Men’s Basketball: BU blows out Merrimack in final game of non-conference slate

Featured image by Jacob Ireland

By Sam Robb O’Hagan

This is what it’s supposed to look like.

16 assists on 28 buckets. Plus-50 percent shooting from the field, plus-40 percent shooting from 3. Five players with at least eight points, three of them in double-digits.

This — a 74-63 win over Merrimack (6-8) on Saturday in the final non-conference game of the season — is this Boston University men’s basketball team (5-8) at its best.

The Terriers led by as many as 29.

“We were just moving the ball,” senior guard Miles Brewster said. “We just run the play and find the open guy,” sophomore forward Nico Nobili echoed.

When it’s working, maybe it really is that simple.

BU’s offense is a pass-first, whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts operation. Open shots are created with collective movement. Sharing the ball is a requirement. All five players on the court are involved in every possession.

BU entered the game as the only team in the Patriot League without a double-digit scorer, and they want it that way.

As Brewster put it: “We don’t work on iso in practice.”

But it has been a perilous existence; one that BU has suffered for. The Terriers entered Saturday on a two-game skid with losses at Dartmouth and against UMass Lowell that, on the offensive end, got outright ugly. In BU’s eight losses thus far, they’ve failed to score 60 points in five of them.

“We struggled in the last two games, I thought, of playing with the level of focus and energy we have to play with,” head coach Joe Jones said.

For an offense reliant on collective movement like BU’s is, focus and energy is a necessity. When the Terriers bring it, they produce moments like the one that defined the game on Saturday.

After playing three scoreless minutes towards the end of the first half, allowing the Warriors to cut what was an 11-point deficit to just 3 points, the Terriers scored 20 unanswered over the next six in-game minutes. 

BU roared to a 45-22 lead two minutes into the second half. No looking back from there.

“Our guys were more locked into what we were trying to do,” Jones said.

Six different players scored on the 20-0 run.

“We work on passing and moving,” Brewster said. “So it’s really about executing what we do in practice and trusting each other.”

BU put special trust in its bigs, namely Nobili, to be the linchpin of its pass-first attack. The Terriers made sure to position a post player at the free-throw line, allowing BU to work the ball inside with a quick entry pass instead of asking its guards to beat Merrimack’s perimeter defenders off the dribble.

“We knew where the ball should have went,” Nobili said. “The open area was mainly the free-throw line, behind their first line of defense.”

Merrimack, which plays a small-ball lineup with hyper-aggressive perimeter defenders, was helpless. When BU got the ball to its free-throw line ball-handler behind the Warriors’ high perimeter line, the Terriers attacked the open space behind it with timely cuts from the corners and the wings.

“They bring their wings up really high, so if you can get it in the middle, you can get some things,” Jones said. “But you have to cut.”

The Terriers, energized and focused after two of their toughest losses of the season, made the cuts. 

From there? “It was kind of easy,” Nobili said.

Nobili dished out four assists, added 10 points on 5-for-9 shooting and corralled six rebounds.

“That’s where he’s at his best,” Jones said. “He’s a really good facilitator, he understands the game.”

As BU’s primary ball-handling guard, Brewster recorded three assists, profiting off his teammates’ off-ball movement throughout the game. When senior wing Anthony Morales made a piercing baseline cut in behind Merrimack’s defense halfway through the first period, Brewster delivered a perfectly placed lob from the ‘BU’ logo for a momentum-shifting dunk.

 

Morales, who returned from a knee injury to play his first game of the season on December 10, scored 7 points in 23 minutes on the floor, both season-highs.

Brewster paced BU with 17 points on 6-for-8 shooting, matching the career-high he set on December 22 against Lowell. Obedient to the Terriers’ offensive system and by no means cavalier, the senior guard brought an aggressive edge as a ball-handler, attacking the basket off the dribble when given the opportunity.

“When I attack the rim, I’m making sure I’m doing it with conviction,” Brewster said. To score his 17th points, he threw down a highlight-reel dunk — plus a foul — to bring the Terrier lead to 25 with 6:41 left.

“It’s a big point of emphasis within myself (to be aggressive),” Brewster said. “I know I’m athletic. I know I can dunk the ball. And my teammates, they get on me when I don’t dunk the ball.”

With Brewster and Nobili leading the way, the Terriers put together their most complete performance of the season.

What better time to do it. BU opens Patriot League play on Wednesday at Navy.

“Absolutely, it’s a timely win,” Jones said.

“I think it was really important to finish non-conference on a win, on a good game, on a strong game with a lot of energy,” Nobili said.

But to start the conference slate in the win column, they’ll have to do something they have yet to do this season: win multiple games in a row.

“We’ve definitely gotten more comfortable within our system,” Jones said. “We’re just having a hard time sustaining it.”

The Terriers have proof of concept at the perfect time. They have momentum. They have energy. 

Now, we wait to see if BU can walk into the Patriot League slate at its best.

Said Brewster: “I mean, conference play is everything, right?”

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