Huskies Fall in BIG EAST Semifinals in an Upset by Fifth-Seeded Boston College

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HARTFORD, CT (March 8) -- The top-seeded Connecticut women’s basketball team suffered an upset in the semifinals of the 2004 BIG EAST Championship by Boston College 73-70 on Monday night at the Hartford Civic Center.

The Huskies ranked No. 4 nationally stand at 25-4 while No. 23 Boston College improves to 24-6 on the season.

The Eagles had an answer for every Connecticut basket and shot a season-high 63 percent from the field. The percentage was also a tournament single-game best. Boston College will be playing in its third conference final on Tuesday night and has never won a tournament title.

UConn has played in 14 of the last 15 championship games and was eliminated by Providence in 1993 quarterfinals, the last time the Huskies were not in the finals. UConn fell short of the title for the second straight year after winning a league-best nine tournament titles in a row.

Boston College’s Jessalyn Deveny scored 20 points and Kathrin Ress added 18, including the game-winning free throw with 26.2 second remaining in the game. Ress dominated inside and was 8-for-11 from the floor.

UConn battled back from an 11-point deficit to knot the game at 59-59 on a lay up by Ashley Battle with 7:42 left. Maria Conlon followed a Boston College free throw with her second 3-pointer of the game, which moved her into a tie for fifth among the school’s career leaders, to give UConn a two-point lead at 62-60.

Boston College would score the next four points to open a 64-62 advantage before Taurasi hit a 3-pointer with 4:28 left to help the Huskies reclaim the lead at 65-64.

Deveny drilled a 3-pointer with 3:14 left to make the score 68-65 Boston College, before Ress added a mid-range jumper to increase the margin to five points.

UConn managed to tie the game at 70-70 but would get no closer as Boston College notched the final three points, all from the free throw line, of the contest to secure the 73-70 win.

The Huskies had one final opportunity but came up short as they failed to get a shot off before the final buzzer.

UConn will now await their seed and site placement in the 2004 NCAA Tournament which will be announced on Sunday, March 14 and broadcast live on ESPN.

POST GAME QUOTES
UConn head Coach Geno Auriemma
It was a great game. I said before the tournament started that there are no easy games in the tournament anymore. Nothing was going to be easy. We played a team tonight that was, I thought, truly inspired, and they executed their stuff, and they ran as well as anybody has against us in a long time. I think they put themselves in position in the first half to win the game, and made us have to battle back, and we did. We’re used to having the ball bounce our way on those rebounds, and we’re used to having shots go in for us when they need to and the other team miss shots when they had to. Tonight it didn’t work out that way and that’s why they won and we didn’t.

On Boston College
They ran the same stuff down here that they did at their place. I think the difference is that they got better shots because they ran it better. I don’t know that in the first half, certainly for the first 18 pts that Boston College scored that there was a hand in their face, ever. I don’t think there was one shot that went up that there was a hand in their face.

Anytime somebody makes a shot it’s a function of two things: you executed it pretty well, and the defense didn’t react accordingly. But you still have to make the shots, and they did.

On last shot of the game for UConn, and Ann Strother
As I said earlier, Ninety nine percent of the time, that shot goes in. And ninety nine percent of the time when we got the offensive rebound and kicked it to her, that one goes in. The other ninety nine percent of the time, she puts it on the floor and goes to the basket and gets fouled, or makes the shot, and we win it at the free-throw line. This time, none of those things happened.

I don’t know how you measure this (loss), because you can’t, and I don’t know how you prepare for this, because you really can’t. But the inevitable inevitably happens. Teams that have never won the Big East Tournament get really hungry to win it. And I don’t know that you can prevent them from doing it sometimes. Then you kick yourself afterwards saying, ‘We should have done this, we should have done that,’ but none of it makes it any different. There just comes a point in time where the circumstances are right, and a team is really hungry enough, they execute brilliantly, shoot the ball fabulously, and that it is absolutely positively their turn to win it. Maybe that’s BC (Boston College), and that’s where they are right now. Maybe tomorrow night it’s their time to win it, just like last year’s Villanova team. For us at Connecticut it’s a killer, because for the last 10 or 11 years that’s been what we’ve done to everybody. Now that for the last few years it hasn’t happened, we’re here saying, ‘Well how can it not happen? What did we do wrong?’ I don’t know and I bet if we went back you could say that we did a million things wrong. But it comes a point when you have to say Boston College took advantage of every opportunity given to them tonight, and I don’t know that I have a better explanation than that.

Diana Taurasi
She (Ann Strother) turned and got the ball and I thought I was still open and was calling for it and I thought she was going to lob it over. She didn’t see me or what not and at that time we didn’t have that much time to bring it up instead of play it up. We basically had something set up from the previous time out and we just got an unlucky bounce, it bounced off of her foot, and we couldn’t even get a shot.”

On Ann Strother
That wasn’t the shot we were going for, but I think she had an open three, and like coach said, we’re used to making shots like that. We’re used to making shots like that, and Ann’s used to making shots like that, we’re used to our teammates making shots like that, and today they didn’t go in.

In the second half I thought we worked our butts off defensively to get back into the game. Whenever you put yourself in hole in the first half it’s never easy, and being down double digits in the first half and a little bit in the second half-that’s never easy. I think for the most part in the second half we just battled and tried to get back into it.

Right now we’re just disappointed, and after last year with the loss to Villanova, this was the time to get that back. Being here in Hartford, this is a home game for us, and we’re not supposed to lose here. We’re not supposed to give any team a reason they can (win), and today we did.

Ashley Battle
About losing to BC
We knew it could happen and that it was possible because of the way we played against them the first time. But never in our wildest dreams did we think it would happen, but we all knew it was plausible.

Boston College head coach Cathy Inglese
I’m just overjoyed, excited, I’m so happy for this team. The last time we played them I was so disappointed for them, we didn’t play our game last time even though UConn did a great job taking us out of our game, I can’t be any happier for this team for what they’ve not only done this game but for the season, I think this game culminated a lot of things, to play in these circumstances with this crowd, I’m so pleased and proud of them.

On what it would have felt like if they lost
I’d feel a little bit disappointed, it would be nice going out with it, I’ve been in the conference for 11 years and we’ve grown and got a lot better as a team and as a conference it would be great if that happened.

On beating UConn
To beat UConn them on their court in front of this crowd, I think that we play well but I think that it was just a great game of basketball to watch, to win a great game of basketball and to not have to be sloppy and complain about this or that, but to beat them in these circumstances was the best. To do it on the road like this was special.

On comparing this team to making the Sweet Sixteen
I don’t know if at this point I can compare that, making the Sweet Sixteen was very special, especially the way we had done this, maybe this equals this right now because we wanted to go and win against an outstanding team on their home court, no it’s not the Sweet Sixteen, but its right up there.

It was simply tempo, after the last game we were just so rushed, we learned from that and we had to be patient and get our shots and make sure we got good ball movement, I was just really pleased with their patience throughout the entire game and especially through the runs, when they made a few runs and the crowd got going we just answered it and that to me was very critical.

On what was discussed during halftime
These are the things that you did well and these are the things that you need to continue to do and watch out for more pressing and certain adjustments they were making I think that they were ready, like the girls said, they know the UConn players so well.

Jessalyn Deveny
On the win
I’m kind of speechless, we’ve played them three times this season, our second game we didn’t play as well as we did in the first game, but we learned from both of them and we came out here today knowing exactly what to do, we did a great job as a team, we played amazing defense on our post, the guards were outside, we came together as one and accomplished one of our goals for the season.

On calling the timeout
I was in the passing lane and I went back and got the ball and I was like whoa it was kind of funny I was laughing to myself, I knew that we had to get the ball in bounds we knew we were going to get fouled and we had to put our foul shots in and we did that and it was a great win

On the game tempo
We just had to find the right tempo, Amber did a great job breaking that press and we helped her out when we could, but she did a great job dribbling through, we just had to find the right shots and not take rushed shots get it in and out and stay with our good tempo.

On getting fouled
Everyone on our team is great free throw shooters, I had a lot of confidence going to the line, I wanted to get that ball and I wanted to get fouled…. Amber, Kathrin and I…. we’re all great foul shooters, so anyone could have gone up to the line.

Amber Jacobs
On the win
This is kind of a sweet win for me, considering this is probably the last time I’ll play UConn. It’s a great way to go out, they’re a great team and I have to give a lot of credit to my teammates, I thought that we came out and played the way that we know how to play, and we’ve been playing some great basketball in this tournament, and I’m looking forward to this championship game tomorrow.

On game preparation
I think that coach does a great job preparing us, we know UConn like the back of our hands, we can tell you every player and what \they do well, we can tell you every play that they do, what they’re looking for, we knew coming into this game that it wasn’t going to necessarily be the physical part of the game, we knew it was going to who could gut it out mentally and who could stay tough for 40 minutes, we talked a lot about that and that we had to focus. We know that UConn wins on runs, and we knew that if we could stop runs and not let it go to far we would be fine, I think that we kept mentally telling each other that we’ve got to get a stop on this possession and not only do we have to get a stop we have to box out on the floor, I think our team did a phenomenal job tonight sticking together and staying focused all forty minutes and we came out with a win.

On tomorrow’s game
We’re ready, you can’t let being tired on the fourth day be an excuse, this is the BIG EAST championship, this is what it’s all about, obviously we’re on a little high because we beat UConn, we know that we still have another game tomorrow, we have to come in mentally focused and ready to go for this game, because this is a big game and it’s a game we’ve wanted for a long time.

Kathrin Ress
On the win
It felt great, we’ve played them three times and we knew what we needed to do, the first time, it went well, but at the end we just let go, the second time didn’t do what we had to do, the third time we put everything together, from the first and second game, we kept our composure and came out with a win

On playing all 40 minutes
I think that this was my first time. I felt great it was fun. Anytime coach asks me to I will be ready.