, she's 100 percent, going all out, and that's what she does every day in practice."

Lezama represents a homegrown story for BC's player development model, but few outsiders recognize how her year-plus with the Eagles built on her previous experiences. The Hyde Park native always felt custom-fit for the BC uniform because she was one of two in-state recruits to commit to the school from her recruiting class, but she came with a reputation as an all-around basketball player after she earned honors while playing for the prestigious Noble & Greenough School that competes as part of Massachusetts' prep school circuit.

The Independent School League, known more colloquially as the ISL, is, after all, a breeding ground for elite athletes who compete at the Division I level, but it, too, operates under a more shadowy spotlight cast by the state's overall high school tournament structure. The schools are more exclusive and less regionalized, and the coverage is more or less obstructed by the local MIAA competitions. That means that the athletes sometimes go unnoticed in comparison to the public and private schools that make headlines even as they operate on a higher plane.

Lezama was one of those student-athletes, and she'd earned All-Star status from both the Boston Globe and Boston Herald by averaging 14 points with seven rebounds and seven assists during the 2018-2019 season. A highly-touted prospect, she stepped into USA Basketball's 16U trials before ascending to the Bulldogs' overall captaincy, and her trips through the travel team circuit included a stint with both the New England Crusaders and Exodus NYC of the EYBL.

"I wanted to make sure that I came into games with energy," Lezama said. "There's so many kinds of contributions that I think about when I come in, so it's more about what my team needs, if it's rebounding, getting a stop or scoring. I just try to make sure that someone can't get away with anything from a coverage standpoint."

It didn't automatically translate to external success, but Lezama was a gritty guard built to withstand an opposing offense's pressure attack. In her first year last season, the freshman played in 19 games, and her two steals against Central Connecticut State came less than a month after she scored seven points with five boards in a win over Morgan State.

She went relatively unnoticed while coming off the bench, but her offseason work exploded into full view this year when she had six points with a career-best four steals against Providence in 21 minutes. She broke her career-high for scoring one game later when she went 3-for-4 overall and 2-for-3 beyond the arc in a 22-minute game against Marquette, she was a mainstay through the Kentucky game with two assists in 12 minutes' worth of work.

"As a coach, experience is everything," Bernabei-McNamee said, "so if younger players or newer players on the team can get experience, that's just going to build our future. Even for this year as well, it just makes our chemistry really a lot better."

Lezama's gritty, hard-nosed game steadily earned her minutes against UMass Lowell and UMass, but her performances against the Saints and Skyhawks across a three-day span ultimately fired her name directly into the BC basketball consciousness. She went a combined 10-for-17 across the two games and scored double figures for the first time in her career when she scored 13 points against Siena, but her performance vacillated between the offensive and defensive side of the ball after she tallied three combined assists and three combined steals. Her five rebounds included three on the defensive window, and the minutes she posted felt like they were impactful in spelling starters who saw equal time during games that ordinarily would've featured 25-30 minutes' worth of work.

"When we just play with pace and slow down just a touch, this team is really good," Bernabei-McNamee said. "It's always the hardest thing to know - when to push hard in transition before needing to slow it down and play, but we're so focused on [developing] the high IQ in the half-court. Kayla has said that we're getting it and it's a work in progress, but we're always going to be working."

"We've had a different offensive [system] where it was post-based," Lezama said, "but now we have a lot of guards and we're starting to work through the offense. We're finding out how we can adjust with it, and that's what's been helping us. It's taken some time, but everything is starting to get into their groups."

It couldn't be happening at a better time. Last Tuesday's game was an 11 a.m. matinee to coincide with BC's Field Trip Day game for local area schools, but the Eagles broke 100 points with their largest margin of victory in program history. No player had a plus/minus lower than 20, and the 40 points off turnovers and 54 points in the paint both would have outscored Stonehill's overall output in a game that BC won by 64.

Both that win and the victory over the Saints pushed the Eagles back over .500 with a 7-5 overall record, and Wednesday's game against Bryant is the last non-conference test before ACC play opens with a New Year's Eve trip to Duke. The Bulldogs themselves vastly improved on their 9-21 season from a year ago by starting this year with a 6-5 overall record, and their undefeated December included a three-point overtime win over Sacred Heart and a nine-point win over Loyola before a 93-20 victory over Division III's Fisher College.

The BC game is their last Division I non-conference game before a January 4 trip to Albany to start America East play, though another Division III exhibition against the MASCAC's Bridgewater State Bears awaits on December 30.

BC's game against Bryant tips off on Wednesday at 7 p.m. The game can be seen on ACC Network Extra via ESPN's family of online and mobile device apps.

"I can always count on Kayla to be our energy giver"

Players Mentioned

Kayla Lezama

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