With four seconds remaining in the first half of Boston College women’s basketball’s game against No. 19 North Carolina, Reniya Kelly sank a long two-pointer to cut the Tar Heels’ deficit to three.
BC had turned its luck around in the second quarter. After falling behind 16–23, Savannah Samuel and T’yana Todd combined for seven straight points to tie the game.
A six-point burst later in the quarter brought the score to 37–31, BC’s largest lead.
The Tar Heels (15–3, 3–2 Atlantic Coast) didn’t trail for long after a tough second quarter, shutting down BC’s offense (10–8, 1–4) on their way to an 80–67 conference win.
When play resumed in the third quarter, UNC wasted no time reclaiming the lead. The Tar Heels forced three BC turnovers and scored six points in the opening two minutes.
While the Eagles found the right looks in the first half and connected on their shots, those quality looks and BC’s confidence dwindled in the third quarter.
“I think I have a group of good-hearted players, so as soon as they miss a couple shots, instead of that fueling them to say, ‘All right, I’m gonna make the next one,’ I think sometimes they think, ‘Oh, I better not shoot the next one,’” BC head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee said. “I’m trying to change that mentality, because, you know, this is an aggressive league, and you got to continue that aggression.”
The Eagles turned the ball over nine times in the third quarter.
“A forced shot is the same thing as a turnover,” Bernabei-McNamee said. “So we got to make a little bit better decisions with the ball. But with that, when people double us when we drive, our shooters got to be ready to shoot, and I thought we passed up a lot of open shots. I think we had a big scoring drought there in that third quarter, and I think people passed up open shots.”
Without point guard Kaylah Ivey in the lineup, the Eagles mustered only six assists as a team. BC found the most success when attacking the basket.
Dontavia Waggoner led those attacks, earning 12 free throw attempts and finishing with 15 points.
“Yeah, I think when Tay drives it hard to the basket, she’s athletic, and you have a hard time stopping her,” Bernabei-McNamee said. “She’s continually getting better at making reads, instead of like shooting the ball against a few people when she drives it, she’s really trying to work on driving it, coming off two feet, and seeing the open person.”
T’yana Todd went 8 of 9 from the free-throw line and led all scorers with 18 points. Todd was also the only Eagle to make multiple threes. The only other player to make a three for BC was freshman Tatum Greene.
“We had a good rebounding lineup almost the entire four quarters in the game, and that should really give our shooters more confidence,” Bernabei-McNamee said. “But, I thought in the third and fourth quarter—third especially—we just didn’t have that confidence to shoot threes and take the open shot. It was like we were hesitant and second-guessing ourselves, and we need to work on that.”
