Men’s Basketball: Terriers Fall at UMass

By: Matt Doherty

Wednesday night’s trip to Amherst is certainly one Head Coach Joe Jones and the rest of the Boston University Terriers men’s basketball team will like to soon forget following a 99-69 drubbing to the hands of UMass.

The matchup was supposed to be a promising one on the heels of a win against Binghamton and the return of leading scorers Cedric Hankerson and Eric Fanning. However, the Minutemen had other ideas en route to their dominating performance. The game was tied at 12 early on until UMass went on a 19-3 run and never looked back.

UMass had five scorers in double figures with four of them scoring 18 points or more. Senior guard Trey Davis and fellow backcourt mate Donte Clark each had 20 points while Jabarie Hinds and Rasheen Holloway were right behind them with 18 points a piece.

The Minutemen, who live and die by the three point ball just like BU shot over 60% from the arc in the first half opening up a 54-26 lead into intermission. Derek Kellogg’s team finished the game shooting a tad over 50% in both field goals and three point field goals.

UMass continued to dominate in the second half claiming a lead as large as 37 when it was 99-62.

As for BU, the Terriers could not slow down the UMass offensive attack and turned the ball over a season high 15 times. The anticipated return of Hankerson from a torn ACL was overshadowed in the loss but he did have 10 points in 12 limited minutes off the bench.

Freshman sensation Kyle Foreman did not play in the game leaving the point guard duties to sophomore Eric Johnson. Johnson made his third career start notching 7 points and 6 assists but got into foul trouble early on leading to no true ball handlers on the court for the Terriers at times.

Senior forward Justin Alston led BU in scoring with 13 points and fellow veteran frontcourt partner Nathan Dieudonne had 10 points but the Terriers struggled shooting the ball. They shot just 37% from the field and 29% from three.

Boston University thrives from behind the arc as well as good shooting games from John Papale and Cheddi Mosely but the two of them combined to go 4-20 FG and 3-14 from three.

Eric Fanning also played his first game since being suspended for the violation of team rules prior to the season. The second leading scorer from a season ago played just five minutes but did hit a three pointer late in the game.

The Terriers simply could not slow down or keep up with the potent UMass offense and dropped to 3-4 on the season. The Minutemen improved to 5-1.

This game was the fifth and final contest of a long road trip in which BU went 2-3 on. The Terriers will finally return home to Case Gym next Tuesday December 8th at 7 PM when BU will host crosstown rival Harvard.