There was a progression to the way Tara Watchorn reacted to the penalties called against the Boston University women’s hockey team on Friday night.
In the second period, it was the kind of straight-faced look of pain that’s become an iconic emoji. Late in the third, it became a mild, yet still pointed, scream at the officials. After the last of the astounding nine penalties, it was a lean against the boards behind the bench and a hand up to the mouth.
And when BU’s head coach finally made it to the press room at Walter Brown Arena after a 3-1 loss to UConn, it became a business decision.
“I’ll plead the fifth,” Watchorn said.
But:
“I wouldn’t say it was the best officiating I’ve ever seen.”
To blame the No. 14 Terriers’ loss to the Huskies on bad officiating — or even just the penalties, regardless of how they came about — would be generous to a BU team that was made a shell of itself by the defending league champions for half of the game on Friday. Yes, the Terriers played much better in the final 30 minutes and gave UConn a real run, only for the whistles to clip their wings. But BU (19-9-1, 16-5-1 HE) didn’t lose because of the referees, it lost because of its own shortcomings — even in an overall performance Watchorn was pretty satisfied with.
Case in point: It wasn’t even a goal on a UConn power play that sealed BU’s fate, it was a goal on a BU power play, as Husky captain Jada Habisch buried the Terriers with a shorthanded goal midway through the third period to make it 3-1.
Furthermore, BU’s penalty kill — which entered the second-best in the country at 91.8 percent — conceded a goal for the first time in 2025 in the first period, when senior Brianna Ware tapped home a pass from a wide-open Claire Murdoch. BU went to the kill two more times in the first and looked shakier than it has in a long time; if it weren’t for senior goalie Callie Shanahan (30 saves), UConn would’ve scored again.
And more generally, BU was simply outplayed by the Huskies in a way it hasn’t been almost all season in the first period and a half. UConn’s defense dominated, refusing to allow a BU team that’s so good at establishing territorial advantage to find any sustained offensive-zone time. The Huskies glided into their own offensive zone throughout those first 30 minutes and took a deserved two-goal lead when Murdoch fired a shot off Shanahan’s back from behind the goal.
“Obviously, we came out a little hesitant and got behind the 8-ball,” Watchorn said.
BU, put simply, couldn’t get anything it wanted.
“They don’t make it easy for you to get past that next layer,” Watchorn said. “They have a 1-2-2 in every zone of the ice, if you think about it. So they make you make a move, attack the next layer, upgrade the puck, which isn’t easy sometimes.”
After all, even though BU entered four points ahead of the Huskies at the top of Hockey East, UConn is still the defending champion, and it looked like it for half of Friday night.
It didn’t for the other half, which is why Watchorn emerged so unconcerned. When asked for her general takeaways from the loss, Watchorn deadpanned: “Excited to play them again.”
The Terriers will play them again, in two weekends’ time in a home-and-home series to conclude the regular season, and those two games could very well decide who gets the No. 1 seed. And BU will enter that series with a period and a half of proof it can hang with UConn. Despite such a slow start and the nine penalties, the Terriers still outshot the Huskies, 35-33.
“So proud of the response into the second and third,” Watchorn said. “Wasn’t pretty by any means, but I loved our composure on the bench, the most I’ve liked in a really long time. And I felt like we were able to make adjustments to some key parts of their game and not lose our identity.”
Sophomore Neely Nicholson pulled BU within a goal late in the second, whacking home a rebound that started with a rush from senior Liv Haag for her fourth goal of the season. Star Husky goalie Tia Chan (34 saves) couldn’t corral the initial save yet stopped the first rebound from BU senior Ani Fitzgerald, but Nicholson arrived in time to pick up the scraps.
It was yet another rebound goal for a team that has gotten so good at scoring them, after Watchorn said early in the season it was one of the Terriers’ biggest areas of focus.
“Relentlessness,” Watchorn said when asked what she liked about Nicholson’s goal.
BU then recorded 15 shots on goal in the third period, despite failing to beat Chan and eventually conceding a third. The Terriers, who fire the second-most shots on goal per game in Hockey East, looked far more like themselves going forward.
The same was true in defense; specifically on the kill, where — after a brutal start — BU eventually snuffed seven power plays (one was a 5-on-3 to end the game).
“We just got a little bit hesitant when we saw their puck movement, and not realizing that what we do works, we just have to be assertive,” Watchorn said of the early struggles on the kill. “At the end of the day, if we’re aggressive, it shouldn’t matter.”
Watchorn said her message to the team after the loss was “short and sweet.”
“I said we controlled our environment, we’re a good hockey team and that’s what we take from this,” she added.
BU did eventually play like the good hockey team it is on Friday, but not before it had dug itself in too deep a hole. The Terriers made a good attempt to climb out of it, only for penalties to push them back down. Those, ultimately, are the little things that matter a whole lot in games like this against teams like the Huskies.
And those are the things BU will need to do better the next time it meets UConn.
But as Watchorn said:
“That’s a team that we can beat. And I know the locker room feels that.”
More reading on BU women’s hockey:
- Instant takeaways from BU’s 3-1 loss to UConn
- Behind Alex Law’s heroics, BU makes another statement with 3-2 OT victory over Northeastern
- BU was taken out of its comfort zone against BC. It still won
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