Eagles Emerge As Dark Horse Candidate After Gritty Duke Defeat

Last Sunday's ACC opening round game at Duke was supposed to herald the end of days for the 2023-2024 Boston College women's basketball season. The five-game winning streak that sent the Eagles into an 11-day break prior to the trip to Durham was a thing of the distant past compared to the more recent perception of an uphill battle associated with league play, and the Blue Devils returned Reigan Richardson and Kennedy Brown, who each had led different pieces of the dominant blowout from a year ago. Throw in the added transfer of former BC point guard Taina Mair, and the experts all predicted a crash back to earth for the gritty Eagles who destroyed UMass-Lowell, UMass, Siena, Stonehill and Bryant.

That expected implosion never happened, though, and though BC lost, 80-75, a feeling quickly emerged that these Eagles are readying themselves for a run at dark horse status within an ACC featuring more parity than most recent memories.

"Basketball games are won on free throws and layups," said head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee after the Eagles' first game loss, "and I think you better knock down your gimmes. We had a lot of shots go in-and-out, and if you look at our stats, I thought we did a lot of things well. But at the end of the day, those two stats are what kind of hurts you. The number of shots we got comparatively [to Duke], we just have to make more of them."

Duke never totally blew the Eagles out of the game, and a second half that devolved into more of a defensive battle tilted the flow back towards BC after the Blue Devils entered halftime with a slight edge on the scoreboard. The 70 percent field goal percentage that included a 6-for-9 first half from beyond the arc slowly petered down towards 50 percent in the second half, and the number of shots dwindled below 10 attempts after the Eagles started crashing the boards with even more gusto.

BC, meanwhile, matched Duke in made baskets, but the bigger problem came from the larger, more expansive number of attempts. Both teams hit anywhere from four to six field goals in the third and fourth quarter, but BC attempted 44 shots after halftime and was 6-for-26 in the fourth quarter with a 4-for-11 clip from outside. That made it clear how the score would have tilted with even a marginal shift in either number.

"We talk a lot about the things that we can control," Bernabei-McNamee said. "We can control being gritty, being relentless and playing with a lot of passion, and a lot of those are all things that we have control over as players. Those are also things that I thought we did a pretty good job [controlling]. We did have a couple of defensive mental lapses that led to us giving up wide open threes against good shooters, but that's a statistic that you can't get back. We just needed to step up a little more on their step-up screens. If we had bogged down in our zone a little faster for those corner threes, it's a little bit of a different game where the pressure is on them at the end."

A loss is a loss at the end of the day, but hanging tough with a team slotted into seventh in the preseason ACC poll is an encouraging sign for a BC team that wasn't predicted to insert itself into the conference's overall conversation. Even in defeat, the overall performance showed how controlling different numbers and making some of those easier opportunities - all things that are easily improved or likely to shake down after a 75-point performance - puts BC in a higher standing than those early conversations.

Five players continued to score in double figures for the Eagles, and Dontavia Waggoner added seven rebounds with five on the offensive end. Andrea Daley, meanwhile, continued to surge towards the top of the scoring chart with 18 points on 8-of-17 shooting, and Teya Sidberry connected on an outside shot as part of a 17-point, five-rebound performance. Kaylah Ivey added five more assists, and JoJo Lacey continued finding her stroke to the tune of a 5-for-7 night shooting.

"I thought Kayla Ivey did a really nice job of settling people down and running the offense," Bernabei-McNamee said, "and we want to play with that pace and poise. I thought at times, we ended up taking silly turnovers because we knew they were coming at us with the press, but we cleaned that up in the second half."

The ACC in general is a top-heavy league, but Notre Dame, a traditional national powerhouse expected to annually place in a top slot, lost to a Syracuse team initially picked to finish ninth. A Clemson squad that previously beat Duke in early December hung tough with North Carolina, and Virginia gave third-ranked NC State all it could handle in an 11-point loss. Even Wake Forest, which was one of two teams with a losing record in non-conference play, battled Florida State on the road.

Those emerging signs open the door for a team willing to run the gauntlet, and BC, by virtue of how it played at Duke, is a name that most people aren't talking about. Like the Blue Devils, Miami enters Thursday as a middle-regarded team that historically struggled to win in Conte Forum, and the Eagles enter their Throwback Night with a 2-2 record in the last four games against the Hurricanes.

Six straight games have seen BC produce at least 20 turnovers, and the 25-point per-game average off of opposing miscues is a complement to the 24 offensive rebounds grabbed against Duke. To that end, the Eagles continue to protect their offensive opportunities as one of the best teams in the nation at offensive rebound rate and offensive boards per game, though the Hurricanes are also averaging over 15 grabs over their past seven games.

"We have to prepare for every game because there are no gimme-games," Bernabei-McNamee said. "There are no easy games in the ACC, and it'll be a battle every night. I don't care who you're playing, so we've got to be mentally and physically prepared for it. I think we're in good shape physically, so mentally, we'll keep working on our sustained excellence."

Eagles Emerge As Dark Horse Candidate After Gritty Duke Defeat

Players Mentioned

Andrea Daley

Kaylah Ivey

JoJo Lacey

Taina Mair

Teya Sidberry

Dontavia Waggoner

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