Men’s Basketball: Terriers secure close win over Binghamton

By Sara Sturtevant

Saturday afternoon the BU men’s basketball team (7-3, 0-0 PL) took on the Binghamton Bearcats (2-5, 0-0 AEC) in a hard-fought contest, eventually coming out on top with a 68-63 victory. The Terriers are now on a three-game win streak.

The start of the game was fast-paced and a bit chaotic on both ends of the court. While both teams settled in and keyed into their man-to-man defense to shut down multiple scoring opportunities, the Bearcats appeared to have more composure on offense. The Bearcats outshot the Terriers 54.2% from the field.

Though BU struggled offensively as a whole, point guard Javante McCoy had the hot hand all afternoon — scoring a season-high 27 points and reaching 1,500 career points as a Terrier.

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Center Sukhmail Mathon has been finding consistency in his game and continued to do so Saturday, posting 16 points and eight rebounds. The majority of Mathon’s points were scored from the free-throw line, where he went 14-16 after drawing plenty of contact down low.

“I was trying to stay level-headed and play through the contact,” Mathon said. “The refs did a good job with calling the fouls. I just hit the free throws.”

In the first half, sophomore guard Caelan Jones came off the bench to lock down his man on defense, following up the forced turnover with a three that had everyone in Case Gym on their feet.

However, that was about the only exciting moment for the Terriers in the first period, as they continued to struggle to capitalize on the offensive end. And despite beginning to find some consistency in their defense toward the end of the half, BU’s miscommunications allowed Binghamton to lead 30-27 heading into the break.

“They ran us around defensively. We were really bad defensively especially in the first half of the game. We were better in the second half. We held them 38% in the second half, but the first half we were pretty bad defensively,” said head coach Joe Jones.

The second half is where BU began to find a sense of cohesiveness. The team was decisive in its passing lanes, working to correct its previous turnover mistakes from the first when the Terriers gave up the ball 10 times. The Terriers also began to register second-chance points and became more active on the fast-break.

“In the first half we weren’t a connected group, so in the second half we did a better job at being vocal, telling each other to switch or get through a ball screen,” Mathon said. “You have to give credit to Binghamton, they set a lot of screens and that’s their offense.”

Hakon Hjalmarsson led the Bearcats’ offense with 18 points, followed by Tyler Bertram with 14 points and Dan Petcash with 11. Each was a decisive playmaker for Binghamton, playing over 30 minutes.

Yet, their team’s collective energy began to wear out, and a string of fouls tipped the score in favor of BU.

“I think mentally we’re just not sharp right now,” Jones said post-game. “A lot of poor decisions. We just weren’t on top of our game. We’re going to have to be a lot better to continue to win and that was the message in the locker room after the game. I was happy we won the game, but I’m not happy with the way that we’ve been playing the last couple of games.”

“We need to get our bravado back. We need to look more like the team that had Florida State by one possession.”

BU will host UMass Lowell at 7:00 p.m. Wednesday.