The Binghamton University women’s basketball team has had a rough February; after three consecutive losses, the Bearcats have dropped five of six games this month. But with tournament play coming up, anything can happen for this Bearcats squad.
The Bearcats (9-18, 5-9 America East) fell at home to defending conference champion University of Vermont (21-5, 11-2 AE) on Saturday by a score of 64-39. Binghamton was undone by both poor shooting on the offensive end (28 percent for the game) and sharp shooting from the Catamounts. Vermont guard Courtnay Pilypaitis had a perfect-shooting day from the floor, including four 3-pointers, en route to a game-high 19 points. Backcourt teammate May Kotsopoulos added 18 points. The Catamounts had four players score in double figures.
“I don’t think it’s about stopping so many weapons,” said Binghamton head coach Nicole Scholl about Vermont’s balanced scoring effort. “It’s about the energy and effort that we have. We came back a little bit right before the half, but then [in the] second half I don’t think we had a very good start. Our energy and effort just dropped; the same energy and intensity that we started with in the beginning definitely wasn’t there in the second half, and I think that’s where you saw them start to excel a little bit more.”
“No one person individually is gonna stop any one person of theirs,” Carter said. “We have to do it as a team defensively to stop that many weapons.”
The Bearcats shot just 15-of-53 from the field against Vermont and only 5-of-12 from the charity stripe. They missed 10 layups and committed 18 turnovers.
“It’s part of the game,” Scholl said of the missed layups and free throws. “When those pieces of the game aren’t going well for you, you have to find other ways to bounce back from them.”
“I think that’s just gonna happen,” said senior guard Darryll Peterson. “It’s just how we handle the missed layups more so than worrying about them. Because we get so many opportunities, we can’t dwell on the fact that we missed them.”
Vermont held senior guard Erica Carter, who was ranked second in the nation in 3-pointers per game earlier this season, to just three attempts from downtown.
“Vermont is a very good team,” she said. “So we knew they were gonna come in and pressure us. We tried not to rush as many shots and play at our own speed.”
Peterson led the Bearcats in both points (15) and rebounds (10), notching her first career double-double.
“I didn’t even know it,” Peterson said of the accomplishment. “It’s nice to know; we didn’t win so it’s not as important or special as if we had won the game.”
According to Carter, if the Bearcats have to face the Catamounts again in the America East tournament, it will be very different than Binghamton’s two regular season losses to the team.
“To know that a team previously beat us before by double digits should give us that much more energy and intensity to come in and beat them.”
The Catamounts defeated the Bearcats 76-43 in the first meeting, in which Binghamton again struggled to find an offensive rhythm.
“They didn’t do anything different than last time,” Peterson said. “It was an off night on our part. They’re the same team they’ve always been.”
“We missed a lot of shots,” Carter said. “It came down to missing shots, rushing shots. We went in little spurts and we can’t do that, especially against a team like Vermont; we’ve gotta be consistent.”
“I think for the previous game, they rushed us into a lot of things,” Scholl agreed. “In the start [of this game] I thought we did a better job of handling it, but I thought they did that to us again. Defensively we switched into a [man-to-man defense], which I thought helped us a little bit more; they still scored 64 points, but we held them under their average, and that was one of our goals.”
The Bearcats’ woes continued on Monday night in Albany with a 65-51 defeat. The Great Danes (9-16, 2-10 AE) were defeated by the Bearcats at the Events Center earlier this season, but were able to avenge the loss at home. The Bearcats shot a season-low 21.5 percent, hitting just 14 out of 65 field goal attempts.
Binghamton was led by Holmes, who tallied 19 points, 12 rebounds and four assists for a double-double in the losing effort. The score of the game was neck-and-neck until just over five minutes remained in the game, when Albany took a 50-41 lead.
“When things aren’t going your way and you get down, the successful teams are the ones that can battle back from that,” Scholl said. “That’s the one thing that we haven’t been doing in those situations.”
“It’s really just about our intensity and being able to keep it up the entire game, not coming out intense and then losing it,” Peterson said. “If we can keep our intensity consistent, we’ll be better.”
But the Bearcats failed to play consistently well against first-place Hartford (22-3, 13-0 AE), who beat Binghamton 72-54 on Thursday night. Though the team shot much better from the floor (49 percent), Hartford nailed 11 3-pointers to doom the Bearcats, who lost their third straight and have dropped five of their past six games. Binghamton has not defeated the Hawks since Feb. 23, 2005.
“Hartford shot the ball particularly well from the outside tonight,” Scholl said. “We kind of sat in a couple different zones tonight and that was unfortunate [that they beat it], but Hartford’s a good team, they played well and shot the ball well.”
Peterson and teammate Jackie Ward led the team with 16 points apiece. Ward hit the only two 3-pointers for the team. Carter, always a prominent threat from downtown, did not attempt a shot from beyond the arc.
Despite playing from behind for the majority of the game, the Bearcats’ performance throughout the loss pleased Scholl.
“Our team never game up,” she said. “We continued to battle back. It was just a matter of getting our confidence back.”
Despite the cold streak, America East tournament play is sure to be an entirely different kind of game, even against teams that took down the Bearcats earlier this season.
“The tournament is a whole different beast, in my opinion,” Scholl said. “Everything we’re doing right now is preparation for the tournament. When it is a one-and-done situation … at that point in time you have to focus on that game. I don’t think we ever go into a game thinking an opponent is that much better than us … That’s never our attitude; it’s ‘Here’s what we’re going to do to win this game.’ It’s about executing a game plan.”
The Bearcats will try to enter the tournament on a winning note, with their first shot to end the losing streak coming this Saturday against the University of Maine. Tip-off is scheduled for 2 p.m. at the Events Center.