Consistency is key in the Patriot League, and right now, BU men’s basketball doesn’t have it
The Terriers have only once won consecutive games against Division I opponents. On Thursday, they were dealt a setback four days after a thrilling win at Maine.
Here was Joe Jones, in his postgame zoom call with reporters after the Boston University men’s basketball team’s loss at Lafayette Thursday night, talking about the same thing he’s been bemoaning all season. It is not a complicated flaw to diagnose, but it sure feels like a complicated one to figure out: “Our ability to be consistent with our focus and our energy is something that we’ve got to get back to,” BU’s head coach said.
It is January 2, and BU has only once won consecutive games against Division I opponents. And the problem with Jan. 2 is that it means BU is now in Patriot League play — the exact point in the calendar where the Terriers really need to start winning consecutive games. All season, this group has spoken of the need to go on a winning streak during conference play — something they struggled with mightily until the very end of last season — but if they don’t go on a run here soon, they’ll be in the same place they were a year ago.
BU is far, far better than it was this time in 2024, but that won’t matter much if it can’t get this consistency thing figured out. The results will be the same until that happens, and they will go something like this: the Terriers (6-8) dropping their Patriot League opener to Lafayette (6-8), 60-46, at Kirby Sports Center in Easton, Pa., four days after simply willing themselves to an enormous road win over a legit Maine team.
“We had a whole different vibe than we did today,” Jones said of Sunday’s win.
In Orono, BU executed as close to flawlessly as a team can get down the stretch, closing with a 10-0 run to steal a victory from the above-.500 Black Bears. Then on Thursday night, after the score was tied at 43 with 10 minutes to play, the Terriers surrendered a 13-0 run to decide the game, allowing the Leopards to put their foot on BU’s neck with a bevy of offensive rebounds down the stretch.
“Lafayette, the last 10 minutes of the game, just played harder than us,” Jones said. “And the aspect they beat us in was, they literally went after the ball harder than us.”
It couldn’t have been further from BU’s effort in the final 10 minutes Sunday, a game of which Jones said: “We could’ve easily lost, but we were tough as nails.” Proceedings on Thursday were equally ugly offensively — after a season-low 19 first-half points versus Maine, BU only scored 23 against Lafayette — and the Leopards weren’t much better, which resulted in Jones declaring postgame that the Terriers needed to “win the game on pure effort alone.”
“It wasn’t gonna be a pretty game,” Jones said, and those words will ring true many more times during BU’s next 17 Patriot League games.
But the Terriers didn’t win on pure effort alone, perhaps because, as Jones said, their preparation “could’ve been a little better.” His evaluation sounded earlier similar to BU’s late-November, early-December sequence. BU won two games in two days at UMBC’s Multi-Team event (the Terriers’ lone win streak this year), then, according to Jones, simply weren’t locked in during practice the week after and laid an egg at home against Sacred Heart the following Saturday. Motivated by that loss, BU promptly earned an enormous overtime win over an excellent UAlbany team — a victory that felt like a turning point.
But a couple weeks later, the story hasn’t changed. BU lost its next DI game at Merrimack, then defeated Maine — when Jones actually said the win could’ve been a turning point — then lost again Thursday. BU is amazing after a loss, poor after a win, and during Patriot League play, that simply isn’t going to fly. After all, if the Terriers are to make the NCAA tournament — which both the team and everyone around it rightfully believe they can — they’ll need to win at least three games in a row come the conference tournament.
BU’s collapse on the defensive glass late Thursday was mystifying, considering the Terriers entered Patriot League play with the conference’s best rebounding margin and dominated the boards in the first half. Lafayette only shot 32 percent for the game, meaning all BU had to do to give itself a chance in the closing minutes was do what it does very well — and it couldn’t do it. Lafayette collected eight offensive rebounds in the second half and outrebounded BU for the game, 43-41.
“I don’t know,” Jones said when asked why that happened. “We just didn’t block out and go after the freakin’ ball.”
Last year, this same group of players was inconsistent largely because it couldn’t shoot the ball. That’s not the case this season, even though BU shot a paltry 33 percent from the field and was 4 of 21 from 3 on Thursday. It was simply a bizarre night offensively — the Terriers missed countless layups and a bunch of open 3s, despite connecting on a series of circus shots — but it feels likely Thursday was a fluke, given BU entered fourth in the Patriot League in field-goal percentage and third in 3-point-percentage.
The issue here, it seems, is effort, which is inexplicable because effort was the one thing this group hung onto for most of last season.
BU has considered plenty of answers to its inconsistency throughout the season, but so far, hasn’t landed on one. Thursday, Jones was asked if the inconsistent play of graduate guard Miles Brewster, a preseason All-Patriot League selection whom Jones hails as one of the best leaders he’s ever had, is partly to blame for the entire team’s inconsistent play, but he quickly shot the idea down.
“He’s not the only one,” Jones said. “We need a level of consistency from all our guys that are starting and playing the bulk of the minutes.”
Sophomore guard Kyrone Alexander, who’s emerged as one of the conference’s premier players this year, scored a team-leading 14 points in the first half, then didn’t score in the second. Senior forward Malcolm Chimezie, in the midst of a breakout season and one game removed from a game-winning bucket against Maine, opened the second half on a personal 7-0 run but didn’t score again. Sophomore guard Mike McNair, the league’s third-best 3-point shooter coming in, was 2 of 8 from downtown.
All three of those players are starters with Brewster, and Thursday was not the first time they haven’t been good enough — that was part of the story in the loss to Merrimack.
All three are excellent players, too. As is Brewster, and as is BU’s team collectively. In theory, at least.
But right now, they’re only excellent half the time, and that can only be the case for so long.
“Tonight, we should’ve won the game really ugly,” Jones said. “But they went after the ball harder than we did, and that was a shame.”