Women’s Basketball: BU prevails in overtime victory against crosstown rival Northeastern

Featured image by Jacob Ireland

By Brian Foisy

With less than three minutes remaining in the third quarter, the ball found freshman guard Inés Monteagudo behind the arc with the Northeastern Huskies (4-6) leading BU, 53-50.

The Terriers went on a 37-20 run across the two previous quarters to turn a 17-point deficit into a one possession game. 

Monteagudo, whose family traveled to Boston from her native Spain to catch Friday’s game before the holidays, had only averaged six minutes in the first 10 games of her freshman season. Now, with 10 points in the game already, she had a chance to cap off her team’s run. 

Monteagudo rose up, shot, and delivered a high-arching nothing-but-net jumper. Game tied, 53-53. 

 

A dog fight followed, with the two teams ultimately needing an extra five minutes after regulation to settle Friday’s afternoon contest, where Boston University women’s basketball (8-3) capitalized on clutch shots to defeat their crosstown rival 83-80 in overtime. 

Monteagudo played 27 minutes, scored 15 points and dished out five assists. All were career-highs.

“I’m so happy for her to have her career high today, she played great,” Graves said.

Monteagudo joined Anastasiia Semenova (18 points) with a clutch career-high performance. Semenova, a sophomore forward, has now set new career-highs in points in three straight games. Together, along with 13 points from junior guard Alex Giannaros and a monster 26 points, 12 rebounds and 6 assists from senior forward Caitlin Weimar, they helped BU outlast the Huskies.

“I’m just really proud of them,” coach Melissa Graves said following Friday’s win. “They found a way to get it done.”

Northeastern outscored the Terriers 25-10 in the first quarter, by locking down Weimar in the paint and capitalizing off poor turnovers from the Terriers. The Huskies scored 12 points off BU’s six turnovers. 

“I think we didn’t start the way we wanted to, obviously,” Graves said. 

From there, the Terriers dug in, outscoring Northeastern 27-20 in the next period but never truly coming within striking distance. The Huskies’ lead bobbed in and out of double digits, but BU was slowly chipping away. 

Graves talked about the team’s approach of looking at the game one possession at a time. 

“We wanted to look at strings of three possessions where we can get a stop, score, stop,” Graves said.

This method of scoring and stopping in bunches helped the Terriers cut the lead to single digits by the final minute of the second quarter. A 3-pointer from Semenova cut Northeastern’s lead to six points with 41 seconds left in the first half. 

On the next possession, freshman Husky guard Yirsy Quéliz fed her teammate, senior forward Deja Bristol, who scored after a cut to the basket. The eight-point lead dashed BU’s hopes for a one possession game at halftime. 

Both teams had a slow start to begin the third quarter, with the exception of a make from Northeastern’s Derin Erdogan to put the Huskies back up by 47-37 on their first possession. Two minutes later, a three from Giannaros brought it within single digits again for BU. 

A Weimar layup with less than four minutes remaining in the quarter capped off an 11-1 BU run and put them within two points. Northeastern’s Jaelyn Batts made one of her two free throws after a shooting foul against Weimar, putting Northeastern up 53-50. 

It set up Monteagudo’s game-tying 3-point shot with 2:43 left in the third. 

Then, with 35 seconds left in the third, the Terriers took the lead for the first time since going up 2-0 in the opening minutes of the game after a 3 from freshman guard Aoibhe Gormley. 

 

Quality defense from the Terriers kept the game in order early in the fourth quarter. For some possessions, Graves’ defenders were in a 2-3 zone, clogging up the paint for Northeastern’s driving scorers. 

“We were just trying to eliminate their paint point, they were really able to attack downhill,” she said. 

Specifically, Graves highlighted Erdogan as a threat inside for the Huskies. 

“She’s amazing as a playmaker,” Graves said. “She was obviously scoring the ball as well, but she’s able to attack downhill and find her teammates or score it.”

The final quarter of regulation saw four lead changes as the two teams fought for every inch. 

Northeastern led the game at 70-67 with under a minute left when Weimar, Batts, and Giannaros got tangled up near the 3-point line on BU’s end of the court. A resulting personal foul on Batts caused her to foul out and put the Terriers in the bonus.

Batts was issued a technical foul on the same play for arguing with the officials, but the foul was offset when Giannaros got a technical of her own. Weimar made both free throws after the confusion was settled, narrowing the deficit to one point. 

With 30 seconds remaining, the Terriers elected to intentionally foul Oralye Kiefer to send her to the line. Kiefer missed the first, but made the second, putting Northeastern up 71-69. 

A layup from Giannaros tied the game for the Terriers on the next possession, but left 27 seconds on the clock for the Huskies. 

 

A last-second heads-up play from BU senior Sophie Beneventine sent the game to overtime. A Terrier defender cut off the lane to the basket for Northeastern’s Erdogan, leaving her scrambling near the 3-point arc where Beneventine forced a turnover.

“She has been great at being in the right place at the right time defensively, she guards their best players typically every night in our starting matchups…and I think she’s really owned that role of being one of our best defensive stoppers,” Graves said of Beneventine. 

In overtime, the Terriers struck early, eventually gaining five points of separation on a layup from Weimar with two minutes left. 

Erdogan kept the Huskies in it, though, scoring from behind the arc before intercepting a bad pass from Weimar and making another 3-pointer. A made free throw from Erdogan capped off a seven-point run and put Northeastern back up 80-78 with a little over a minute left. 

A mid-range jumper from Giannaros tied the game once more for BU with 26 seconds left in the overtime period. 

The Huskies’ first attempt at a game-winner was a layup from Gemima Motema, which missed. Asha Parker grabbed the offensive rebound for Northeastern but traveled on her next move, turning the ball over. 

Coming off the turnover the Terriers had seven seconds to pull something together. Beneventine dished it over to Semenova who was calling for the pass beyond the arc. With no time for hesitation allowed, she shot it up and watched as her game-winner swished in.

 

Graves said postgame that Semenova’s play earned her ‘Dawg of the Game’ honors from her teammates. 

“Ana hitting that big three to win the game was huge. I thought she was really good all night, and she’s been consistently playing well, game after game,” Graves said. 

On the other end, Erdogan missed her attempt at a game-tying shot with one second on the clock, ending the game with a final score of 83-80. 

“I’m really happy with, obviously, the outcome, but the experience that this game has brought as we move into Patriot League, I think this is a great prep game,” Graves said. 

The Terriers, now with an 8-3 record, open Patriot League play on Wednesday, January 3 with a 2 p.m. game at home against Navy. 

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