Featured image by Elyse Paugh

By Jacob Trapenese

Boston University Women’s Basketball (0-1) is looking to earn its first win of the season, playing host to Dartmouth (0-0) at Case Gymnasium on Friday.

BU is coming off of a 65-55 loss to Quinnipiac, holding a lead with less than two minutes to play, but ultimately failing to close out the game. Dartmouth is yet to open their season, coming off of an 8-19 season and a last place finish in the Ivy League. This is the teams’ first matchup since 2019, which was a 74-56 BU victory, with the terriers leading the overall head-to-head 13-10.

Boston University is looking to bounce back from a down year, finishing just 5-13 in Patriot League play, their worst mark since 2017-18. BU’s biggest loss from last season’s roster is their leading scorer Alex Giannaros, who averaged 13 points per game last season. However, they do get Anastasiia Semonova back, who missed all of last season due to injury. She had nine points in her first game back since 2024.

BU started slowly against Quinnipiac, facing a 12 point halftime deficit before storming back to take a lead late in the fourth quarter. They failed to close it out, as Quinnipiac reeled off an 11-0 run to end the game. Senior Anete Adler led the Terriers in scoring with 17 points, but no other Terrier scored in double figures. Junior guard Aoibhe Gormley, who led the team in assists last year remains out. Junior guard Bella McLaughlin helped to fill that gap, tallying four assists against Quinnipiac.

Dartmouth lost their leading scorer, Victoria Page, to graduation, but return their 2nd-7th leading scorers. Head coach Laura Cimino enters her third year at the helm of the program, looking to build off of a one win improvement from 2025. They will be led by their captains, Olivia Lawlor, Brooke Hollawell, and Alexandra Eldridge, who will all have bigger roles to play this season.

Boston University gave up 12 offensive rebounds against Quinnipiac and was outrebounded by eight rebounds overall, but will look to take advantage of a team that was just 340th in defensive rebound rate last year. Neither team is in the top 300 in tempo on barttorvik.com, so a lower scoring game could be expected.

Tipoff is scheduled for 6:00 PM on Friday at Case Gymnasium. The game will be available on ESPN+.