Eagles Fall to Louisville 62 – 52

By Nick Petralia Heights Staff

Amid Boston College women’s basketball’s five-game losing streak, freshman Taina Mair has shone, averaging 13.2 points and five assists a game. Mair led the Eagles on Sunday, tallying 20 points and seven assists against Louisville in a game full of runs, but it was not enough as BC (14–16, 4–13 Atlantic Coast) fell to the Cardinals (20–9, 11–5) 62–52 at Conte Forum for its sixth consecutive loss. Louisville’s Preseason All-American Hailey Van Lith dropped 17 points in the 60-minute defensive battle.

Both teams struggled shooting in the first quarter, as BC shot 28.6 percent from the floor while the Cardinals shot 30 percent. Defense took the forefront, and the only two players with any offensive consistency were Mair and Van Lith. And while the Eagles managed to keep the ball out of Van Lith’s hands for the game’s first four minutes, Louisville eventually found her for open looks, and she nailed back-to-back 3-pointers, finishing the quarter with eight points.

“The first quarter we went under one or two screens, and she scored six on us,” BC head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee said. “I wish we hadn’t done that for the most part.”

The Cardinals ended the period with a 14–10 lead.

BC started the second quarter with much-needed energy that began with back-to-back layups from Andrea Daley and Ally VanTimmeren. The Eagles even took an 18–16 lead at the 7:21 mark when JoJo Lacey notched a layup. But the Cardinals’ zone defense resulted in offensive struggles from BC and a subsequent 12–0 Louisville run.

Mair, however, refused to let the Eagles fall further behind, as she responded with a 3-pointer. She led all players with 13 first-half points.

“I thought she controlled the tempo for the most part when the ball was in her hands,” Bernabei-McNamee said. “She’s been really fun to watch.”

The half closed with a scuffle between both teams after Louisville’s Chrislyn Carr and BC’s T’Yana Todd

Pitching was at the root of Boston College baseball’s struggles in the 2022 season. But up until the fourth inning of the Eagles’ opening-day contest against Pepperdine, it didn’t look like much of the same could be said. With the sun beaming against a backdrop of palm trees and calm California skies, right-handed pitcher Henry Leake looked at ease in his first start of the year, tossing an array of pitches with poise.

Leake—who registered a 6.27 ERA and totaled 54 strikeouts last season—tossed three scoreless innings before earning four runs in the fourth inning and a fifth run in the fifth inning. What started initially as a lights-out performance soon transitioned into a bloodbath—an all-too-common theme for the Eagles in 2022.

And despite recording eight strikeouts in five innings, the bats of Pepperdine’s Ryan Johnson and Connor Bradshaw alone outperformed BC’s entire roster. Johnson and Bradshaw tallied seven hits while the Eagles registered only three.

Behind a lackluster offense and inconsistent relief pitching, BC (0–1) dropped its first game of the season to the Waves (1–0) by a final score of 9–0.

“Look, you’re not going to go 56–0, as much as we would like to,” BC Head Coach Mike Gambino said of what he told the team after the game. “But we played well defensively. … I didn’t like how the eighth played out, but it came down really to a couple of pitches in the fourth and we all think Henry’s gonna be all fine and will be great for us.”

The new 20-second pitch clock rule—which was instituted this season in conjunction with Major League Baseball’s new rules— played a factor in creating the swift pace of the game. But lockdown starts by both starting pitchers simultaneously accelerated the pace of play.

Pepperdine’s Shane Telfer— who struck out 50 batters in 2022 with a 2.45 ERA—retired the Eagles quickly in the first and didn’t show signs of slowing down until the fifth inning.

Cameron Leary notched BC’s first hit of the game in the top of the second inning with a double to right field, but Daniel Baruch failed to advance Leary to second, and Peter Burns—who hit next—stranded the runner on base with a ground out.

Telfer surrendered just one more hit—a Vince Cimini chopper over Pepperdine shortstop John Peck’s head in the third—in six innings pitched.

“That’s not how we want to play but that’s not taking anything away from Telfer,” Gambino said. “He threw it well, left hander that can let it mix, he did really well.”

Leake, on the other hand, racked up strikeout after strikeout—six total through three innings—until his massive fallout in the fourth, when Greg Mehlhaff catapulted the Waves into the front seat.

Mehlhaff’s single to center field was just the beginning of a seven-hitter rally in which Pepperdine’s Devon Walczykowski,

Quintt Landis, and Charles Masino scored a combined four runners and left a frustrated look on Leake’s once-confident demeanor.

Pepperdine fired off another rally that heated up when Luke Pemberton’s single snuck through the Eagles’ infield.

“I thought, offensively, it was kind of a touch of feeling poor instead of just letting everything go,” Gambino said. “It was a couple of bad swings early … we were just a touch on our heels and that’s not how we want to play.”

Pemberton stole second base, and Johnson, who nailed a deep shot to center field, rounded him home on a 1–2 count after being fooled by the prior pitch—a Leake slider.

Leake stayed the course and remained on the mound through the end of the inning but right-hander Eric Schroeder replaced him in the sixth.

The Eagles’ relief system only further cemented Pepperdine’s offensive choke hold, however, as BC’s next four pitchers—Charlie Coon, Brian McMonagle, Bobby Chicoine, and Travis Lane—earned four combined runs and conceded five hits, although Chicoine didn’t allow a single hit.

Nonetheless, a pair of home runs from Bradshaw and Peck in the bottom of the eighth inning dug the Eagles’ grave. With a ninerun deficit, Joe Vetrano and Parker Landwehr recorded the final two outs for BC in its blowout loss.

“Curveball, curveball, slider, fastball, it was just a good mix, a lot of soft, soft, soft, but he kept us off balance and did a good job,” Gambino said of Pepperdine’s relief pitcher Brandon Llewellyn. n