Men’s Basketball: Terriers Fall at Home to Navy

By: Matt Doherty

The United States Naval Academy scored 19 of the game’s first 22 points as the Midshipmen knocked off Boston University 83-67 in the Terrier’s Patriot League home opener on Tuesday night at Case Gym.

Navy came out red hot highlighted by six quick points from senior Will Kelly and a 17-0 run that gave the visiting team a 21-5 advantage less than ten minutes into the contest.

However, the momentum shifted quickly as the Terriers dominated the rest of the first half going on a 25-7 run of their own to open up a 30-28 halftime lead as Nick Havener (15 points) hit a shot at the intermission buzzer to give BU their first lead of the night.

But the lead in the second half belonged to Navy. Both teams traded buckets to begin the opening minutes of the second half but as time went on the Midshipmen wore down the shorthanded Terriers and built a sizable lead on their way to victory.

Navy scored 55 points in the second half on 57% shooting from the field.

A disappointed coach Joe Jones talked about his team’s effort on the defensive end.

“We’re not competing, we’re not fighting, we’ve given in cause things have gotten hard, we’ve played no defense the first three games of the conference.” he said.

The Terriers have certainly been bitten by the injury bug this season with Cedric Hankerson and Justin Alston both out for the year, and yet another key player missed time as Cheddi Mosely sat out tonight’s game with a foot injury.

That left BU with only 8 scholarship players dressed and their 9th different starting lineup in just 16 games.

Jones however isn’t focusing on the uncontrollables but rather the controllables like energy and playing hard.

“I’m just disappointed in how hard we played, we’ve got enough guys to win. We have 8 guys, I mean how many guys do you need to win a basketball game. We have enough good players.” Jones said.

BU has to tip their cap off to Navy though, who blew a 16 point lead in the first half but regained their mark on the game in the second half.

Navy seniors Will Kelly and Tilman Dunbar set the tone in the second half both scoring 16 total points. With the game tied at 52, Navy went on a mini-run to pull away from BU.

Leading scorer Shawn Anderson also had 16 points while forward Jace Hogan had 13 points off the bench for the Midshipmen.

Eric Fanning, Kyle Foreman, and Nick Havener all had 15 points for BU with the latter adding 11 rebounds to his 15 point evening.

This is certainly a difficult defeat for BU as they are still in search for their first Patriot League victory of the year but the Terriers need to keep plugging along despite adversity.

“What’s going on is not that complicated. You’re either going to make things hard for them or easy for them. We’re making it easy. It’s sad cause this is our season. You could say injuries is a reason but that’s not an excuse, we need to play harder,” Jones said.

The Terriers will look to pick up their first conference win of the season when they host Lafayette on Saturday at 1 PM at Case Gym.