Air Carlos, Now Boarding

And you thought JH23 was the only Terrier who could fly?

Photo by Kristyn Ulanday via Coach Chambers

Media Day: Everybody Loves the Terriers!

For the third year in a row, the America East coaches have UNANIMOUSLY picked BU to finish #1 overall in the Preseason:

1. Boston U
2. Vermont
3. Albany
4. Stony Brook
5. New Hampshire
6t. Hartford
6t. UMBC
8. Maine
9. Binghamton

And we were well represented on the Preseason All-Conference Team:

Tim Ambrose, Jr., Albany
Marqus Blakely, Sr., Vermont
Muhammad El-Amin, Sr., Stony Brook
John Holland, Jr., Boston U.
Corey Lowe, Sr., Boston U.

Pat Chambers was "sick" (no really, Coach, we believe you...) and missed his first America East Media Day, so right-hand man Orlando Vandross ably stepped in to give soundbites of things we mostly knew already. Among them:

Chambers will bring a more exciting, Villanova style of play to BU

Carlos Strong and Tyler Morris are healthy and ready to go

BJ Bailey should emerge as a regular part of the rotation by conference play

It was mighty nice of the coaches to vote us #1, but we don't care

"There is a genuine excitement about our basketball program. We need to harness it."

BU will secretly play UMass on Saturday

OK, so don't tell anybody, but BU is going to play UMass in a "secret scrimmage" this coming Saturday. It'll be Pat Chambers' first experience as a head coach going up against another D-I program. It's an opponent his players will know better than he does; before last year, BU played (and lost to) the Minutemen three years in row.

Every year, teams play 1 or 2 so-called secret games against another school, one that they won't play during the regular season, just for practice purposes. It's secret because fans and media are not allowed to attend, and coaches aren't allowed to comment on them. This is because schemes and plays that coaches are trying out are apparently akin to state secrets and should be protected as such. Jeff Goodman released his list of "secret scrimmages" this morning.

This leads to some philosphical questions of the basketball universe. If two teams play a basketball game and nobody's around to see it or hear about it... does it ever actually take place? Is there a score? If an injury happens, does it miraculously heal when the teams return home? Since it's Halloween, will they dress up in disguises?

If, somewhere in the space-time continuum, this game actually occurs and somebody hears about it and any real or virtual scores, storylines or injuries, let us know!

Just the Tip-Off

PAT CHAMBERS.

I could end the post there and I would have said enough. But it deserves a few more words. We have heard Pat Chambers talk a lot about getting kids fired up for basketball. This is the first time we saw it in action. Like a mad man, Chambers sprinted out onto the court, screaming at the fans to stand up, even jumping up on the scorers table. And the fans responded by standing up, and screaming back louder. Chambers lost his voice in about 2 seconds. He went on for about 5 minutes talking about supporting the team, getting fired up, the team has a new attitude.

It was a far cry from a Dennis Wolff tip-off performance, or even the BU women's coach. It might even succeed in getting people to go to games, who knows.

Random observations from the rest of the night:

-- Is it just me, or were the guy's intro songs slightly outdated? I think the time for "Hey Shorty, It's Your Berfday" and "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" has passed. (And John Holland, lose the Yanks cap dude. You're trying to connect with the student body!)

-- Speaking of outdated songs, someone with access please slip some newer material under Chris Parks' office door. I love the BU Band -- they are probably the most devoted BU sports fans there are -- but the old songs they have been playing since I was a freshman (a decade ago!!) just remind me of the OLD BU basketball. Pat Chambers is trying to re-invent this program with new life, but that old intro song the band plays (whatever it's called) keeps me back in the DWolff era. And were any students even born before "Push It" came out?

-- The Dance Team was good as usual, but I'm feeling the MJ fatigue. But the collab with the hoops team was "Bad" (meaning good). John Holland was not good, Tyler Morris was surprisingly good, and Jeff Pelage looked like he was having the most fun out there.

-- My ranking of the different dance performances of the night:

1. Fusion
2. BU Dance Team
3. BU Cheer Team
4. XCeption
5. Status Quo - not impressed by them. Bring back Lil' Phunk or Phunk Phenomenon!
...
99. BU Men's Basketball team - points for effort. At least it was better than this:



-- In the first round of the 3-point shooting contest, both girls beat Tyler Morris and Corey Lowe. In fact, both guys appeared to be drunk. But then Tyler redeemed the men by getting on fire in the second round, proving once and for all the men are the dominant gender.

-- The best dunks from the dunk contest were pretty impressive. Carlos Strong was the clear winner, so I'm glad he took the title for the second staight year. My favorite comment, courtesy of Dean Elmore: "Show 'em what it means to be from Maine, Carlos!"

Line up the troops!

At Fake BU, the lineup means standing in front of a giant ruler and a witness behind glass. At the Real BU, however, it means the five guys who are going to lead Coach Chambers into his inaugural season on the court.

Projecting the Terriers' starting lineup and depth chart will not be as easy this year as it seems. Even if Chambers didn't bring in any of his own guys this year, he's bringing his own system and philosophies and we may not know how the players fit into his schemes.

That said, we've seen what all but one of these guys can do so we have a pretty good starting point. What can we expect to begin the season? My guess:

1: Corey Lowe
2: Carlos Strong
3: John Holland
4: Jake O'Brien
5: Scott Brittain

I think this is the year that 'Los sheds the "6th Man" label and gets a chance to start every game. The other option is throwing Tyler in at the point and moving Corey off the ball, but Tyler was a little less effective last year after coming back from injury. Chambers may feel that Corey would be more effective off the ball. But due to Tyler's injury problems of the last few years, he may benefit from not being ridden for 35 mins per game this year. I think that Tyler would excel in a bench/quick energy, shooting and defense role, but we know he can hold down a starting job too.

There aren't really any other debates about the starting lineup, but there is certainly some decent depth right behind them. While noting that practice hasn't even started yet, here's how I could see it shaking out:

1: Lowe/Bailey
2: Strong/Morris
3: Holland/
4: O'Brien/Sirutis
5: Brittain/Pelage

I think it'll be a 9-man rotation, with Vlad Sirutis getting only a few per game. Mike Schultz, Tunde, Sully and, unfortunately, TheRod Smith will play the role of pine-jockey until the team is completely ravaged by injuries.

Who's steering this thing??

Famous captains:

Apparently, you can add 4 more to that list. Coach Chambers announced that Corey Lowe, Tyler Morris, Scott Brittain and Carlos Strong are BU's captains this year. This group contains all of the seniors who have played significant minutes every year since they were freshmen.

Congrats to all of them, as they have all been great contributors over their three years so far and they all deserve to be recognized.

However, and maybe I'm behind the times on this, but I have always been of the mind that there should be 1 captain per team. It's very cool for all the players if every significant player to go through the system becomes a captain at some point in their careers, but if every player is a captain does it really mean anything?

And if they really do have actual responsibilities, is it a good idea to have 4 guys trying to make decision or run drills? You know what they say about too many cooks in the kitchen.

Take Derek Jeter or Jason Varitek, for example. They are not the best players on their teams, but they lead by example and they lead by their words. It's not Varitek, Wakefield, Lowell, Ortiz just because they are the "seniors" of the Red Sox. President Obama is the "Captain" of America... we didn't choose the 4 guys who had been in the Senate the longest.

Regardless, I'm sure the guys will find some way to divide the captaining responsibilities. As long as it doesn't devolve into an ugly power struggle along the lines of Jim Halpert/Michael Scott.

BU's schedule: This time with Latin Flavor!

Most of you have seen and pored over the BU non-conference schedule, which came out via Twitter a month ago. I tweeted some reaction at the time, but here it is all in one place:

11/13/09 at Iona
11/17/09 vs George Washington
11/19/09 vs Kansas State
11/20/09 Indiana/Mississippi
11/22/09 TBD
11/25/09 vs Northeastern
11/29/09 vs Harvard
12/02/09 vs Connecticut
12/06/09 vs Bucknell
12/12/09 at Marist
12/22/09 vs Mount St. Mary's
12/29/09 at Dayton
2/19/09 TBD

With a brand new coaching staff, you'd expect to see a few changes from the past few schedules. But... no, not really. This year's out-of-conference slate looks a lot like last years. (Maybe that's because the AD has a bigger hand in putting together these games.)

Our home opener is GW for the second straight year. This is a series of which I'm a big fan. Last year we took them to OT, this year we should be able to finally break through. Sad they won't be playing here in DC, but on the bright side I won't have nightmares from their mascots.

Iona and Marist are middling MAAC teams - at least we can't get them in the Bracketbuster, as we did Iona last year. FUN FACT: John Holland's pops played at Iona.

Harvard and Northeastern are there every year. Doesn't make me like them any better.

Mount St. Mary's and Bucknell are both very decent teams from other low-major conferences. We split them last year; with an improved squad we should take both this year.

Now it starts to get really interesting. We play against UConn at the big Hartford arena, then against Dayton in their intimidating building. Chances of taking either game are slim as both are great teams, but it's a good learning experience for the guys that'll make chumps like Bucknell seem like JV Girls.


Finally, the crown jewel is the Puerto Rico Tip-Off beginning with Kansas State, then Indiana or Ole Miss, then George Mason/Villanova/Georgia Tech/Dayton (again). All are great power conference teams (or close enough), and we'll be lucky to steal one. Indiana is probably our best chance, since they're the Big Ten version of Binghamton except not nearly as addicted to crack.

As soon as we know a little more about all of these teams, I'll come back with a prediction for each game. Until then, we wait (im)patiently for the conference schedule to come out!