If BU men’s basketball couldn’t win at Holy Cross, will it ever win on the road?
The Terriers are now 0-6 on the road in conference play, yet 6-0 at home. After Saturday's loss, a winless campaign in road Patriot League play looks increasingly likely.
WORCESTER, Mass. — As the merciful final buzzer sounded and the rest of his teammates lined up for handshakes, Miles Brewster sat on the bench motionless and stared into the abyss. Saturday afternoon was supposed to be a turning point for the Boston University men’s basketball team, and once again, it was not.
The graduate co-captain has seen some things over the years at BU, some far more profound than the situation BU finds itself in now. But you’d be hard-pressed to find another time when Brewster, in year five, or even head coach Joe Jones — in year 14 — was this starved of answers.
After a 72-52 loss at Holy Cross, the Terriers are 6-0 at home during Patriot League play and 0-6 on the road, and that makes exactly as little sense as you’d think.
Sure, the first four road losses were more about BU being deficient — especially offensively — than anything else. The fifth loss, at Loyola Maryland last Saturday, was an obvious sign of progress even in a last-second loss. But this one? In Worcester — BU’s shortest Patriot-League road trip — against the last-place Crusaders? This was when you really began to wonder if the Terriers might actually go winless on the road in conference play, a feat they are now only three games away from doing.
BU (12-13, 6-6 PL) entered the Hart Center on Saturday scoring 77 points per game over its previous four games and was three days removed from a conference-high 87 at home against Navy, then proceeded to limp to a ghastly 52 against one of the league’s worst defensive teams.
“We had a hard time,” Jones said, “just doing anything.”
The question, of course, is why? Why couldn’t a team that barely broke a sweat in a blowout win on Wednesday against — check notes — a better team than Holy Cross, not do the same things on Saturday? Why couldn’t a team that, as Jones said, punched the Crusaders “in the nose at our place,” not do the same at theirs? Why is BU — picked to finish third in the Patriot League preseason poll while receiving first-place votes — such a good team at home and such a bad one on the road?
“I don’t know,” Jones said. “I wish I knew the answer to that.”
It was obvious nearly right away that BU wasn’t itself on Saturday, and even more concerning — most of the early struggles were actually on defense. Jones was thrilled with the way his team handled HC sharpshooter Joe Nugent in January’s 69-59 win over the Crusaders at Case Gym, but on the first possession at the Hart Center, Nugent buried an uncontested triple.
“A wide-open 3 off something we’ve been over,” Jones lamented postgame.
Holy Cross found plenty of wide-open looks — at the basket or behind the 3-point line — the rest of the half. Jones bellowed at his team multiple times to switch ball screens and, at one point, marched out onto the court to meet his players and give them a piece of his mind after a timeout.
Eventually, when Holy Cross opened up a 31-16 lead late in the first half off a series of defensive breakdowns from BU, Jones called another timeout and this time could only smile, such was the disbelief at what he was watching.
“We just screwed up some of the things we had worked on and went over,” Jones said. “That’s the stuff that I get most upset about.”
BU stopped handing Holy Cross easy buckets in the second half, but couldn’t stop star Crusader freshman Max Green, who finished with 18 points on 7-of-13 shooting and five assists. Holy Cross scored 37 points in the second frame and shot 55 percent for the game, and Jones said he told his staff afterwards he thought BU didn’t play well enough defensively.
That’s true, and it still leaves the 52 points to dissect at the other end. BU’s trio of leading scorers — Brewster and sophomore guards Mike McNair and Kyrone Alexander — again shot poorly on the road, this time going a combined 7 of 28 from the field. Brewster had only five points on 2-of-9 shooting after dropping a career-high 25 on 10 of 11 against Navy.
Freshman guard Azmar Abdullah (14 points) was BU’s only impressive player on offense, much like he was during the Terriers’ two-game road skid against the service academies several weeks ago. BU endured a back-breaking scoring drought in each half and only shot 35 percent from the field, losing by 20 points despite taking 10 more shots than its opponent.
“The ball stuck,” Jones said. “We sold out and took tough shots. We didn’t play good team ball… we need to get back to playing, like, ‘Okay, we run something. We can’t score. Let’s flow into the next action.’”
But those are all the things BU had finally been doing well over the past four games, three of them at home.
“The biggest thing is, ‘Can we have the same type of energy on the road that we need to have, and be the aggressor the way we’ve had at home?’” Jones said.
That’s been the same question he’s been asking all season, and Jones was asked on Saturday if he’s changed anything about BU’s routine — practice, travel, whatever it may be — before road games.
“No, I haven’t,” Jones said. “I’m gonna have to think about how to attack it. But I don’t have any answers right now.”