MADISON, Wis. — The first things Lindsay Bochna noticed when she took her seat in the enormous press room underneath Wisconsin’s 17,000-seat basketball arena were the lights.
“It’s really bright,” she said.
The forward sat alongside fellow graduate assistant captain Julia Shaunessy and head coach Tara Watchorn, perched in front of an NCAA ICE HOCKEY backdrop and behind placards that bore their names. They had walked through a maze of hallways to get to the brand new press room under the state-of-the-art Kohl Center, after they’d just played a hockey game at neighboring LaBahn Arena, the standard-setting home of the biggest program in their sport. Now, they represented the Boston University women’s hockey team in a postgame press conference with the bright lights, literally, shining.
It was here where No. 11 BU’s miraculous season finally ended, a 3-1 NCAA tournament loss to No. 9 Clarkson in the semifinal of No. 1 Wisconsin’s regional, six months after the Terriers had declared their aspirations to reach the national stage. Everyone thought they were crazy then, and no one — according to Shaunessy, at least — gave them a chance on Thursday night. All of that noise, the Terriers proved once again, was wrong.
So there was not so much as a whimper — let alone a tear — as Shaunessy, Bochna or Watchorn spoke. The latter was asked for an opening statement and paused for almost five seconds before giving one, and not because she was solemn.
“Proud,” BU’s second-year head coach said, “is an understatement.”
Shaunessy was next to speak, asked by a reporter what her emotions were as the final buzzer sounded on BU’s season. In her first four years, she didn’t finish with more wins than losses once. In year five, she bowed out with 24 victories, 12 defeats, a Hockey East Champions ball cap and an NCAA patch on her jersey.
“Obviously it’s tough, you see your hockey career kind of ending in front of you,” she said. “But what Tara said is very true.”
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Watchorn made a habit this season of creating buzzwords and catchphrases to describe the state of her team, and one of the most prominent in the last month has been “dipping our toes in the water.” It’s a metaphor for being tentative in a high-pressure game, essentially, and it was what Watchorn was worried about during her media zoom on Wednesday as her team prepared to play a blue blood non-conference opponent.
She noted the tentativeness usually shows up when BU is playing a team for the first time.
“We talked about how the biggest opposition is the unknown to us,” Watchorn said postgame on Thursday. “And it’s kind of been that all year.”
Clearly, that was what got to BU in the first period against Clarkson. The Golden Knights opened the scoring five minutes in with an unstoppable solo effort in transition, then BU’s second-ranked penalty kill conceded just 16 seconds into its first appearance of the game. The Terriers were eventually outshot, 13-3, in the opening frame.
BU, in its first NCAA appearance in a decade, was a shell of itself against a 3-time National Champion program coming off a Frozen Four last season.
“Their pace of play was faster than we’re used to,” Shaunessy said. “It just kind of shocked us a little bit.”
BU’s game, Shaunessy has said, is built on its physicality, but against a quick team that hunts space and attempts to isolate its players, the Terriers played into the Golden Knights’ hands in the first period. All season, Watchorn has stressed to BU that it should never change its game for anyone, even an opponent like Clarkson. The Terriers got away from their game on Thursday and it cost them two goals.
“We were overcompensating,” Shaunessy said. “Trying to let our feet do the work when we can let our body do the work.”
This was not the first time these Terriers have been shaken. It happened in October in BU’s fourth game of the season in a 4-0 loss at Hockey East powerhouse Northeastern. Then again in January’s Beanpot final at TD Garden to those same Huskies, as well as a series-opening loss at defending champion UConn in late February, when the Terriers had a chance to clinch the HE regular season title.
From the very first official practice of the year, BU knew it was capable. But this was still a group that wasn’t used to being good, one picked sixth in the league preseason poll after three straight losing seasons. Their confidence naturally wavered, at times, like it did in Madison.
What never wavered, however, were two more Watchorn buzzwords: “Professionalism” and “debrief.” Every time BU faltered, its players faced the music. They talked about what happened amongst themselves, asking themselves what went wrong and finding a way to fix it. When the Terriers reference their “culture,” which they’ve done constantly, this is what they mean.
“I haven’t seen a group of women come together like this, solve problems like this. It’s just unheard of,” Watchorn said postgame on Thursday. “They’re professionals, and they have the task they want to accomplish, and they go to work. And they have real conversations. All the “in between” is cut out, all the emotions are cut out.”
The result? A 4-0 win over Northeastern a day after that 4-0 loss, a victory-worthy effort even in a loss to UConn on the final day of the regular season and three overtime victories in the Hockey East tournament after they’d wilted under the pressure of a trophy in the Beanpot final.
Add the second and third periods on Thursday to the list.
The Terriers outshot Clarkson, 8-4, in the second. In the final 15 minutes of the frame, the Golden Knights — who entered averaging 38.7 shots on goal per game, third-most in the country — put just one shot on BU senior Callie Shanahan. The Terriers had real chances themselves, too — most notably Riley Walsh hitting the post off a feed from Lilli Welcke. A couple costly penalties in the third period neutered the momentum BU built in the second, but Shanahan made several miraculous saves in the first half of that frame before the Terriers surged in the final 10 minutes. Bochna eventually poked home a net-front rebound with four minutes to go to give BU a chance, but Clarkson sealed it with an empty-netter.
“We stopped trying to play into their game, which was just trying to isolate players,” Shaunessy explained. “Instead, working as a unit. Pinning people up against the boards. Just playing more physical than we did in the first because we let that slip a little bit.”
What BU realized was something it’s been realizing all year, despite its tendency to start slow in a new situation.
“We figured out that the way we play can actually work against them,” Shaunessy said.
But now, here the Terriers were, against easily the strongest opponent they’d played all year on by far the biggest stage, watching the lightbulb go off during a single, 15-minute intermission.
“It used to be Friday-to-Saturday, and it got to period-to-period, and it’s just remarkable,” Watchorn said. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and it’s why they’ve been so successful.”
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When the Golden Knights officially sealed her team’s fate with 35 seconds left in the third, Watchorn turned to Shanahan, who stood beside her on the bench, and nodded her head. Shanahan slipped through a couple teammates, hopped over the boards and skated back to her net. BU was waving the white flag.
Moments later, the final buzzer sounded. Watchorn went up and down the bench, hugging each member of her staff, as her players made their way to Shanahan. They showered her with pats on the helmet before heading for the handshake line. It was a heavy moment, sure, but BU was still standing on its own.
Eventually, the players gathered at center ice and acknowledged family, friends and the university pep band that made the trip, before filing into the tunnel under a chorus of applause. There were no players in tears in need of consolation, none frozen on the ice after their season — or in many cases, their career — had ended.
“We surprised ourselves again today,” Watchorn said.
Required reading on BU women’s hockey:
