Instant takeaways from BU men's basketball's season-opening 80-72 loss to Northeastern
Sophomore guards Kyrone Alexander (16 points) and Mike McNair (12) and senior forward Malcolm Chimezie (14) led BU in scoring.
BOSTON — Three takeaways from the Boston University men’s basketball team’s 80-72 loss against Northeastern in the season opener at Case Gym…
BU couldn’t stop Northeastern transfer LA Pratt.
Pratt, a junior from Elon, exploded in his first game with the Huskies, scoring 24 points on 9-of-13 shooting and making four 3s. BU did what it could — putting its best defender (and best player) in graduate guard Miles Brewster on Pratt for most of the game — but the Terriers had no answers.
With 2:25 to go in a one-point game, Pratt drained a deep catch-and-shoot 3 from the wing, a back-breaking bucket for BU after it had cut down a seven-point Husky lead.
A couple minutes earlier, Pratt forced the steal and had the assist for an enormous tomahawk dunk in transition from teammate Rashad King. And midway through the second half, Pratt exploded down the lane for an easy layup to give the Huskies a 57-55 lead, their first in over 13 in-game minutes.
Northeastern jumped out to a 17-5 lead in the first six minutes, and Pratt scored eight of those points, including two casual wing 3-pointers and a thunderous fastbreak dunk off his own steal. He finished the first half with 16 points.
Joe Jones went small, and Mike McNair rewarded him for it.
Starting four guards is just not something head coach Jones does, but likely out of necessity due to injuries down low, BU trotted out a small-ball starting lineup around senior center Malcolm Chimezie.
Sophomore guard McNair, who didn’t play much last season, started instead of 6-foot-7 forward Matai Baptiste and looked as comfortable as anyone on the floor in his first collegiate start. He scored six points on two 3-pointers in the first half, both of them critical shots in digging the Terriers out of an early hole.
Then, early in the second half, he dropped a perfect bounce-pass to Malcolm Chimezie for a dunk before draining a catch-and-shoot corner 3, with a hand in his face, to give the Terriers a 7-point lead, their largest of the night to that point. The Huskies called an immediate timeout.
McNair finished with 12 points (4-of-6 shooting, 3-of-5 from 3) and seven assists.
Despite BU’s injuries down low, the Terriers had no trouble getting into the paint.
It looked rough for the Terriers’ guards early, who committed three turnovers in the first couple minutes as Northeastern stormed out to a 10-3 lead.
But after McNair and Brewster drained some 3-pointers, BU’s guards settled down and played their game. The Terriers finished with 38 points in the paint, and considering the injuries to junior forwards Otto Landrum and Nico Nobili — the two starting bigs last year — the Terriers did well to play inside-out.
Brewster and senior guard Ethan Okwuosa (9 points, 7 of them in the second half) looked especially confident penetrating off the dribble, something BU will need them to do consistently until Landrum and Nobili return.
And BU was excellent on the offensive glass, corralling 14 offensive rebounds and scoring 17 second-chance points, compared to 4 and 2 for the Huskies, respectively.
That the Huskies lack size themselves certainly helped, but the absence of BU’s twin towers was not as big a deal as initially feared.