{"id":39844,"date":"2024-01-07T01:56:20","date_gmt":"2024-01-07T06:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=39844"},"modified":"2024-01-12T16:12:42","modified_gmt":"2024-01-12T21:12:42","slug":"mens-basketball-bu-falls-to-0-2-in-the-patriot-league-as-shooting-woes-continue-against-lafayette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2024\/01\/07\/mens-basketball-bu-falls-to-0-2-in-the-patriot-league-as-shooting-woes-continue-against-lafayette\/","title":{"rendered":"Men\u2019s Basketball: BU falls to 0-2 in the Patriot League as shooting woes continue against Lafayette"},"content":{"rendered":"

Featured image by Jacob Ireland<\/em><\/p>\n

By Sam Robb O’Hagan<\/em><\/p>\n

BOSTON \u2014 It was the same story, it was the same result. A few games early in the season could have been fairly chalked up to an anomaly, at worst a slight cause for concern. But BU has now played 15 games, and they\u2019re shooting just 40.8 percent from the field. That\u2019s fourth-worst in the Patriot League.<\/span><\/p>\n

And in their 10 losses, the number is all the way down at 36.2.<\/span><\/p>\n

Boston University men\u2019s basketball (5-10, 0-2 PL) fell to Lafayette College (3-13, 2-0 PL) at Case Gym on Saturday in their second game of conference play. It was the same story. And it felt like a tipping point.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the conference opener at Navy on Wednesday, BU shot just 33.9 percent. Against Lafayette, after a quick 7-0 run early in the first half to race out to a 17-6 lead, BU didn\u2019t make a shot for the next 10 minutes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When the Leopards took their first lead with 14 minutes left in the second half, the Terriers had four buckets in the previous 16 minutes of game time. They made just seven more field goals the rest of the way.<\/span><\/p>\n

BU made 16 shots, just 30.2 percent of its attempts. Both were its lowest output since the second game of the season, almost two months ago.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to win any game shooting, you know, 30 percent,\u201d BU head coach Joe Jones said. The Terriers have been saying that all season.<\/span><\/p>\n

A reckoning is needed. BU can\u2019t keep shooting poorly and throwing its hands up.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to examine what we\u2019re doing,\u201d Jones said. \u201cWe think we have a lot of guys that can make shots, but we\u2019re not shooting the ball well from 3 at all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

BU shot 26 3-pointers on Saturday. It made eight.<\/span><\/p>\n

When the Terriers gave up on perimeter looks and threw the ball inside to its posts, it got similar results. Sophomore forwards Nico Nobili and Otto Landrum are the only true post-players left on the active roster \u2014 junior Malcolm Chimezie will miss the rest of the season with a knee injury \u2014 and they weren\u2019t effective in their isolated looks down low. Landrum shot 5-for-16. Nobili barely shot the ball at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it\u2019s been the same story there, too. The two haven\u2019t been efficient on shots inside the arc, a vast majority of them around the rim, all season.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard for us, we don\u2019t score the ball at the rim great, and so now we\u2019re saying we got to make 3s to win,\u201d Jones said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t score the ball well at the rim, and you\u2019re not shooting the ball well from three, it\u2019s hard to win.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It sure is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Coincidentally, BU\u2019s guards have been hesitant to attack the rim off the dribble all season. Senior Miles Brewster, junior Ethan Okwuosa, and freshman Kyrone Alexander have been the Terriers\u2019 mainstays in the backcourt, starting the last 14 games. Their roles have been reduced to running a set-heavy offense \u2014 which, at times, has led to turnovers (BU committed 14 on Saturday, and Jones cited them multiple times after the game) \u2014 or simply passing it into the post for Landrum and Nobili.<\/span><\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t worked. Not consistently enough, at least. In BU\u2019s losses \u2014 and there are now 10 of them \u2014 the Terriers are averaging just 56.4 points per game.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to examine how we\u2019re attacking people,\u201d Jones said.<\/span><\/p>\n

As he had in BU\u2019s previous three games, Brewster showed promise attacking the rim against the Leopards. To cap the early 7-0 spurt in the first half \u2014 easily the Terriers\u2019 best stretch of the game \u2014 Brewster aggressively drove to the cup and finished with an impressive move that forced Lafayette into an immediate timeout.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Brewster (six points, seven assists) took just three shots inside the arc over the entire 40 minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think we got to talk about trying to open up some spaces to attack on the dribble more,\u201d Jones said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Junior guard Ethan Okwuosa (nine points, seven rebounds) has shown a willingness to attack the basket and shoot mid-range jumpers all season, and when he has, the results have been there \u2014 almost 50 percent on shots inside the arc. But Okwuosa simply hasn\u2019t had many of those looks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Five of the 11 shots Okwuosa took on Saturday were 3s. He made one.<\/span><\/p>\n

Said Jones, when asked if he wants Brewster and Okwuosa to look to create their own shots with dribble penetration more often: \u201cDefinitely, I think that\u2019s something we\u2019ve got to look at.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Terriers growing trend of poor shooting has come with another equally frustrating story. BU has yet to finish a close game. In the Patriot League opener in Annapolis on Wednesday, the Terriers surrendered the game-winning basket in the final minute and lost by two. In losses at Dartmouth and against Maine in non-conference play, the Terriers were within three points in the closing minutes but wound up losing by nine.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Saturday, BU trailed 48-46 with 2:25 left. They lost by eight.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Jones, the shooting problem and the finishing problem were not mutually exclusive.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we struggled to score,\u201d Jones said, \u201cwe didn\u2019t really have the confidence to finish the game the way you need to finish it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Terriers walked into the season more inexperienced than they\u2019ve ever been in 13 seasons under Jones.<\/span><\/a> The head coach was willing to use the youth as a crutch for late-game losses in the first and third games of the season, but by the loss against Maine on December 6, he said he wouldn\u2019t go there anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, a month later to the date, BU is suffering from the same deficiency.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to meet it head on,\u201d Jones said. \u201cYou have to hold yourself accountable for the mistakes you\u2019ve made in those minutes and those moments.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Terriers are 0-2 to start the Patriot League. In both losses, they made less than 20 field goals. In both losses, they couldn\u2019t finish a close game down the stretch.<\/span><\/p>\n

BU hosts American on Wednesday at 7 p.m. If this BU team is more than this same story, it has to start happening soon.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to jumpstart that learning curve, because a lot of these games are going to be close games,\u201d Jones said. \u201cAnd we have to be better.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Featured image by Jacob Ireland By Sam Robb O’Hagan BOSTON \u2014 It was the same story, it was the same result. A few games early in the season could have been fairly chalked up to an anomaly, at worst a slight cause for concern. But BU has now played 15 games, and they\u2019re shooting just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21477,"featured_media":36976,"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\/39844"}],"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=39844"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39867,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39844\/revisions\/39867"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}