Recap and Key Takeaways: Boston College Earns Win in Back & Forth Game Against Albany

Coach McNamee welcomed her former team to town this afternoon as the Boston College women’s basketball team defeated the Albany Great Danes by a score of 77-65.

Albany jumped out to an early lead, and despite a few ties midway through the first quarter, the Great Danes led 19-16 after the first 10 minutes of play. Albany’s lead was largely due to the fact that while the Eagles were shooting at 33%, the Great Danes shot 50% in the first.

The Eagles took their first lead of the game a couple minutes into the second quarter off of an Ally VanTimmeren 3 pointer, shortly followed by a Taylor Soule bucket for a 24-19 BC lead. The Great Danes got their fifth foul just over 3 minutes into the period, which gave BC an early advantage as well. However, BC’s biggest advantage came from Makayla Dickens, who hit a trio of nothing but net 3 pointers. The Eagles managed to take a 41-31 lead into halftime in no small part due to those 3s.

Albany opened the third quarter with a trio of 3s to get back into the game, and the Great Danes retook the lead just over 3 minutes into the game. The Eagles didn’t earn the lead back until there were just a couple minutes back in the game, and they lead 56-53 heading into the fourth.

The game stayed close through most of the fourth quarter, but the Eagles managed to hold a lead. The Great Danes started fouling with about 90 seconds left in the game, which allowed BC to pad the lead with free throws and earn the 77-65 victory.

Key Takeaways

• The Eagles are playing much more aggressive defense this season, which is good! This is resulting in more fouls as they start to play better teams, but BC got things more under control after the first quarter today. They’ll need to work on finding a balance before ACC play starts, but either way there was truly some fantastic defensive plays today. You love to see it.
• Speaking of fouls, BC has gotten very good at drawing them! Cam Swartz in particular has been good at this.
• The Eagles definitely need to focus on dominating rebounding and not letting opponents get second chance points.
• VanTimmeren had her best game of the season today - she looked more confident than she has since last season when she made such a seamless adjustment to NCAA play.
• The Eagles had a rough first quarter accuracy-wise, but by the end of the game they were shooting over 50%.