BU men's basketball fought hard in a tight loss at American
The Terriers flirted with a first Patriot League road win but fell short as neither team reached 50 points.
Something was different on the Boston University men’s basketball sideline on Saturday afternoon.
Head coach Joe Jones and his coaching staff, always dressed in suits and ties, were wearing red team-issued quarter zips, black pants and white tennis shoes.
After seven straight Patriot League road losses, it was finally time for a change.
“We felt like the routine that we’re going through on the road, obviously, it wasn’t working,” Jones said with a chuckle. “So we tried to change it up a little bit and get a little more relaxed atmosphere.”
The wardrobe change saw BU hold Patriot League-leading American to just 48 points, the fewest the Terriers have conceded in a game this season. It also saw BU score just 44, its second-lowest mark of the year, in a 48-44 defeat at Bender Arena in Washington, D.C.
“I was really proud of the effort and the way our guys fought in this one,” said Jones. “We make a couple of shots here and there, you know, I think it’s a game that’s right there for us.”
American (18-11, 12-4 PL) made its first three field goals to take an early 6-3 lead. It proceeded to make 2 of its next 18, as the Terriers clamped down defensively. The Eagles were held scoreless for just under six minutes during that anemic stretch.
American finished the first half with just 20 points on 9-of-31 shooting and 0 for 12 from 3. For the game, the Eagles were held to a season-low 48 points on 18-of-56 shooting and 2 for 21 from deep.
“We’re on the road and we held a team to 32 percent, 9 percent from 3. There’s no shame in losing a game like this,” Jones said.
BU (14-15, 8-8 PL) has struggled to score on the road throughout Patriot League play (53.5 points per game on 37.3 percent shooting). But Saturday’s effort — 44 points, 17-of-49 shooting, 19 turnovers and only four trips to the free throw line — was the worst of the worst.
The Eagles scored 14 points off of BU’s 19 giveaways.
“A lot of guys needed to be better with the ball,” Jones said. “That was a big difference in the game.”
The Terriers also allowed 10 offensive rebounds — seven of which came in the first half — despite being a top-five defensive rebounding team in the nation.
“There were a lot of long rebounds that we didn’t get,” said Jones. “A lot of it was our guards not blocking out. That was huge.”
Turnovers and issues on the defensive glass resulted in the Eagles taking seven more shots than BU — and eight extra free throws — in a two-possession game.
“Those extra possessions were the difference in the game,” Jones said.
In the first half, BU only scored 14 points, its lowest mark in any half this season. The Terriers had double the turnovers (10) as they did field goals (5).
“We scored 14 points in the first half. That’s always difficult, to try and win a game that way,” Jones said.
Freshman guard Azmar Abdullah drilled a 3-pointer from the right wing with four seconds left in the first half off of a skip pass from graduate guard Miles Brewster. It was the first Terrier field goal in 10 minutes and 37 seconds. No one in a BU uniform netted more than one field goal in the first half.
Senior forward Malcolm Chimezie scored two points on 1-of-5 shooting and missed multiple layups inside.
“We weren’t getting a lot of clean looks, and then when we got the ball inside, we just didn’t finish,” said Jones. “I thought Malcolm had some bunnies around the basket that he didn’t finish, and that really hurt us.”
The Terriers were clearly disrupted by American’s defense, which allows the fewest points per game in conference play (64.8). The Eagles heavily trapped every ball screen and it halted BU’s ability to find an offensive flow.
“I really could have been better in terms of putting a plan together that I thought was a little bit easier for our guys to attack,” Jones said. “They pressure you, and they take away passes, and they pressure the ball screens, they can give you a lot of trouble.”
BU opened the second half by scoring on its first five possessions, a far cry from its first-half output. A two-hand slam by Chimezie (team-high 10 points) followed by a 3 from sophomore guard Kyrone Alexander (9 points) forced American head coach Duane Simpkins to call timeout just 47 seconds into the half.
Eagles graduate forward Matt Rogers (13 points) responded with baskets on three straight trips to keep American in front, 27-25.
After three and a half scoreless minutes, Chimezie slipped a ball screen and converted the easy layup inside off of an Alexander feed to tie the game at 27.
“The big thing is that we wanted to kind of hit our bigs,” said Jones. “And then that led to shots for our 3-point shooters.”
Abdullah drilled a contested 3 with the shot clock waning that gave the Terriers a 36-35 lead with seven and a half minutes remaining. BU failed to score for the next five minutes and American scored eight unanswered.
Trailing by seven with under three minutes to play, and an inability to score all game, the Terriers fell short of earning a first conference road win.
But despite a lackluster offensive performance, BU fell by just four points — their second smallest margin of defeat in PL play — against the top team in the conference.
The Terriers are running out of time for a road win, with a date at Lehigh (10-17, 5-11 PL) on Wednesday as the final regular season opportunity, but Saturday’s outing has Jones feeling optimistic about what BU’s future on the away from Case Gym may hold.
“Hopefully it’s a game where we feel like we’ve got the monkey off our back a little bit because we showed up and through some tough situations, we stayed together,” Jones said. “It’s a game we didn’t win, but I thought we showed some real resilience, some of the same resilience that we’ve shown on our home court.”