Pressure turns coal into diamonds, but it can also lead to the downfall of a struggling team. The women’s basketball team entered the season with high expectations, but it leaves the season with a sense of disappointment after falling to the University of Massachusetts 55-49 Wednesday night in the first round of the Atlantic 10 tournament.
The 2014-2015 campaign had been a difficult one for the Bonnies. After starting the season 11-3, the Bonnies began to falter. They went through a seven-game losing streak in January, but then, just when the season seemed lost, they gained some momentum and went 4-4 in their final 8 games which included a thrilling 20-point second-half comeback on the road against Saint Louis.
Going into the conference tournament, the Bonnies were hard to predict. Their stretches of success coupled with stretches of futility made them one of the tournament’s wild cards. Yet, a match up against UMass seemed to favor the Bonnies. The Brown and White defeated the Minutewomen in each of their previous meetings, book-ending January with a 10-point win on Jan. 3 in the Reilly Center and a 20-point win in Amherst on Jan. 31.
But Wednesday night, the Bonnies’ success against the Minutewomen ran out. In a tightly contested, low-scoring game, UMass had just enough to come out on top. St. Bonaventure played poorly on offense, shooting only 31.3 percent from the field, but UMass was worse, connecting on a mere 30 percent of its shots. For the Bonnies, however, the difference was the shots they attempted. Realizing that their shots were not falling, UMass attempted only five three-point shots. St. Bonaventure, on the other hand, took 16 three-point shots and made only two, resulting in a paltry shooting percentage of 12.5 from behind the arc. Guards Nyla Rueter and Mariah Ruff, who had both been shooting over 28 percent from beyond the arc combined to make only 10 percent of their three-point shots against UMass, going 1-10.
In close games, the team that wins is often the team that makes the most of every opportunity, and UMass did just that. The Minutewomen forced only one more turnover than the Bonnies, but they scored 14 points off turnovers compared to six for the Bonnies. Likewise, UMass grabbed 11 offensive rebounds and scored seven second-chance points. The Bonnies only scored two.
Despite the disappointing end to the season, several bright spots remain for the Bonnies. Against UMass, junior forward Katie Healy, who was recently named a second-team all-conference player, played well. She gave up six turnovers, but she led the team in scoring, rebounds and assists, recording 15, eight and two, respectively.
Although this season ends in disappointment, fans of the Brown and White cannot help but to be optimistic for the future. The only graduating player is guard Ashley Zahn, who often came off the bench. Additionally, freshman guard Mariah Ruff emerged as a strong player toward the end of the season, earning a place in the starting line-up.
With more than seven months until their next game and an offseason to assess what went wrong this year, the Bonnies will likely be a highly motivated group next year. The 2014-2015 season was underwhelming, but next year’s senior-laden team will have one last chance to leave their mark on the program.
