Boston College Women's Basketball Breezes Past Northeastern

Since BC's win over Purdue last month in the ACC/B1G challenge, one week after a tight loss to a very good Oklahoma team, the hopes for this season have been ratcheted up, and a shot at an NCAA berth seems very much a possibility. In order to realistically put themselves in to a tournament position in the very difficult ACC, BC women's basketball needed to finish the OOC schedule strong with no let-ups.

So far, so good. BC continued their breeze through their nonconference schedule with a comprehensive 71-45 win yesterday over Northeastern, on the road at NU's Cabot Center. BC carried a 46-19 lead in to halftime before easing up a bit in the second half for the semi-respectable final margin.

With the win, BC improves to 10-1 on the season, by far their best start since starting 12-1 in 2010-11. That year, BC went on to an NIT berth after going 5-9 in ACC play - so there's a lot of work left to do.

That said, it's hard not to be encouraged. Even if you take the tournament talk out of the picture - remember, this team has been borderline non-competitive in the past 3-4 years, and has lost a number of head-scratching non-conference games - it's exciting to see the development of some of their young players.

Kelly Hughes had one of the best games of her career, dropping 26 points on the Huskies. The junior had 23 points in the first half alone. Freshman Mariella Fasoula, who's been better than advertised for the Eagles this year, also had double digits, scoring 13, while adding 4 rebounds. Martina Mosetti, whose play is a real revelation to watch in person, had 8 assists. The team as a whole had an assist to turnover ratio of 16 to 2.

BC is back on the court tomorrow night against Bryant, a 6 PM tipoff at Conte Forum. They'll want to win that one and stay hot as ACC play begins this weekend - the Eagles travel to Blacksburg on Sunday to take on Virginia Tech.