{"id":40084,"date":"2024-01-29T23:06:09","date_gmt":"2024-01-30T04:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=40084"},"modified":"2024-01-30T18:01:17","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T23:01:17","slug":"mens-basketball-bu-starts-hot-collapses-in-second-half-in-loss-at-holy-cross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2024\/01\/29\/mens-basketball-bu-starts-hot-collapses-in-second-half-in-loss-at-holy-cross\/","title":{"rendered":"Men\u2019s Basketball: BU starts hot, collapses in second half in loss at Holy Cross"},"content":{"rendered":"

Featured image by Stevie Potter<\/em><\/p>\n

By Sam Robb O\u2019Hagan<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

WORCESTER, Mass. \u2014 BU had it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Terriers led, 37-33, at the break, sure, but it was more than that. It was the near-50 percent shooting clip in the first 20 minutes. It was the smirk from sophomore forward Nico Nobili after delivering a slick bounce pass to a teammate on a backdoor cut for an easy layup. It was the way BU weathered a sudden storm from Holy Cross\u2019 Bo Montgomery.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was, as head coach Joe Jones put it to open his postgame press conference, \u201cprobably the best half we\u2019ve played all year.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And BU has nothing but a loss to show for it. After an electric Holy Cross (6-16, 3-6 PL) run in the second half and an ice-cold shooting streak on its own end, BU fell, 65-63, at the Hart Center on Monday night.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cToo bad it\u2019s two halves,\u201d Jones joked. \u201cI should\u2019ve walked out after the first like Larry Bird back in like \u201886 during the 3-point contest.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Jones laughs, but this was as brutal as it gets. BU (8-14, 3-6 PL) tail-spinned in the second half. It\u2019s field goal percentage free-falled to 25.8 percent. It made just eight shots in the final frame, and at one point, it went almost eight minutes without scoring.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over that scoreless run? Holy Cross, charged on by freshman guard Kahlil Singleton, went on a 19-3 run over seven minutes to turn what was a 12-point BU lead at one point in the first half into a 9-point Crusader advantage with four minutes left.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Hart Center, filled to near capacity, hit its peak with 9:16 remaining, when Singleton pulled up for a long 3-pointer and drained it, his second triple in as many possessions and his 15th points of the second period. It gave Holy Cross a 57-53 lead.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cKhalil Singleton was awesome,\u201d Jones said. \u201cI saw him play AAU, he\u2019s got a reputation of a great 3-point shooter, and tonight he was terrific.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Singleton finished with 18 points on 7-for-11 shooting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Montgomery (15 points, 3-for-3 from behind the arc) hit another 3 before a layup gave Holy Cross a 63-52 lead, its largest of the game.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From there, though, BU buckled down the hatches, allowing the Crusaders just three more points over the remaining seven minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we settled down, and once that run was over, we defended fine,\u201d Jones said.<\/span><\/p>\n

But BU still couldn\u2019t find enough buckets down the stretch. The Terriers, on one of their worst scoreless runs of the season, reverted to 3-point shots to pull themselves back up.<\/span><\/p>\n

BU hasn\u2019t been a good 3-point shooting team all year, the worst distance-shooting team in the conference coming into the game, and it\u2019s been a point of emphasis for Jones to take less triples as he tries to spark his offense.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve tried to change our identity, we\u2019ve tried to go to the basket more and put pressure on the paint,\u201d Jones said.<\/span><\/p>\n

It worked in the first half. BU scored 37 points in the first 20 minutes while taking just nine 3s. But in the second half? BU was 2-for-11 from behind the arc as it settled on the perimiter, if it could even find a shot at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOh, no doubt, no doubt we reverted back to what we\u2019re trying not to do,\u201d Jones said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s hard. It\u2019s hard not to do it when there\u2019s pressure, right? You\u2019re just trying to score, you\u2019re not thinking about your identity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Even when BU did find its way into the paint, it was smothered in the second half. Holy Cross junior forward Caleb Kenney blocked seven shots, including a miraculous chase down block of BU freshman Kyrone Alexander that he sent back over the Terrier bench and into the bleachers. Kenney added 12 points in a dominant second half.<\/p>\n

“The player of the game outside of [Singleton] was Kenney,” Jones said. “He was all over the place.”<\/p>\n

Still, with the help of timely layups from Alexander and junior Ethan Okwuosa, four free throws from senior Miles Brewster and three critical missed free throws from Holy Cross in the final minute, BU had a chance.<\/span><\/p>\n

It trailed, 65-63, with five seconds left and an inbound below the Crusaders\u2019 basket. Brewster (13 points) took the pass and raced up the court, but ran into a platoon of Holy Cross defenders near the 3-point line. He heaved the ball to freshman Matai Baptiste, but BU was out of time. He didn\u2019t get a shot off.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a familiar script for the Terriers, who, after Monday, have now led at the half in six of their nine conference games but have held on to win on just one of those occasions.<\/span><\/p>\n

After an ever-so-promising win over Patriot League-leading Lafayette on Saturday, the lone game BU has won when leading at the half in the conference slate, BU continued to build, playing what Jones called his team\u2019s best half.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then the Terriers collapsed. It was agonizing.<\/span><\/p>\n

BU, moving in the right direction but without a tally in the win column to show for it, will move on to face Lehigh on Saturday at Case Gym. Tip is at 1 p.m.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re feeling good, you come here, you\u2019re playing great in the first half,\u201d Jones said. \u201cAnd all of a sudden, you get punched in the face and you lose.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo then all of a sudden the wind comes out? No, bro, we got to focus on what we can control, that\u2019s what we should be thinking about, not that we lost the game.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Featured image by Stevie Potter By Sam Robb O\u2019Hagan WORCESTER, Mass. \u2014 BU had it. The Terriers led, 37-33, at the break, sure, but it was more than that. It was the near-50 percent shooting clip in the first 20 minutes. It was the smirk from sophomore forward Nico Nobili after delivering a slick bounce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21477,"featured_media":36131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1026,1027,19],"tags":[1128,1129,69,1145,1149,1902],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40084"}],"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=40084"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40105,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40084\/revisions\/40105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}