By: Dave Souza<\/p>\n
The Boston University Terriers held a four-point lead over Loyola Maryland in the Patriot League Quarterfinals when the Greyhounds inbounded the ball with precious seconds remaining on the clock. As Jarred Jones attempted to cut the deficit in the waning moments of the contest, senior Justin Alston swatted away his shot at the glass to seal the 64-60 victory and send the Terriers (18-13) into the conference semifinals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought the game was going to be a close game going down the stretch,\u201d said head coach Joe Jones. \u201cThe game can turn that way on you if you don\u2019t kind of blow them out\u2026the game changes\u2026and we\u2019ve seen that a million times.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Terriers roared out of the gate, jumping out to an early 9-0 lead in the first three minutes. That dominance would continue throughout the first half as BU pushed their lead up to 15 at one point, never letting the Greyhounds (15-16) come within five points in the half.<\/p>\n
Everything seemed to be going in the Terriers\u2019 favor as they entered halftime sporting a 35-22 lead. However, Loyola Maryland would not go quietly, scoring 38 points in the second half, drawing near even with BU. A quarter of the Greyhounds points came off of 18 turnovers by the scarlet and white.<\/p>\n
Loyola\u2019s second half success was also a product of greater conversion, rather than capitalizing on BU mistakes. In the first half, the Greyhounds made just one of five shots from behind the three point line. However, Loyola turned it on in the second half, converting five of nine attempts beyond the arc.<\/p>\n
The Greyhounds halftime adjustments also translated to a higher shooting percentage from the field in the game\u2019s final 20 minutes. Knocking down seven of 22 shots in the first half, Loyola improved by roughly eight percent in the second, draining 11 of 28 attempts from the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just didn\u2019t get to Kostecka and Walker,\u201d Jones said of his team\u2019s second half defense. \u201cIf we did a better job of guarding those guys and not letting them get threes off, I thought we would have done a solid job defensively.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the glass, the Greyhounds out-rebounded BU 34-28, with 13 of their boards coming on the offensive side of the ball. The Terriers were efficient in their own side of the court, collecting 21 rebounds, but managed just five offensively.<\/p>\n
And while BU was sub-par on defense in the second half, a well-spread offense delivered them the win. All but one Terrier recorded at least a point in the contest, with sophomore guard Kyle Foreman leading the way with 12 points. A Clyde Hill, Wash. native, Foreman went five for seven from the field and collected his two other points at the line, where he pushed the BU lead to four in the game\u2019s final minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cKyle was terrific,\u201d complimented his head coach. \u201cDown the stretch he got his hands on a couple of balls \u2013 he had a few turnovers \u2013 but I thought overall he played really really well tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trailing shortly behind Foreman was Alston, who had 11 points and a team-high seven rebounds. Also collecting seven boards was junior Nick Havener, who Jones credited with having a great game following a stellar week in practice.<\/p>\n
With the win, the Terriers will now advance to the Patriot League Semifinals, where they will host the Lehigh Mountain Hawks on Sunday. Lehigh is coming off of a 77-72 victory over Colgate and entered the season as the favorites to claim the conference title. BU will look to eliminate the Mountain Hawks after sweeping them in their regular season series. Tip-off is set for 12 p.m. at Case Gym.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we win this, we\u2019re going to win this ugly,\u201d Jones said of his team\u2019s chances to win the league title. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to be able to play through some bad possessions at times and some mistakes we make, but it\u2019s going to be done ugly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By: Dave Souza The Boston University Terriers held a four-point lead over Loyola Maryland in the Patriot League Quarterfinals when the Greyhounds inbounded the ball with precious seconds remaining on the clock. As Jarred Jones attempted to cut the deficit in the waning moments of the contest, senior Justin Alston swatted away his shot at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17192,"featured_media":8199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1026,1027],"tags":[1053,1112],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8377"}],"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\/17192"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8377"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22102,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8377\/revisions\/22102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}