Scarlet Daily Digest: Coach Greenberg's Most Memorable Game
December 8, 2010 | Women's Basketball
Dec. 8, 2010
GoTerriers.com asked Kelly Greenberg, coach of the BU women's basketball team since the 2004-05 season, to reflect on her most memorable Terrier game. It wasn't a championship game -- just an ordinary regular-season contest that suddenly took an extraordinary turn.
Boston University 80, Hartford 75 (OT) - 2/24/09
It was definitely our game at Hartford a couple of seasons ago. Nothing went right for us. On our way down, we hit major traffic; we got there late. Early on, we just couldn't hit a shot. Everything was against us.
We were down by 17 with about ten minutes left in the game. Our two best scorers that year just couldn't do anything. When they hit a three to go up by 17, I actually sat down and went, `Oh boy, this is really getting ugly.' I called a timeout, and usually when your girls are running off you can get a feel for them being a little down. And one of our top scorers and captains [Jesyka Burks-Wiley] who wasn't playing well and was on the bench quite a bit a result, she and our other captain, Christine Kinneary, took charge of that timeout with their teammates.
They said, `We are not losing this way! If we're going to go down, we're going to go down being us.' They just got in their teammates' faces and said, `We're doing this.' And I thought, 'Wow, that's not coming from me, that's coming from them.' I thought that maybe we could make a little run and come back to make it a little bit of a game. I didn't think we'd win it.
Christine, who was our point guard, just stepped up even though she wasn't a scorer - just a real point guard. It was just as if she said, `I'm not losing this game,' and basically we went on this huge run. Kristi Dini hit a three at the buzzer to go into overtime, and sure as shoot we win it in overtime.
That game wasn't for a big playoff or anything like that. We didn't get a trophy. And I think that's why I liked it so much. We basically had a leader on the team who just said, `No way. We're not losing this way, and I'm going to take over this game,' and she did. She scored 27 points, and this is someone who had never averaged 12. I'll always remember that game: Everything can be against you, but you go back to the nit and grit.`I'm just going to out-tough and out-compete this person right now, and make this happen.' It was extremely memorable for my staff and me.
