STROKE OF GENIUS: Assistant coach Jamie Insel dials up a winner to send BU Women’s Basketball to the Patriot League semifinal

By Sam Robb O’Hagan

When the game-winning layup fell through on Monday night, Brianna Finch turned to Jamie Insel and made sure she got her praise. Fist pumps, a pat on the back, the whole thing. Like some of Caitlin Weimar’s teammates would when they greeted her at midcourt moments later, Finch roared in Insel’s face on the sideline to acknowledge one enormous stroke of genius.

“That was one that I had in the books, ready to go,” Insel, an assistant coach in her first season with the Terriers, said on Tuesday.

With 15 seconds left, in a tie ballgame, in the Patriot League quarterfinal, Insel whipped out the whiteboard and straight-up pantsed the Army Black Knights. No other way to put it. It was so nasty that the game’s final possession ended with Caitlin Weimar — Caitlin Weimar, who was presented with the Patriot League Player of the Year trophy pregame — wide the heck open right under the basket.

It was, as men’s basketball head coach Joe Jones wrote on Twitter, “as good of an endgame play for a post player as you will see.”

 

Yeah. Finch wasn’t going to let that one go unnoticed.

“I’m not one to show too much emotion in the moment,” said Insel, who barely even moved, except for an ever-so-subtle nod as the vision materialized and a grin at Finch’s applause. “But for me, it was obviously very exciting.”

It was ballgame. BU 64, Army 62. A wild quarterfinal game slammed shut, a ticket to the semifinal punched.

“Coach Jamie does a phenomenal job end of game, and to have that last play wide open for Cait was so huge,” head coach Melissa Graves said postgame. 

And yes, this was still Caitlin Weimar’s moment. It so often is around here. Her stunningly casual 27 points, 9 rebounds and 3 blocks were a herculean effort that BU could not have lived without. She is, after all, the Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year for a reason. But a superstar like that doesn’t come to be unless those around her can put her in position to succeed, and that was the muscle these Terriers flexed the hardest on Monday.

“It was a perfect play,” Graves said, “and they ran it to perfection.”

So it was also Insel’s moment, of course, the one who drew it all up in the huddle with 16 ticks left. But it was Aoibhe Gormley’s moment, too, who bled just the right amount of clock to time everything up for Weimar to drop in the layup with only a second to play. It was Alex Giannaros’ moment, who set a vicious back-screen in the paint that took two Black Knights out of the picture. It was Audrey Ericksen’s, who dropped in a precise lobbed pass with a hand in her face, and it was even Anastasiia Semenova’s, who set a flare-screen away from the play to take away the help defense.

“Everyone contributed to that play,” Insel said.

And BU (19-11, 10-8 PL) needs that. The Terriers aren’t exactly catching opponents by surprise when they look to feed Weimar (18.8 points per game) in the post. Double-teams come. Triple-teams come. Some teams even foul — anything to keep BU from simply throwing it down to the best player in the conference and letting her go to work. (UMass Lowell actually did let the Terriers do that, and Weimar proceeded to torch the River Hawks for 33 points and the game-winning, buzzer-beating hook shot in the first game of the year.)

“She sees so much attention throughout every 40 minutes, so it’s finding different creative ways to get her the ball,” Insel said. “Having a great post player is (having) great teammates that can get her the ball in the areas she wants.”

BU’s trio of freshman guards have been particularly good in that role. Gormley, Ericksen and Inés Monteagudo have all been excellent at recognizing a specific look and delivering the corresponding entry pass – bounce-pass to the right hand, chest pass to the left, a lobbed pass over the shoulder, whatever it may be – and that quality is something Weimar, who isn’t a natural creator off the dribble, can’t live without herself. The senior forward has taken 376 shots inside the 3-point line this season, tied for the 24th-most by a player in the history of the conference, according to Sports Reference. That’s 350-some-odd entry passes.

“It’s talked about daily. It’s repped daily,” Graves said on the They’ve Got Now podcast on January 26. “We do post-feed passing almost every day.”

On Monday, it kept BU in the game. Army’s perimeter defenders stonewalled the Terriers’ guards for much of the first half, limiting dribble penetration and forcing BU to pass into the post to work the ball inside. Weimar wound up scoring 12 of BU’s first 15 points. Every single basket came from the post.

“(Weimar) does an incredible job, obviously,” Insel said. “But I think a big piece of it is making sure we have good movement off the ball and having her teammates be able to find her.

“As a whole, everyone’s done a really nice job.”

And that brings everything back to Insel, the first-year assistant coach handed the keys to crunch time, but only after she was brought in to help develop BU’s play in the post. 

No, it wasn’t rocket science that she elected to go to Weimar with the Patriot League quarterfinal on the line.

But everything that followed sure was. And that’s the thing. It may be a simple decision to look to the best player on the court when it matters most. But to get the ball into her certainly isn’t.

Because it takes a lot to nurture a Player of the Year. A village, for one thing.

But every now and then, it takes a stroke of genius, too.

FEATURED IMAGE BY JACOB IRELAND

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