Boston College Women's Basketball Defeats UMass Lowell 66-55

Boston College women's basketball recovered from a sloppy first half with a dominant third quarter effort to top UMass Lowell 66-55 on Sunday afternoon at Conte Forum. The Eagles trailed 30-26 at halftime, but outscored UML 18-4 in the third to overcome the River Hawks and pull away for their fifth consecutive victory. With the win, BC is now 9-1 on the season, continuing their best start during the tenure of coach Erik Johnson.

The third quarter stats were pretty staggering, with BC holding Lowell to 1-for-15 from the field (6.7%) while shooting 57.1% themselves. During the second half, BC was able to consistently and successfully feed Mariella Fasoula and Katie Quandt inside, who were able to use their size and strength to score some easy layins. BC also got their passing game going successfully, showing the kind of rhythm and teamwork that's been the team's hallmark so far this season.

"It's nice to have a team that can flounder a bit, but put the pedal to the metal and come out with a win against a good team that's playing well," said Johnson after the game, while noting that BC was "not satisfied in any way with today's performance... but at the end of the day, we got the job done."

Balance was the name of the game for BC offensively, with their five leading scorers putting up 12 (Fasoula), 10 (Kailey Edwards), 9 (Kelly Hughes), 9 (Nicole Boudreau) and 9 (Quandt). This was a continuation of a trend for BC; in their last game, a 70+ point output, their leading scorer had just 11 points. It never seems to be one or two players in particular who lead the way - BC's offense looks most effective when everyone is touching the ball and contributing.

"We have a balanced team, and they do share the ball well," said Johnson. "What Lowell did [in the first half] was take away scoring from some of our favorite places. But because we have a balanced team, we can score all over the place."

The Eagles came within 40 seconds of shutting out the River Hawks for the entire third quarter, starting with a 15-0 run that was fueled in large part by Italian sophomore Martina Mosetti. With just over two minutes to play in the quarter, Mosetti hit a smooth jumper from just inside the three point line to put BC up 39-30. On the other end, she swatted away a UMass-Lowell shot attempt with a block that brought the Eagles' bench to its feet. She then came down on offense and set up a sequence of passes that led to an easy layup by Quandt to give the Eagles their first double digit lead.

Kailey Edwards (4), Mosetti (3) and Alexa Coulombe (3) led the team in assists; BC combined for 17 assists in total on the game. BC lost the rebounding battle 34-30.

BC takes a break for Christmas, then returns to action with two games in three days. They travel across town to face Northeastern next Monday afternoon, then host Bryant on Dec. 30 in their last game before the ACC schedule starts. BC will want to take their game up a notch before ACC play begins, but are surely happy that their record is better than anyone would have predicted to this point.