WBB | Notre Dame Dominates BC on the Road
Notre Dame raced by Boston College to win an ACC road game by 50 points — 97 to 47. The Irish played a sloppy first quarter, but still led after the first 10 minutes 22-11. ND crushed the Eagles in the second and third quarters 66-18 to push the lead to 88-29 heading into the fourth quarter.
The Irish overwhelmed BC in the third quarter — using a 23-0 run to score 37 while limiting BC to just 7. The 37 points in the third quarter were the most the Irish have scored in any quarter this season.
"I thought we rebounded well and got the break going," head coach Muffet McGraw said. "We could score in transition and we're hard to stop. That was the best part of our game."
The Irish built the lead to 61 points — 94-33 — before pulling the last two starters still in the game. The Irish played the final five minutes with the only available sophomore, two freshmen and two walk-ons.
All Irish starters scored in double figures led by Arike Ogunbowale with 23. Her final basket of the night pushed her past coach Beth Cunningham into second place in career points with top all-time scorer Skylar Diggins-Smith firmly in her sights. Ogunbowale now needs just 34 more points to secure the Notre Dame scoring record. In addition to leading all Irish scorers, Ogunbowale led ND with 7 assists. She also had 3 of ND’s 15 steals on the night and grabbed 4 rebounds.
Brianna Turner was 9-10 from the field to score 19 points to go with 6 rebounds, 2 steals and 3 blocks. Jess Shepard had 16 points, 12 rebounds, 5 assists, and 4 steals. She also went 6-6 from the free throw line. She’s now made 40 of 48 (83.3%) free throw attempts in ACC play. Both Turner and Shepard rested the entire fourth quarter.
Jackie Young was a highly efficient 5-8 from the field and 5-5 from the line for 15 points. She had 10 rebounds, 6 assists, and 2 steals. Marina Mabrey only scored 2 points in the first half, but hit two threes in the second half to end the game with 12 points. The two three-pointers moved her into a tie with Sheila McMillen with 249 career three-point baskets — second all-time to Alicia Ratay who netted 262 in her sharp-shooting career.
ND won the rebounding battle 49-29 and only gave up 9 offensive rebounds to the Eagles. The Irish had 23 assists against 18 turnovers for the game. The turnover stat is a bit misleading because the Irish committed 8 giveaways in the first quarter, but settled down to just 2 in the second quarter and 3 in the third.
The Irish scored 38 points off Eagle turnovers and dominated points in the paint 58 to 32. Sixteen offensive rebounds also led to 23 second-chance points against just 6 for BC.
Notre Dame shot 54.4% from the field for the game despite the reserves only managing to make 1 of 10 shots over the last six minutes of the game.
Boston College came into the game averaging 77.1 points per game, which is fourth best among all ACC teams. They averaged 8.3 made three-point baskets per game. The Eagles only made one three out of 21 attempts (4.8%) against the Irish. Overall, BC was 18-59 from the field (30.5%) — they were averaging 42.9% in ACC play, which was fourth best in the conference. The Irish limited BC to 11 points in each of the first two quarters and just 7 in the third.
Taylor Soule led BC with 11 points — the only Eagle to hit double figures. Soule also led BC with 18 points in the Irish home win over the Eagles last month. Leading scorer Emma Guy only managed 8.
Both Abby Prohaska and Dani Patterson each played 27 minutes as two of just three available scholarship players on the Irish bench. Mikayla Vaughn didn’t make the trip after suffering a concussion in the last game against Florida State, and Jordan Nixon was also unavailable with a reported pulled hamstring. Prohaska ended up with 4 points, 2 rebounds, 2 steals and an assist. Patterson scored 6 points, grabbed 7 rebounds, and had 2 assists, 1 steal and a block.
The loss drops BC to 14-11 overall and 3-9 in the ACC. Notre Dame picked up win 23 against 3 losses, and the Irish moved to 10-2 in the conference — still a game in the loss column behind Louisville in the standings.
Notre Dame will be back on the road for a Monday night game at #12 NC State. The Wolfpack beat Syracuse 77-73 Wednesday night to improve to 9-2 in the ACC and 22-2 overall. Monday night’s game will be televised on ESPN2 at 7pm eastern.
