‘Less thinking, less talking:’ BU men’s basketball changed its routine on the road, and now they’ve got the monkey off their back
Joe Jones changed several parts of his team's routine for road games in pursuit of a more relaxed locker room.
With the weight 20 seconds away from being lifted off the Boston University men’s basketball team’s shoulders, Kyrone Alexander looked up and saw nothing but open court ahead of him. There’s been a joke surfing through BU’s locker room that the sophomore guard — the team’s leading scorer — never dunks, so with a road win over Lehigh all but official and no one there to stop him, Alexander took his chance.
“I was like, ‘You know what? How about I dunk to end the game?’” he said.
The BU bench rose in anticipation, then gave the Barbadian a cheer as he hung on the rim. When Alexander returned to earth, he pointed at the sidelines and ran back down the floor. Moments later, the buzzer sounded. The Terriers on the floor trickled back to the bench and lined up for handshakes. Graduate co-captain Miles Brewster grinned.
And that was it. There was no mob at center court, no leaping up and down.
BU went about winning on Wednesday night as they would any other game, and maybe that was the secret it was missing all along. It took them almost two months and until their very last chance to do so, but the Terriers finally won a Patriot League game on the road, 79-68 over the Mountain Hawks, their first win away from Case Gym since Dec. 29. BU entered 0-8 on the road during league play, with Joe Jones one loss away from going winless on the road during a regular-season conference schedule for the first time in his 21 seasons as a head coach.
How it came to that, no one can figure out.
“I really don’t know the answer to that question. My teams have never struggled on the road,” Jones said.
“We won a championship on the road,” he added, grinning, referring to the 2020 Patriot League title BU won at Colgate. “Which is the hardest thing to do.”
Jones was 55-44 in road Patriot League games entering this season. Even more mystifying was that the Terriers (15-15, 9-8), picked to finish third in the PL preseason poll, are 8-0 at Case Gym during league play and are on a 10-game home winning streak overall. Had they finished the conference slate undefeated at home and winless on the road, they would’ve been the first Patriot League team to achieve that feat since the league moved to a 18-game conference schedule in 2013-14, per Greg Levinsky.
In short, the trend had become too established to ignore.
Jones wore a bright red BU quarter-zip, khakis and white sneakers on Wednesday (the rest of his staff did the same, but instead wore black pants) after he chose that attire in Saturday’s road loss to PL-leading American. BU’s staff is the only one in the Patriot League — and one of few remaining in the whole country — that wears suits during every game, home or away. Jones said he made the change in pursuit of a “more relaxed atmosphere,” and while he was not asked whether or not the staff will return to suits at home for BU’s regular-season finale against Lafayette on March 1, he did say they’ll probably go with the relaxed attire if they were to play on the road in the Patriot League tournament.
“No, actually,” said Alexander, when asked if he’d ever seen his coaches in anything other than a suit for a game. “Even when they throw on sneakers, they’re still wearing suits.”
It wasn’t the only thing Jones changed about BU’s road routine. He said the Terriers usually arrive at the arena for road games 90 minutes before tip for warmups, and the staff meets with the team twice before the game starts. But on Saturday and Wednesday, BU arrived 75 minutes ahead and the players only met with the staff once.
“Less thinking, less talking,” Jones explained. “Just playing.”
When the Terriers’ struggles on the road reached a boiling point in a 20-point loss to Holy Cross on Feb. 8, Jones was asked if he’d changed any part of BU’s routine on the road and said “absolutely not.” Throughout the eight-game road losing streak, his players — Alexander chief among them — brushed off the road struggles and insisted it was something they tried not to think about.
The problem, Jones often said, was about the basketball BU was playing, not where it was being played.
But then, after last Wednesday’s home win over Loyola Maryland, Jones finally admitted that he knew his players were worried about their performance at home versus on the road.
Three days after that, he made the changes for American.
“Just to break the rut that we’re in,” he said after Lehigh on Wednesday. “I think sometimes you have to be able to break the routine and get them in a different, you know, more relaxed headspace.”
BU appeared to play more relaxed at Stabler Arena. The Terriers jumped out to an early lead, holding the Mountain Hawks scoreless for the first six and a half minutes of the game, but Lehigh quickly surged back. Powered by senior Tyler Whitney-Sidney (career-high 32 points) and sophomore Nasir Whitlock (24), the Hawks cut the BU lead to one possession at several points in both halves.
But Lehigh never tied the game. The Terriers responded with a bucket at the other end each and every time the Mountain Hawks made things nervy, including a long fadeaway mid-ranger from Alexander (team-leading 21 points) on the final possession of the first half, then a miraculous 3-pointer from Brewster (14 points) at the shot-clock buzzer with three minutes to go in regulation that gave BU a five-point lead.
“I don’t think we were panicking at all,” Jones said.
After Brewster’s 3, Lehigh never again got within a possession as the Terriers stretched the final margin to nine.
“It deflated them,” Alexander said. “And that’s what we wanted.”
BU, put simply, was nails on Wednesday, like it’s been all season back at Case Gym. Jones had remained steadfast that the Terriers would eventually win a game on the road, his logic being that BU — as was abundantly clear at home — had the toughness and resilience necessary. He couldn’t figure out why his team lacked those intangibles on the road, but he said he felt BU was getting closer to getting over the hump. A four-point loss to league-leading American — even though the Terriers scored a ghastly 44 points — was viewed as a step in the right direction.
Alexander was asked if there was a feeling of relief that BU didn’t end up finishing winless on the road during conference play, especially before a quarterfinal of the conference tournament that will likely be played away from Case Gym.
“I mean, I was confident in our team’s ability regardless. Because obviously, we know we’ve beaten every team in the league at least once [except Lafayette],” Alexander said. “But I definitely think proving to ourselves as a group that we could come out here and get a win is gonna be big going forward.”
A stoic competitor, Alexander still didn’t seem all that concerned with any of it. He said he wasn’t even sure why Jones and the staff changed their attire and couldn’t say whether or not the other routine changes had a noticeable impact.
But maybe that was the entire point. After all, Jones wanted less thinking.
During a postgame interview on the broadcast, he was asked about being 0-8 on the road entering the game. Jones chuckled and dropped his head, as if still in disbelief his team actually found itself in that position.
“I’m just glad,” he eventually said, beaming, “we got the monkey off our back.”