{"id":39258,"date":"2023-11-07T08:48:42","date_gmt":"2023-11-07T13:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=39258"},"modified":"2024-01-12T22:55:33","modified_gmt":"2024-01-13T03:55:33","slug":"mens-basketball-terriers-show-flashes-but-cant-overcome-inexperience-in-loss-to-northeastern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2023\/11\/07\/mens-basketball-terriers-show-flashes-but-cant-overcome-inexperience-in-loss-to-northeastern\/","title":{"rendered":"Men’s Basketball: Terriers show flashes, but can\u2019t overcome inexperience in loss to Northeastern"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo courtesy of Helen Gui<\/em><\/p>\n

By Sam Robb O’Hagan<\/em><\/p>\n

BOSTON \u2014 Otto Landrum took the cheese. Northeastern\u2019s Chris Doherty ran right past, careening down a wide open lane left by the second-most experienced active Terrier. Matai Baptiste, BU\u2019s freshman forward playing in his first career game, took the brunt of it. He had no chance.<\/span><\/p>\n

A slam, a poster, and a statement bucket gave the Huskies (1-0) an eight-point lead with a minute and a half left.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Game over.<\/span><\/p>\n

Suffice to say, this was not the way it was supposed to go. The Terriers (0-1) got excellent individual moments from all six of their new players, but, down the stretch in a tightly-contested game on the road against a hostile local rival, BU\u2019s few experienced players were nowhere to be found in a 67-58 loss in the season opener on Monday.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have some guys that we have to rely on that struggled in this game,\u201d head coach Joe Jones said. \u201cIf you would\u2019ve told me that some of our key guys wouldn\u2019t play well in this game, I would say we would have a hard time winning.\u201d He let out a wry laugh. \u201cAnd we did.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t difficult to figure out who Jones was referring to. Landrum and Nico Nobili, both sophomore forwards, and Miles Brewster, a senior guard, were the only Terriers to see the floor Monday night with even 70 minutes of prior experience at BU.<\/span><\/p>\n

They combined to shoot 5-for-17 from the field. Landrum fouled out one possession after Doherty\u2019s dunk. Nobili committed four turnovers. Brewster spent most of the last ten minutes on the bench because, as Jones said, he simply wasn\u2019t playing very well.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI just thought defensively, [Brewster] is capable of being so much better,\u201d Jones said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Never has BU needed the three of them more. Six of the eight players that saw the floor alongside the trio were playing in their first career games. The other two, sophomore guard Ben Roy and senior forward Andrew Patnode, had played a combined 88 minutes before Monday.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, this early in the year, we have so much inexperience, that we have some guys that we have to rely on,\u201d Jones said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps most frustrating, though, is that the six Terriers that didn\u2019t have experience \u2014 four freshman and two junior transfers from Division II \u2014 hit the ground running. Baptiste made two threes and finished with 11 points. Just minutes before finding himself on the game-sealing poster, he drained a critical 3 to bring BU within four.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought Matai played very well,\u201d Jones said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Baptiste wasn\u2019t alone. Freshman guard Kyrone Alexander started, played 28 minutes and scored 15 points, both to lead the team. He went six-for-nine from the field and made three 3-pointers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s not afraid of the moment,\u201d Jones said. \u201cHe\u2019s a good player. Nothing he\u2019s doing is surprising me after what I watched in practice, someone that thinks the game as well as he does.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Junior guard Ethan Okwuosa, a transfer from DII Southern New Hampshire, scored nine. The first time he touched the ball, he was intercepting a Northeastern pass and taking it the other way for a layup. The second time? Sinking a 3-pointer on the wing to cap a 10-0 Terrier run early in the first half.<\/span><\/p>\n

BU\u2019s three leading scorers \u2014 Baptiste, Alexander, and Okwuosa \u2014 did it while taking their very first steps on a DI court. Even freshman guard Michael McNair, who scored five on 2-for-7 shooting, earned praise from his head coach. BU charged to a 34-31 halftime lead. 25 of their first-period points were from new players.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought we really controlled the game in the first half,\u201d Jones said. \u201cWe had some good offense, we played a good half.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But the Terriers can\u2019t rely solely on their newcomers, an impressive first half withstanding. Northeastern quickly applied pressure in the second period, at times, moving to a full-court man-to-man press. When things got uncomfortable, BU\u2019s new players \u2014 and it\u2019s difficult to blame them \u2014 struggled to find a rhythm against an aggressive opponent.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the second half, we got on our heels, and didn\u2019t really know what to do,\u201d Jones said. \u201cAnd a lot of it is, we\u2019re coming back with no one that has done it. No one\u2019s been in a game where they\u2019ve been the guy, so now everybody\u2019s wide-eyed, because who are we going to? What are we doing? Who\u2019s getting the shot? Everybody\u2019s trying to figure that out. And so that\u2019s going to take some time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Terriers can soak in the individual peaks from their talented new faces, but the familiar ones will need to be there to carry them out of the inevitable valleys. On Monday, they weren\u2019t.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But, they\u2019re facing a tall task, too \u2014 Nobili and Landrum are both sophomores, but they played sparingly in their freshman seasons. Brewster is a senior, but he spent his first three years playing in relief of older upperclassmen. Now, suddenly, they are the adults in the room.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first time [Brewster] is being looked at to score, it\u2019s a lot to do,\u201d Jones said. \u201cNow, before, it was \u2018alright, we got Walter Whyte, Javonte McCoy, [Sukhmail Maton], Jonas [Harper], I don\u2019t have to worry about scoring.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHere, it\u2019s like, \u2018I got to do everything,\u2019\u201d Jones said. \u201cThis is the first time he\u2019s going through it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a lot. And in the end, BU looked like a team that was seeing it all for the first time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to play without ever having any experience, It\u2019s hard to just be \u2018alright, we\u2019re gonna go play,\u2019\u201d Jones said. \u201cWe have a lot of confusion with who\u2019s on the floor and who\u2019s doing what. But I knew that was going to happen.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Per the official stat sheet, six of them really were seeing it all for the first time. But the three that weren\u2019t, in many ways, were still learning on the fly.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the Terriers turn their sights towards Friday \u2014 when they travel to Piscataway, New Jersey to take on Rutgers at 7 p.m. \u2014 the attention again goes to the three adults in the room. Even if they themselves really aren\u2019t that old, either.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think if we can get better play out of Nic, Otto, and Miles in particular, I think we gotta pretty good team,\u201d Jones said.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo courtesy of Helen Gui By Sam Robb O’Hagan BOSTON \u2014 Otto Landrum took the cheese. Northeastern\u2019s Chris Doherty ran right past, careening down a wide open lane left by the second-most experienced active Terrier. Matai Baptiste, BU\u2019s freshman forward playing in his first career game, took the brunt of it. He had no chance. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21477,"featured_media":35775,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1026,1027,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39258"}],"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\/21477"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39258"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39878,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39258\/revisions\/39878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}