Men’s Basketball: Terriers Topped by the Highlanders
By: Chris Lynch
After two close games at home, BU opened up a five game road trip with a battle in Newark against the New Jersey Institute of Technology. They looked to open up the road run strong against a difficult opponent. Instead, the home team took control late in the game and won 90-76.
BU found themselves behind after the first half for the third consecutive game, and could not find an answer late to pull out a victory.
There were many good things to take out of the loss, though. BU is not at full strength and played close with a team coming off a run to the Semi-finals of the Collegeinsider.com Postseason Tournament.
Senior guard John Papale also continued to impress. He had his second consecutive 21 point game tonight, and shot 62.5% from three point range.
Freshman Kyle Foreman also continues to play poised and complete basketball. Foreman tallied 17 points, 7 assists, and 4 rebounds. Those two will be big pieces for the team the rest of the way.
What cost the Terriers tonight was NJIT outscoring BU 38-10 in the paint, and BU only making 10 of 22 free throws in the game.
The Highlanders also came ready to play in their home opener. Their offense was balanced and loaded, with all five starters getting double digit point totals. They were led by Senior Ky Howard’s team leading 20 point and 8 rebounds, and three other starters, Tim Coleman, Damon Lynn, and Winfield Willis all scored 17 points.
There was also a series of costly turnovers late in the game. NJIT collected a total of 9 steals to BU’s 4, and committed only 12 turnovers to BU’s 15.
Something more worrisome is the Terriers’ foul trouble. Nathan Dieudonne fouled out tonight. It marks the third time in three games that BU has had a player foul out of a game. BU will have to do something different there in their next game.
“We’ve got enough talent and experience on this team,” said BU Head Coach Joe Jones. “There’s three seniors on this team who’ve been through a lot in their time here. We just didn’t play well enough or carry ourselves well enough mentally tonight.”
It is still an early season game against a tough opponent when the team was missing a couple important pieces to the puzzle. They will have a chance to rebound quickly, with their next game on Saturday at the Sun Dome in Tampa, FL, when they take on the South Florida Bulls.