By: Ethan Fuller<\/p>\n
BOSTON, MA — In their penultimate contest of the 2019 calendar year, Boston University men’s basketball used a strong second half and improved half-court defense to take home a decisive 74-62 win over UMass Lowell. The Terriers’ second straight win moves the school to 5-7 on the year, while the River Hawks drop under .500 at 6-7.<\/p>\n
Max Mahoney led the way for the Terriers with an efficient 23 points in just 24 minutes. The senior forward made 9 of his 12 attempts on the afternoon by bullying opposing bigs down low, and also made five of six free throws — important for a player who entered Saturday shooting just 56.8 percent from the line.<\/p>\n
Next to Mahoney in the frontcourt was junior Suk Mathon, who earned his first start of the season in today’s contest. Mathon rewarded head coach Joe Jones by grabbing a career-high 13 boards. Though he scored only four points, Mathon’s strength down low provided a great counterattack to the physical frontcourt of UMass Lowell.<\/p>\n
Sophomore Alex Vilarino may have been moved to the bench, but he still played well for the Terriers, scoring nine points in 12 minutes. Vilarino displayed a better attacking mentality, using his burst and strength to finish through some tough contact in the paint.<\/p>\n
BU burst out to an early 10-1 lead before the River Hawks eventually countered with an 8-0 run of their own. But the Terriers responded again, pushing the score to 28-19 and never looked back. By midway through the fourth quarter the lead had ballooned to a 66-46 advantage.<\/p>\n
BU led for all but 57 seconds in the victory, and while they were not absolutely consistent, growing a steady lead like they did is a positive sign after losing close games during their skid and falling into one against Dartmouth last week.<\/p>\n
For UMass Lowell, shots just could not fall. The River Hawks made 5 of 21 three-pointers and only 31 percent of their looks in the contest. Christian Lutete and Ron Mitchell both put up double-doubles, but neither player shot with efficiency. UMass Lowell played just eight River Hawks on Saturday, and that lack of depth hurt them later in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
The Terriers have now strung together two victories and hope to close out their non-conference slate with a third against a new Division I opponent in Merrimack College. The Warriors have started strong at the new level, beating solid opponents in Northwestern, Army and also UMass Lowell.<\/p>\n
Merrimack also was the victor in one of the most lopsided scores in college basketball history: a 110-16 slaughter against Lesley. BU looks to avoid anything of the sort when they face the Warriors next Sunday at 6:00 p.m.<\/p>\n
Featured image courtesy of Hannah Yoshinaga.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By: Ethan Fuller BOSTON, MA — In their penultimate contest of the 2019 calendar year, Boston University men’s basketball used a strong second half and improved half-court defense to take home a decisive 74-62 win over UMass Lowell. The Terriers’ second straight win moves the school to 5-7 on the year, while the River Hawks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16046,"featured_media":21105,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1027],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21155"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16046"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21157,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21155\/revisions\/21157"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}