How BU men’s basketball allowed two baskets in three seconds to lose to Wagner
Plus: Defensive woes return, while turnovers and poor free-throw shooting headline poor offensive performance in 60-58 loss at Case Gym.
BOSTON — If Joe Jones wanted to, he had the grounds to blame the Boston University men’s basketball team’s last-second loss to Wagner on the officials.
The Seahawks stepped out of bounds, blatantly, as they corralled an offensive rebound with three seconds left, trailing by two — a call that, had it been made, would’ve likely ended things on Tuesday night. Then, on Wagner guard RJ Greene’s game-winning buzzer-beater, the clock clearly didn’t start when it should have, allowing the junior to lose and regain possession of the ball, plus make a layup, in just 0.6 seconds of game time.
BU’s head coach said he didn’t receive an explanation from the officials, who didn’t review the offensive rebound but did review the buzzer-beater.
But Jones also seemed to imply he didn’t want one.
“My thing is, when it’s over, what’s the explanation gonna do?” Jones said postgame. “When I watched it, I thought he bobbled it, and I thought that was enough, but they didn’t see it that way.”
Ultimately, though, for Jones’ purposes, the officiating hoopla was only a distraction, one he was not particularly interested in entertaining during his press conference after the Terriers’ 60-58 loss at Case Gym. BU got screwed. But both before and between those officiating mishaps, it shot itself in the foot.
Over and over again.
“A lot of times you can get into the things that you can’t control,” Jones said, his tie hanging from a dejected collar, “and you’re not really learning the things you need to learn from a loss like this.”
The Terriers (1-4), somehow, allowed the Seahawks (2-3) to make two baskets in the game’s final three seconds, a sequence Wagner started from under its own basket. Leading by two, the Terriers surrendered a wide-open inbounds pass to halfcourt. Wagner coach Donald Copeland gladly called his final timeout to advance the ball for a sideline out-of-bounds play.
Jones said he knew Wagner had the timeout, adding he told his team “to keep guys in front of you” in order to protect against a full-court play that could’ve led to an easy score.
But when he was asked if BU busted its coverage, he said “I’d have to watch to see how he got open.”
In any case, Greene received the resulting sideline-inbounds pass at the wing and blew through sophomore forward Matai Baptiste — one of BU’s best defenders — for a game-tying layup.
With 0.6 seconds remaining, sophomore guard Kyrone Alexander chucked the ensuing inbounds the length of the court, hunting for Nico Nobili, but his pass was overshot and went out at the other baseline, giving Wagner the ball back underneath BU’s basket. Jones pointed out that BU didn’t have a timeout to draw anything up, so Alexander resorted to going long. “In retrospect, we might have been able to get together and run one of our late-game plays; that’s something we got to talk about. I wouldn’t put that just on Ky,” he added.
Wagner senior guard Javier Ezquerra started the resulting inbounds from the right of the paint. Jones said junior forward Nobili was supposed to wall off a potential pass into the paint; he didn’t. Ezquerra snuck a pass through to Greene, who won the game.
…With the help of a few extra tenths of a second, of course. But Jones wasn’t taking the bait.
“I’m not going to second guess the refs,” he said. “Because we kept leaving the door open.”
After two weeks of improvement, the Terriers’ defensive woes returned
Jones was peppered with questions about the late-game sequence, but he also expressed an unwillingness to truly entertain those, too. After all, as he declared in the press room, “you’re gonna clean up the end of game stuff.” Of far greater concern was the Terriers’ defense, which Jones was enraged with 15 days ago in a season-opening loss to Northeastern. The unit looked really good in the three games that followed, only for it to struggle again on Tuesday against a team that had scored 28 points — total — in its previous game.
“The fact of the matter is, we couldn’t stop them off the dribble,” Jones said. “To me, that’s more important than these other questions that were answered.”
BU, which allowed just 20 points in the first half, gave up 40 in the second. Greene finished with 19 points on 8-of-14 shooting to lead all scorers, senior guard Zaire Williams had 18 and Ezquerra added 10.
The Terriers guarded the post fine; Wagner’s forwards were a combined 5 of 14 from the field. The problem was BU’s perimeter defense, just like it was against Northeastern.
“The same thing in the Northeastern game, I thought it wasn’t a lack of competing,” Jones said. “We have to get better at defending the drive and then making sure we’re there to help each other when they do beat us off the bounce.”
He added Wagner “tried to take advantage of certain matchups,” but didn’t specify which of his players were taken advantage of.
“It’s the guys that scored, I can’t tell you who exactly was guarding them on every play,” Jones said.
BU competed on the offensive end, but turnovers and missed free throws loomed large
Wagner’s defense was aggressive and hounding, limiting immediate dribble-drive opportunities for BU’s guards. Given the Seahawks’ own struggles on offense, they sought to slow the game down, decreasing overall possessions and turning the game into a slugfest.
Asked if he was expecting a grind-it-out game, Jones answered: “Oh yeah.”
Despite its paltry 12 points in the paint and 36 percent shooting clip, BU survived in that environment, which has not always been the case for this group. Its guards attacked the offensive glass, especially along the baselines. At multiple points, Alexander, sophomore guard Mike McNair or freshman guard Azmar Abdullah rose above multiple Seahawks to either collect or force an offensive rebound. As a team, the Terriers finished with 14.
The fight was encouraging, but overall, BU did not handle Wagner’s defense well. The Terriers committed 15 turnovers and allowed 26 points off them — including 13 on the fastbreak. BU led by as much as nine late in the second half, but a mix of turnovers and, eventually, missed free throws allowed the Seahawks to stick around.
BU was 15 of 26 from the stripe on Tuesday and is shooting 58 percent on the season.
“If we didn’t turn it over, and we made foul shots, we probably would’ve been able to extend our lead and win by double-figures,” Jones said.
But the Terriers didn’t.
“We don’t look very comfortable right now playing against people that are in our face,” Jones said. “And we’ve got to get better at that.”
It’s not the only problem to fix.