The Floor General 2.0

Kaylah Ivey hit an unlikely snag before her junior season at Boston College.

She'd joined a national championship contender at the height of COVID-19's overall impact on college athletics, but she'd muscled through two seasons of playing the backup role to the Eagles' star guards. She'd been, in many ways, groomed to assume the starting role, and she began filling shoes by slowly moving into a featured position. The sporadic player from the pandemic-impacted season of 2020-2021 was on the floor for the closing minutes of BC's run through the WNIT in 2022, and she'd been the player who nailed Cameron Swartz with a pass that left the senior sharpshooter with an opportunity for a last second three-point attempt to tie the Eagles' Quarterfinal loss to Columbia.

Natural evolution pointed to the backcourt becoming Ivey's show, but the unthinkable happened when she tore her ACL before her third season ever began. In one instant, her whole trajectory changed, and a year went up in smoke as she sat on the sidelines in street clothes. Her spot was gone, and with it went an entire season's worth of work.

The whole experience humbled a player who returned with two years of eligibility still intact, but the transition back into a starting role is offering merely a delay, not a stoppage. Gifted a second chance, the floor general that Joanna Bernabei-McNamee recruited is running a system to near-perfection thanks to a revamped outlook by a player who has overcome her own brand of adversity.

"The team really trusts her," said Bernabei-McNamee. "She's been a great leader, a vocal leader, and a leader by example. She's kind of that player that gets on the floor and exudes calmness, and she gets the team to settle into what we need to settle into."

Decision-making is a key part of the point guard experience, but Bernabei-McNamee's game plan and overall system uses the position as a lynchpin for BC's desired speed and pace. It requires an inherent toughness that's built into an uncanny combination of vision and grit that ultimately stirs a drink that mixes five players into a single, cohesive team.

Play is able to move faster or slower in any direction because the point guard decides to push or play for the half court, but possessing the appropriate situational awareness requires an unmatched intelligence with a natural leadership. Executing the challenge forces players to commit to their own roles, but the movement begins, even if it doesn't end, in the point guard's hands.

For Ivey, that's exactly the kind of role that she envisioned when she left Riverdale Baptist High School. The Maryland native averaged 12.5 points and 4.3 assists per game as a senior after averaging 13.8 points, 3.8 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game as a junior, and she finished her career with 1,424 points and over 500 assists in 122 games for a program that ended her senior season with 27 wins. She was one of the top 15 recruits at her position and a top-100 player coming out of high school, and many observers tabbed her as the future of Boston College's backcourt when she joined the Eagles after the 2019-2020 season.

BC, meanwhile, was on the heels of contending for the national tournament before COVID-19 canceled the 2020 postseason, but the backcourt had an opening to build a future foundation after the eventual departures of both Makayla Dickens and Marnelle Garraud. Both had produced over 100 assists during that 2019-2020 season, and Garraud would eventually pass the 121 helpers recorded by Dickens by creating 123 assists during BC's return to postseason play. The duo had left BC with the eighth and ninth-most assists in program history, and there was a tantalizing future for Ivey after two players combined for 737 assists.

The only problem was the aforementioned ACL injury that erased her junior season. Redshirting retained her two years of eligibility, but Ivey sat out the entire season while freshman Taina Mair averaged over six assists per game. The Boston native became the instant replacement for both Dickens and Garraud, and while Ivey supported her team with the same gusto that she carried on the floor, she also found herself evolving as an athlete.

"Mentally, I've tried to slow the game down more in my head over the years," Ivey admitted. "When I got here a few years ago, everything was just fast, fast, fast, but now that I'm a senior [with two years' left], I'm older and everything in the game just slowed in my mind. But I also think that helps me dissect the difference better and make the right decisions."

The change arguably turned Ivey into a more dangerous weapon for BC, and when she hit the floor at the start of this year, the point guard position was back open after Mair's departure. Almost immediately, Ivey picked up exactly where she left off, and her four assists against Holy Cross and Harvard sparked the offense through the first two games before she registered a then-high of seven against Northeastern.

A momentary step back against Ohio State echoed the Eagles' overall struggles in that game, but since mid-November, Ivey has become the go-to option to start BC's team play at both ends of the floor. She's recorded no less than five assists in any game with her last four outings producing nine, nine, 11 and 10, and her three steals against Wisconsin included a 34-minute performance that produced four rebounds, including three on the defensive window. Her two three-pointers against UMass-Lowell came while BC scored 90 points for the first time since a 94-point outburst against Quinnipiac in the 2021-2022 season, and the Eagles surpassed that number one game later with 95 points in a beatdown win over UMass.

Ivey's intensity has been a constant for the team, and her intelligence bookends those eye-popping selfless numbers with a decided lack of turnovers and a tendency to avoid taking fouls. All of it's led to the recent outbreak, to which BC returns to the court on Sunday to potentially pad more of those numbers against a Siena team that snapped a three-game losing streak on Thursday with a three-point win over Fordham.

"Physically, I'm feeling better," Ivey said earlier this season. "Honestly, every day, every game, I just get more and more comfortable with my decision-making, and I'm trusting my body and trusting my knee to make sure everything is up to par. I think that getting into the flow of our offense and working with my teammates to move the ball makes me more comfortable because I can set people up to make the right decision."

BC takes on Siena on Sunday afternoon in its annual ALZ Together Game. Tip-off is at 12 p.m. with coverage slated for the ACC Network Extra channel available through ESPN's online family of Internet and mobile device apps.

Players Mentioned

Kaylah Ivey

Taina Mair

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