Boston College Athletics
March 04, 2024 | Women's Basketball, #ForBoston Files
BC starts the 2024 ACC Tournament with its matchup against Clemson.
College basketball transforms when the calendar switches from February to March. The atmosphere surrounding the game changes happy, trusted and beloved rituals and superstitions into hardened and serious pregame routines. Injuries requiring a couple of days' rest are no longer serious enough to keep anyone away from the court. Mundane film sessions evolve into late night cramming akin to a finals week. Fatigue disappears.
Any of a number of phrases perfectly describe a drama that's unique to the sports world, but to the players and coaches who undergo these emotional alterations without missing a beat, it's the endgame of a year or a career because, simply put, it's March, a calendar month with 31 days that remains the cathedral hosting the holy chalice.Â
It's the one place where legends are truly born, and on Wednesday, Boston College women's basketball kicks off its own version of March Madness when its first round matchup against Clemson jumpstarts the Ally ACC Women's Basketball Tournament's five-day trip to crown its 2024 conference champion.
"I hope it's a long road," BC head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee wryly said during her appearance at the ACC's pre-tournament press event. "We want it to be a long road. One thing that we say is that we have to take this one game at a time, so we're not looking ahead. We're focusing right on Clemson and making sure that we can take care of business in that first game. Outside of that, we're really not looking ahead, and [we're] not worried about anything else because it is a long road [through the tournament]."
Each of the ACC's 15 teams qualify for the conference postseason tournament hosted annually in Greensboro, North Carolina, but paths are changed or awarded based on a team's final spot in the league's overall standings table. The top four finishing teams are awarded coveted "double-byes" that send them directly into the Quarterfinals. The next five teams are then placed into the Second Round with two teams - the No. 8 and No. 9 seed - earning byes to play one another before the bottom six teams are placed into a First Round with the No. 11 seed playing the No. 15 seed as the "best team of the bottom six."
None of the rounds reseed. The unstated goal is to align the best seeds with the lowest-possible remaining team, but the buffer of a double-bye situation has been enough to prevent a team from outside the top four seeds from ever really advancing to the conference championship game during the expansion era. Nobody lower than the No. 3 seed has ever won the championship, and last year was the first time since the introduction of the double-bye that one of the top two seeds didn't compete for the conference's ultimate prize.
That said, exceptions to seeing the top seeds advance permeate the ACC's record book and are especially present during the expansion era that moved the league to 15 teams. At least one team regularly advances to at least the semifinal round on an annual basis, and there's been just one tournament where the top four seeds all qualified for the last two days of play. The 2015 iteration saw sixth-seeded UNC advance to the semifinals while two other paths included No. 13 Wake Forest and last place Virginia Tech in their quarterfinal matchups - a particular surprise given that the Hokies won one league game that year.
BC eventually matched the Tar Heels as the second-lowest seed to ever play a semifinal game when the 2020 Eagles solidified their postseason resume with a win over No. 14 Clemson, an upset winner in the first round, and an epic comeback over third place Duke, but both the 2015 UNC team and that year's Boston College side were pushed off center stage by seventh-seeded Miami's Cinderella trip to the conference championship in 2022.
The 2020 bracket also featured a quarterfinal appearance by 13th-seeded Wake Forest, but there's reason to believe that Boston College harbors dark horse status in this year's bracket after the ACC watched the Eagles fight for their last two wins.
"We're coming [to Greensboro] with a couple of wins," Bernabei-McNamee said, "so I think our team feels a lot better than we did when we were on [an extended] losing streak. We have a little momentum on our side, and I think with it being Greensboro and the tournament, everybody's excited. We're looking forward to getting on our plane, getting there, settling in for the night and getting to practice [on Tuesday] to get used to the court and give our best in that first round game."
The UNC game in effect offered the perfect illustration for postseason basketball because BC was forced to win the game with a shortened bench. Bernabei-McNamee used Senior Day to largely play six players against the more versatile Tar Heels, but hosting a starting five that saw 30-plus minutes of floor time enabled JoJo Lacey to post career-best numbers shooting while the hybrid combination of T'Yana Todd and Dontavia Waggoner bore into UNC's offense for seven of BC's eight steals.
Nearly everyone found a role, and Teya Sidberry and Andrea Daley used their defensive rebounds to find Kaylah Ivey for outlet passes that subsequently translated into offensive opportunities. Lacey would eventually foul out - the biggest drawback to playing an iron-type of game - but the roster rallied around itself to shoot 20-for-26 from the free throw line after going 13-for-16 during crunch time in the fourth quarter.
"I wish we would have maybe had that turning point a little sooner," Bernabei-McNamee admitted, "but I think the biggest thing in the ACC that you'll see right now is that the team that wins is usually the team that makes shots. I think everybody plays hard, but there's a pretty fine line between the difference and the disparity in talent. I think the team that's making more shots ends up winning the game, and finally, against UNC we made shots."
UNC offered a hallmark performance, but the Eagles turned it into a jumpstart by nuking Pittsburgh with a 26-point blowout in their final game ahead of the conference tournament. Again the large bulk of production came from the starting five, but the bench and depth chart was able to find its groove after BC outscored the Panthers with a 33-16 third quarter. Five of the six core players scored double figures, and Ivey added 12 assists while once again layering outlet passes off the defensive window prowess of Daley, Sidberry and Lacey.
"Our gameplay is fueled by our defense," Bernabei-McNamee said, "and I think we were able to generate turnovers in our last couple of games because we were playing pretty seamlessly on the defensive end. We're undersized, but it's hard to capitalize on being undersized for the offenses that we're playing against when our hands are up and they're feeling a bit rushed. We were successful in making the offenses feel rushed with some pressure on them."
Getting through the first game is always the most difficult piece of any postseason tournament, and Wednesday afternoon's opening game salvo comes against a team that previously beat the Eagles by 10 points in their only other matchup. As the matchup between the No. 12 and No. 13 teams in the conference, flipping that result wouldn't have changed anything about either team's paths other than unbreaking the tie between five-win conference opponents, so it's more important to focus on the task at hand than wondering what could have been.
To that end, BC offers an intriguing matchup for anyone willing to throw down a wild prediction for a first round runner, but aside from the lack of a tiebreaking winner, the Eagles lost to the Tigers because they lost their edge from outside. Going 0-for-11 was and is an uncharacteristic day for a volume-based, quick-shot offense, and in both of the team's last games - particularly the UNC game - enough of an outside shot existed to flip that 10-point result from the first day in February.
"We've spent a lot of this season with a low percentage from the field at the end of each game," Bernabei-McNamee said. "Characteristically, after each game, we've taken more shots than our opponent because we're working the offensive glass, we're getting hustle plays, we're causing turnovers. We just were missing layups and missing threes. In that Carolina game, we made more outside shots and made more shots, and we thankfully had that lead because we had a really sketchy fourth quarter. But I was glad to see that we had a big enough lead to end that game."
BC kicks off the 2024 Ally ACC Women's Basketball Tournament on Wednesday with a 1 p.m. tip-off against Clemson. The winner of that game advances to play fifth-seeded Louisville as part of a path that included fourth place Notre Dame with all games starting their respective days. All games through the first four days of the tournament are available via the ACC Network with the conference championship being televised on ESPN.
Any of a number of phrases perfectly describe a drama that's unique to the sports world, but to the players and coaches who undergo these emotional alterations without missing a beat, it's the endgame of a year or a career because, simply put, it's March, a calendar month with 31 days that remains the cathedral hosting the holy chalice.Â
It's the one place where legends are truly born, and on Wednesday, Boston College women's basketball kicks off its own version of March Madness when its first round matchup against Clemson jumpstarts the Ally ACC Women's Basketball Tournament's five-day trip to crown its 2024 conference champion.
"I hope it's a long road," BC head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee wryly said during her appearance at the ACC's pre-tournament press event. "We want it to be a long road. One thing that we say is that we have to take this one game at a time, so we're not looking ahead. We're focusing right on Clemson and making sure that we can take care of business in that first game. Outside of that, we're really not looking ahead, and [we're] not worried about anything else because it is a long road [through the tournament]."
Each of the ACC's 15 teams qualify for the conference postseason tournament hosted annually in Greensboro, North Carolina, but paths are changed or awarded based on a team's final spot in the league's overall standings table. The top four finishing teams are awarded coveted "double-byes" that send them directly into the Quarterfinals. The next five teams are then placed into the Second Round with two teams - the No. 8 and No. 9 seed - earning byes to play one another before the bottom six teams are placed into a First Round with the No. 11 seed playing the No. 15 seed as the "best team of the bottom six."
None of the rounds reseed. The unstated goal is to align the best seeds with the lowest-possible remaining team, but the buffer of a double-bye situation has been enough to prevent a team from outside the top four seeds from ever really advancing to the conference championship game during the expansion era. Nobody lower than the No. 3 seed has ever won the championship, and last year was the first time since the introduction of the double-bye that one of the top two seeds didn't compete for the conference's ultimate prize.
That said, exceptions to seeing the top seeds advance permeate the ACC's record book and are especially present during the expansion era that moved the league to 15 teams. At least one team regularly advances to at least the semifinal round on an annual basis, and there's been just one tournament where the top four seeds all qualified for the last two days of play. The 2015 iteration saw sixth-seeded UNC advance to the semifinals while two other paths included No. 13 Wake Forest and last place Virginia Tech in their quarterfinal matchups - a particular surprise given that the Hokies won one league game that year.
BC eventually matched the Tar Heels as the second-lowest seed to ever play a semifinal game when the 2020 Eagles solidified their postseason resume with a win over No. 14 Clemson, an upset winner in the first round, and an epic comeback over third place Duke, but both the 2015 UNC team and that year's Boston College side were pushed off center stage by seventh-seeded Miami's Cinderella trip to the conference championship in 2022.
The 2020 bracket also featured a quarterfinal appearance by 13th-seeded Wake Forest, but there's reason to believe that Boston College harbors dark horse status in this year's bracket after the ACC watched the Eagles fight for their last two wins.
"We're coming [to Greensboro] with a couple of wins," Bernabei-McNamee said, "so I think our team feels a lot better than we did when we were on [an extended] losing streak. We have a little momentum on our side, and I think with it being Greensboro and the tournament, everybody's excited. We're looking forward to getting on our plane, getting there, settling in for the night and getting to practice [on Tuesday] to get used to the court and give our best in that first round game."
The UNC game in effect offered the perfect illustration for postseason basketball because BC was forced to win the game with a shortened bench. Bernabei-McNamee used Senior Day to largely play six players against the more versatile Tar Heels, but hosting a starting five that saw 30-plus minutes of floor time enabled JoJo Lacey to post career-best numbers shooting while the hybrid combination of T'Yana Todd and Dontavia Waggoner bore into UNC's offense for seven of BC's eight steals.
Nearly everyone found a role, and Teya Sidberry and Andrea Daley used their defensive rebounds to find Kaylah Ivey for outlet passes that subsequently translated into offensive opportunities. Lacey would eventually foul out - the biggest drawback to playing an iron-type of game - but the roster rallied around itself to shoot 20-for-26 from the free throw line after going 13-for-16 during crunch time in the fourth quarter.
"I wish we would have maybe had that turning point a little sooner," Bernabei-McNamee admitted, "but I think the biggest thing in the ACC that you'll see right now is that the team that wins is usually the team that makes shots. I think everybody plays hard, but there's a pretty fine line between the difference and the disparity in talent. I think the team that's making more shots ends up winning the game, and finally, against UNC we made shots."
UNC offered a hallmark performance, but the Eagles turned it into a jumpstart by nuking Pittsburgh with a 26-point blowout in their final game ahead of the conference tournament. Again the large bulk of production came from the starting five, but the bench and depth chart was able to find its groove after BC outscored the Panthers with a 33-16 third quarter. Five of the six core players scored double figures, and Ivey added 12 assists while once again layering outlet passes off the defensive window prowess of Daley, Sidberry and Lacey.
"Our gameplay is fueled by our defense," Bernabei-McNamee said, "and I think we were able to generate turnovers in our last couple of games because we were playing pretty seamlessly on the defensive end. We're undersized, but it's hard to capitalize on being undersized for the offenses that we're playing against when our hands are up and they're feeling a bit rushed. We were successful in making the offenses feel rushed with some pressure on them."
Getting through the first game is always the most difficult piece of any postseason tournament, and Wednesday afternoon's opening game salvo comes against a team that previously beat the Eagles by 10 points in their only other matchup. As the matchup between the No. 12 and No. 13 teams in the conference, flipping that result wouldn't have changed anything about either team's paths other than unbreaking the tie between five-win conference opponents, so it's more important to focus on the task at hand than wondering what could have been.
To that end, BC offers an intriguing matchup for anyone willing to throw down a wild prediction for a first round runner, but aside from the lack of a tiebreaking winner, the Eagles lost to the Tigers because they lost their edge from outside. Going 0-for-11 was and is an uncharacteristic day for a volume-based, quick-shot offense, and in both of the team's last games - particularly the UNC game - enough of an outside shot existed to flip that 10-point result from the first day in February.
"We've spent a lot of this season with a low percentage from the field at the end of each game," Bernabei-McNamee said. "Characteristically, after each game, we've taken more shots than our opponent because we're working the offensive glass, we're getting hustle plays, we're causing turnovers. We just were missing layups and missing threes. In that Carolina game, we made more outside shots and made more shots, and we thankfully had that lead because we had a really sketchy fourth quarter. But I was glad to see that we had a big enough lead to end that game."
BC kicks off the 2024 Ally ACC Women's Basketball Tournament on Wednesday with a 1 p.m. tip-off against Clemson. The winner of that game advances to play fifth-seeded Louisville as part of a path that included fourth place Notre Dame with all games starting their respective days. All games through the first four days of the tournament are available via the ACC Network with the conference championship being televised on ESPN.
Players Mentioned
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