By Derek DeBurger
No. 18 Louisville women’s basketball will try to bounce back with a game against the Boston College Eagles.
Boston College is a well-coached team that’s having a down year. Joanna Bernabei-McNamee is a hard-nosed coach who instills that attitude in her players.
The Eagles’ success comes and goes with their defense, which has generally been hot and cold this year. The Eagles are giving up 67.4 points per game while forcing 22.3 turnovers per game—those marks rank 243rd and 12th in the country—and of those 22.3 forced turnovers, 12.6 of them are steals. Louisville has done poorly against teams that force turnovers at a high rate; those teams have been able to take advantage of the constant lazy passes from the Cards and turn them into points in transition.
The best perimeter defender for the Eagles is guard Dontavia Waggoner, who averages the 10th most steals in the country with 3.2 per game. At 6’0′, Waggoner is a tall guard who gets in passing lanes and makes handling the ball behind the arc difficult due to her length. She also pitches in 12.4 points per game.
Outside of Waggoner, the Eagles’ offense scores 74 points per game with three others averaging double-digits. Boston College has so many people that average 10-plus points because they run such a short bench. Only seven players have played in all of their games this season, and only six players average over 20 minutes per game. Because Boston College relies on so few players in any given game, each player has very well-defined roles and plays well as a cohesive unit.
Ultimately, Boston College is not a very good team, but if you mess around when you play them you can easily get upset. This should be a good “get right” game for the Cards, and hopefully, a good opportunity to work on taking better care of the ball.
