|
|
|
Wednesday, Jan. 26 7:30pm ET
Huskies bring Eagles back to earth | |||||
| ||||||
RECAP
|
BOX SCORE
STORRS, Conn. (AP) -- The longest winning streak ever at Boston College is history. No. 1 Connecticut needed a second-half rally to snap the Eagles' 12-game run on Wednesday with an 84-77 win. Tamika Williams led the Huskies with 24 points, one shy of her career high, and seven rebounds.
Although UConn shot 73 percent in the first half, the Huskies were outrebounded 10-2 on the offensive boards. That disparity, said Williams, fired up the Huskies in the locker room. "When (Coach Geno Auriemma) came in, he pointed out all the post players and said we're not stepping up," said Williams. "We just all got kind of mad and we came out and every possession we were looking for the ball. We wanted to score every time." UConn opened the second half with a 21-8 run. Williams capped the spurt by converting a three-point play to give UConn a 60-50 lead with 11:44 remaining. Her next basket a minute later pushed the lead to 62-50, the Huskies' largest of the game. Injuries had whittled the Eagles' rotation to just six players, but BC (16-4, 5-1) showed no signs of slowing, cutting the 12-point lead to four on a 3-pointer by Allison Murphy with 6:20 left. With less than four minutes remaining and UConn up 78-73, Williams made a steal, then forced BC into a turnover on the Eagles' next possession. Shea Ralph, who had nine assists for the Huskies, found Williams under the basket with 2:08 left for an 80-73 lead. BC pulled within three with 44 seconds left, but 4-for-4 free throw shooting by the Huskies iced the game. Injuries have forced BC Coach Cathy Inglese to go with four different starting linueps in four straight games. Among the missing is rebounding leader Becky Gottstein, out six weeks with a stress fracture in her right foot. "We wanted to play a lot of zone," said Inglese. "We knew we'd have to play with four guards at one point. With UConn you don't want to make too many changes. I don't think we could have done a better job with that." Auriemma said his team was defensively and mentally unsound in the first half and had high praise for the Eagles. The Huskies stumbled into early foul trouble in the first half and were in the bonus with just over 10 minutes to play against the top free-throw shooting team in the league. "I never thought we were going to stop them," said Auriemma. "And even when we did stop them they scored. They made some tough shots. They created their own offense and that's what impressed me most." The Huskies outrebounded the Eagles 29-23. Williams' seven boards were a game-high. Svetlana Abrosimova had 20 points for UConn. Cal Bouchard had 25 points for Boston College and Brianne Stepherson added 18.
| ALSO SEE Womens College Basketball Scoreboard
|