Photo by: ©Joe Sullivan/ Boston College Athletics
Rebuilt For The Modern Game
October 28, 2025 | Women's Basketball, #ForBoston Files
BC's smaller roster is designed to play a new style of basketball.
Conventional basketball wisdom looks at five players on the court with built-in assumptions about their respective roles. Forwards play between intermediate spaces while flanking a tall center in the middle. Guards pace the backcourt but expect to crash the block only when dribbling from the outer rim. Each then slots defensively into similar spots, and the numbers resemble those regions by striking a coherent and cohesive balance.
The modern game blew that apart by using analytics to determine new and lesser-defined roles. In women's basketball, a particular class of athletes began permeating newer styles built around the five best athletes on the floor, and an exciting and new version of the game evolved around higher volume shooters and quicker, more diverse defenders. Scoring increased as it did within the men's game, but the most efficient shooters at the Division I level remained on the interior.
Boston College head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee understood the delicate balance between smaller volume shooters and larger efficiency at the rim when she entered this year's offseason, so it wasn't a surprise when she recast her program's offseason into a new style of play. To the outsider, her roster had been ravaged by transfers and graduation, but as the 2025-2026 season begins, the Eagles are instead ripping a bandage away from the future of the game by morphing into a new style that's increasingly apparent across the basketball spectrum.
"We're young," explained the coach during her local media press conference in mid-October. "There are a lot of new faces, and we're looking forward to seeing how our chemistry off the court, which is really spectacular, is going to transform into great chemistry on the court. These young ladies are excitable. They're looking forward to representing Boston College on the court, and what I love about them is the grittiness and competitive nature that they're bringing to what we're doing with practice."
Less than a decade ago, women's basketball was more of a lower-scoring game built around those stronger high percentage shots. A dozen teams averaged greater than 80 points while four teams averaged over 50 percent from the floor on any given night. Half of those four teams - Notre Dame and Baylor - averaged less than 15 three-point attempts, and none of the most recognizable ACC teams opted to shoot more than that number. Two teams hit more than 300 three-pointers during the 2017-2018 season, but one of those - Duke - averaged just north of six shots from beyond the arc during a run to the Sweet Sixteen.
Players like Kalani Brown and Azura Stevens dominated field goal percentages while towering over opponents, and even the guards on the national champion Notre Dame squad utilized more free throw attempts from its two highest-scoring threats than three-pointers. At Boston College, the last team prior to Bernabei-McNamee's arrival scored less than 60 points per game while taking more than 20 three-pointers on a roster that was untapped within its potential.
Eight years later, Bernabei-McNamee built a second postseason team around a faster team that knew how to strike a chord between the dribble-drive and three-pointer. BC didn't necessarily cut down on its three-pointers, but the Eagles built their shooting around two outside presences while pounding the rock to interior players who could draw contact in the paint. Through an offseason in which all five starters and the bulk of the team's scoring departed, the coach was able to analyze how that style generated success while understanding how to rebuild a roster around non-negotiable core elements.
"In these last few years, there's been big change and almost a complete 180-degree change in what we do," said Bernabei-McNamee, "but I think, as a coach, what I try to stick with is staying true to what I believe makes a great basketball team great. We stick to our three things: trusting the process, trusting each other, loving the game. We love the grit and the grind, and being gritty is what we do. We try to stick with that, and I still try to coach them not to worry about [outside interference]. If I'm on them and getting on them, it's because they're well-loved and a lot is expected of them."
"I'm just really looking forward to the opportunity that I'm getting," said freshman Amirah Anderson. "It's a new roster with a lot of new pieces, and I just want to take pride in being that hard-working player that does the dirty work. I also think I have a good offensive game with three-point shooting and rebounding, so whatever I can do is whatever the team needs while being a voice and an energetic presence in practice and in the games."
This year's BC team is therefore unlike any of the coach's previous iterations. It's a wild card that's loaded with unknowns, but its design always intended to recruit players to play within a scheme built around a smaller roster. An army of dogs, in the best possible word, is therefore able to nip and bark at opponents that are then forced to run the floor with a smaller and more agile team that can disguise which player is jumping into the paint or crashing the boards - which, in turn, then can draw new fouls from bigger players that aren't used to seeing that style.
"They've been super fun to coach," said Bernabei-McNamee. "I have a young coaching staff as well, and we're growing this program. We hope to put a product on the court that [everyone] can be proud of, and that's one that I can guarantee, that we're going to compete hard with everything that we do."
"Coach Mac always says that it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog," said sophomore Athena Tomlinson. "That's a big part of our mentality for this year. We have a lot of ways that we can overcome what we lack in height with other things - like our intensity on defense, our relentlessness to keep playing hard every single play of every single game. Our shooting ability is phenomenal."
BC opens its 2025-2026 season on Monday, November 3 when it hosts Holy Cross. Each of the first four games of the season are at Conte Forum, and the Eagles don't leave New England until a Thanksgiving weekend trip to the Daytona Beach Classic. Selected in the bottom third of the preseason ACC poll, they won't play a true road game away from the six-state region until they travel to Duke for a January 1 matinee on New Year's Day.Â
Monday's game is at 6 p.m. and can be seen on the ACC Network Extra streaming service. For tickets, call 617-552-GoBC or visit BCEagles.com for more information.
The modern game blew that apart by using analytics to determine new and lesser-defined roles. In women's basketball, a particular class of athletes began permeating newer styles built around the five best athletes on the floor, and an exciting and new version of the game evolved around higher volume shooters and quicker, more diverse defenders. Scoring increased as it did within the men's game, but the most efficient shooters at the Division I level remained on the interior.
Boston College head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee understood the delicate balance between smaller volume shooters and larger efficiency at the rim when she entered this year's offseason, so it wasn't a surprise when she recast her program's offseason into a new style of play. To the outsider, her roster had been ravaged by transfers and graduation, but as the 2025-2026 season begins, the Eagles are instead ripping a bandage away from the future of the game by morphing into a new style that's increasingly apparent across the basketball spectrum.
"We're young," explained the coach during her local media press conference in mid-October. "There are a lot of new faces, and we're looking forward to seeing how our chemistry off the court, which is really spectacular, is going to transform into great chemistry on the court. These young ladies are excitable. They're looking forward to representing Boston College on the court, and what I love about them is the grittiness and competitive nature that they're bringing to what we're doing with practice."
Less than a decade ago, women's basketball was more of a lower-scoring game built around those stronger high percentage shots. A dozen teams averaged greater than 80 points while four teams averaged over 50 percent from the floor on any given night. Half of those four teams - Notre Dame and Baylor - averaged less than 15 three-point attempts, and none of the most recognizable ACC teams opted to shoot more than that number. Two teams hit more than 300 three-pointers during the 2017-2018 season, but one of those - Duke - averaged just north of six shots from beyond the arc during a run to the Sweet Sixteen.
Players like Kalani Brown and Azura Stevens dominated field goal percentages while towering over opponents, and even the guards on the national champion Notre Dame squad utilized more free throw attempts from its two highest-scoring threats than three-pointers. At Boston College, the last team prior to Bernabei-McNamee's arrival scored less than 60 points per game while taking more than 20 three-pointers on a roster that was untapped within its potential.
Eight years later, Bernabei-McNamee built a second postseason team around a faster team that knew how to strike a chord between the dribble-drive and three-pointer. BC didn't necessarily cut down on its three-pointers, but the Eagles built their shooting around two outside presences while pounding the rock to interior players who could draw contact in the paint. Through an offseason in which all five starters and the bulk of the team's scoring departed, the coach was able to analyze how that style generated success while understanding how to rebuild a roster around non-negotiable core elements.
"In these last few years, there's been big change and almost a complete 180-degree change in what we do," said Bernabei-McNamee, "but I think, as a coach, what I try to stick with is staying true to what I believe makes a great basketball team great. We stick to our three things: trusting the process, trusting each other, loving the game. We love the grit and the grind, and being gritty is what we do. We try to stick with that, and I still try to coach them not to worry about [outside interference]. If I'm on them and getting on them, it's because they're well-loved and a lot is expected of them."
"I'm just really looking forward to the opportunity that I'm getting," said freshman Amirah Anderson. "It's a new roster with a lot of new pieces, and I just want to take pride in being that hard-working player that does the dirty work. I also think I have a good offensive game with three-point shooting and rebounding, so whatever I can do is whatever the team needs while being a voice and an energetic presence in practice and in the games."
This year's BC team is therefore unlike any of the coach's previous iterations. It's a wild card that's loaded with unknowns, but its design always intended to recruit players to play within a scheme built around a smaller roster. An army of dogs, in the best possible word, is therefore able to nip and bark at opponents that are then forced to run the floor with a smaller and more agile team that can disguise which player is jumping into the paint or crashing the boards - which, in turn, then can draw new fouls from bigger players that aren't used to seeing that style.
"They've been super fun to coach," said Bernabei-McNamee. "I have a young coaching staff as well, and we're growing this program. We hope to put a product on the court that [everyone] can be proud of, and that's one that I can guarantee, that we're going to compete hard with everything that we do."
"Coach Mac always says that it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog," said sophomore Athena Tomlinson. "That's a big part of our mentality for this year. We have a lot of ways that we can overcome what we lack in height with other things - like our intensity on defense, our relentlessness to keep playing hard every single play of every single game. Our shooting ability is phenomenal."
BC opens its 2025-2026 season on Monday, November 3 when it hosts Holy Cross. Each of the first four games of the season are at Conte Forum, and the Eagles don't leave New England until a Thanksgiving weekend trip to the Daytona Beach Classic. Selected in the bottom third of the preseason ACC poll, they won't play a true road game away from the six-state region until they travel to Duke for a January 1 matinee on New Year's Day.Â
Monday's game is at 6 p.m. and can be seen on the ACC Network Extra streaming service. For tickets, call 617-552-GoBC or visit BCEagles.com for more information.
Players Mentioned
G
/ Women's Basketball
G
/ Women's BasketballMen's Basketball: UMass Postgame Press Conference (Dec. 10, 2025)
Thursday, December 11
Women's Basketball: Bryant Postgame Press Conference (Dec. 9, 2025)
Wednesday, December 10
Rowing: Christmas Music
Tuesday, December 09
Rowing: Favorite Thanksgiving Food
Tuesday, December 09
