Men’s Basketball: Terriers overcome lapses to top Gordon College 85-61
By Hannah Yoshinaga
Though the scoreboard read 85-61 as the team walked off the court, Boston University men’s basketball (1-1, 0-0 PL) hardly ever seemed comfortable in their win against Gordon College Friday night.
The Terriers secured their largest margin of victory since Jan. 13, 2020 in their home opener, but found themselves playing catch up for several minutes of the first half and fighting to hang on to a narrow lead for much of the second.
“It’s a lesson learned,” said Head Coach Joe Jones.
The troubles started for BU right off the top — with misfired passes, defensive lapses and a shot clock violation prompting Jones to replace four of five starters after only a few minutes of play.
“We were kinda in our heads at the beginning without really playing together and it showed,” said starting point guard Javante McCoy.
After trading buckets with the Fighting Scots for several possessions, the Terriers began to find their groove defensively, allowing them to earn much-needed stops to keep the deficit at a minimum. Jones attributed the turnaround to getting back to the team’s core values of being “selfless, tough, accountable.”
On offense, senior forward Fletcher Tynen got the Terriers’ rally started with a downhill drive through contact halfway through the first period that had the crowd and bench on their feet. Senior forward Walter Whyte followed it up moments later with a breakaway steal and a towering dunk.
On the very next possession, Whyte sent a deep three through the net, prompting Gordon Head Coach Tod Murphy to call for a timeout.
BU retained control for the rest of the half, extending the lead to 45-31 heading into the break.
Yet, the Terriers were plagued by some of the same inconsistencies they struggled with in the first half to begin the second period. Despite two quick threes from McCoy and a physical battle from senior center Sukhmail Mathon down low, the Fighting Scots shrank the deficit to just six points.
Whyte again helped to rally the Terriers with a dunk and a basket from beyond the arc. Senior guard Garrett Pascoe subsequently forced the ball out of Gordon’s hands and returned it for another dunk, and junior forward Nevin Zink slipped in a layup to bring the lead to 11 points.
The Fighting Scots were dealt another blow when Zach Quanico, their second-leading scorer, went down with an ankle injury a minute later and had to be helped off the court by medical personnel. Quanico did not return, and Gordon never found itself within a few possessions for the remainder of the contest.
Jones attributes some of the Terriers’ struggles to a look they have not seen before on both ends of the floor.
For one thing, it was BU’s first time facing a zone-heavy defense, which Jones felt the team struggled with — “we were trying to give up a good [shot] for a great one,” he said.
He also felt they over-passed the ball at times but was encouraged by the Terriers’ willingness to play together after having difficulty getting on the same page early in the match.
Executing on defense presented more of a challenge, namely mitigating Gordon’s willingness to pull the trigger from anywhere on the floor all night long.
“We knew they were gonna do that but we hadn’t played against that,” Jones said. “We told the guys this is how they’re going to play. They played that way, they got confident, they were taking us off the dribble and we had a hard time guarding them off the bounce, as well as guarding the three-point line.”
Looking ahead to BU’s road matchup against Northeastern on Tuesday, Jones is pushing his team to adopt a tougher, more focused mindset.
From the players’ perspective, McCoy feels the key is bringing the same intensity they show in practice to their game-day preparation and in-game execution.
“You know, we feel like we’re a veteran team, but we don’t always act like a veteran team,” Jones said. “And that’s the thing that we gotta change. We have to just be a consistent team and these are things that we stand for, this is what we do, you see us play, we play this way.”
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The Terriers face the Huskies at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Northeastern’s Matthews Arena.