{"id":40827,"date":"2024-03-12T18:07:09","date_gmt":"2024-03-12T22:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=40827"},"modified":"2024-03-13T01:39:57","modified_gmt":"2024-03-13T05:39:57","slug":"stroke-of-genius-assistant-coach-jamie-insel-dials-up-a-winner-to-send-bu-womens-basketball-to-the-patriot-league-semifina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2024\/03\/12\/stroke-of-genius-assistant-coach-jamie-insel-dials-up-a-winner-to-send-bu-womens-basketball-to-the-patriot-league-semifina\/","title":{"rendered":"STROKE OF GENIUS: Assistant coach Jamie Insel dials up a winner to send BU Women\u2019s Basketball to the Patriot League semifinal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sam<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Robb O\u2019Hagan<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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\u2019s teammates would when they greeted her at midcourt moments later, Finch roared in Insel\u2019s face on the sideline to acknowledge one enormous stroke of genius.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThat was one that I had in the books, ready to go,\u201d Insel, an assistant coach in her first season with the Terriers, said on Tuesday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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\u2019s final possession ended with Caitlin Weimar \u2014 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Caitlin Weimar<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, who was presented with the Patriot League Player of the Year trophy pregame \u2014 wide the heck open right under the basket.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was, as men\u2019s basketball head coach Joe Jones wrote on Twitter, \u201cas good of an endgame play for a post player as you will see.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">YEEAAHHHH!!! <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/GoBU?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#GoBU<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/PLTop3?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#PLTop3<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Watch on ESPN+: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/lqTEH5rRjs\">https:\/\/t.co\/lqTEH5rRjs<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PatriotLeagueTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@PatriotLeagueTV<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/espn?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@ESPN<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/wFoYviR1fg\">pic.twitter.com\/wFoYviR1fg<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 BU Women&#8217;s Basketball (@TerrierWBB) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TerrierWBB\/status\/1767338937595433264?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 11, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. Finch wasn\u2019t going to let that one go unnoticed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI\u2019m not one to show too much emotion in the moment,\u201d said Insel, who barely even moved, except for an ever-so-subtle nod as the vision materialized and a grin at Finch\u2019s applause. \u201cBut for me, it was obviously very exciting.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was ballgame. BU 64, Army 62. A wild quarterfinal game slammed shut, a ticket to the semifinal punched.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cCoach Jamie does a phenomenal job end of game, and to have that last play wide open for Cait was so huge,\u201d head coach Melissa Graves said postgame.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And yes, this was still Caitlin Weimar\u2019s 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\u2019t come to be unless those around her can put her in position to succeed, and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">that <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was the muscle these Terriers flexed the hardest on Monday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt was a perfect play,\u201d Graves said, \u201cand they ran it to perfection.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So it was also Insel\u2019s moment, of course, the one who drew it all up in the huddle with 16 ticks left. But it was Aoibhe Gormley\u2019s 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\u2019 moment, who set a vicious back-screen in the paint that took two Black Knights out of the picture. It was Audrey Ericksen\u2019s, who dropped in a precise lobbed pass with a hand in her face, and it was even Anastasiia Semenova\u2019s, who set a flare-screen away from the play to take away the help defense.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cEveryone contributed to that play,\u201d Insel said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And BU (19-11, 10-8 PL) needs that. The Terriers aren\u2019t 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 \u2014 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 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">did <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cShe sees so much attention throughout every 40 minutes, so it\u2019s finding different creative ways to get her the ball,\u201d Insel said. \u201cHaving a great post player is (having) great teammates that can get her the ball in the areas she wants.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">BU\u2019s trio of freshman guards have been particularly good in that role. Gormley, Ericksen and In\u00e9s<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Monteagudo have all been excellent at recognizing a specific look and delivering the corresponding entry pass \u2013 bounce-pass to the right hand, chest pass to the left, a lobbed pass over the shoulder, whatever it may be \u2013 and that quality is something Weimar, who isn\u2019t a natural creator off the dribble, can\u2019t 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\u2019s 350-some-odd entry passes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s talked about daily. It\u2019s repped daily,\u201d Graves said on the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They\u2019ve Got Now <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">podcast on January 26<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u201cWe do post-feed passing almost every day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On Monday, it kept BU in the game. Army\u2019s perimeter defenders stonewalled the Terriers\u2019 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\u2019s first 15 points. Every single basket came from the post.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201c(Weimar) does an incredible job, obviously,\u201d Insel said. \u201cBut 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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAs a whole, everyone\u2019s done a really nice job.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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\u2019s play in the post.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, it wasn\u2019t rocket science that she elected to go to Weimar with the Patriot League quarterfinal on the line.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But everything that followed sure was. And that\u2019s 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\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because it takes a lot to nurture a Player of the Year. A village, for one thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But every now and then, it takes a stroke of genius, too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>FEATURED IMAGE BY JACOB IRELAND<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Sam Robb O\u2019Hagan 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\u2019s teammates would when they greeted her at midcourt moments later, Finch roared in Insel\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21477,"featured_media":39428,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,1039,1040],"tags":[1128,1129,1136,69,1145,1789,1415],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21477"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40827"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40836,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40827\/revisions\/40836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}