Who is this fast-paced basketball team, and what have you done with BU?

In my Iona preview I listed a few things people might think of when they hear "Iona." Unfortunately, BU fans who traveled to the game on Friday have emailed me to add another one: "raging alcoholic dickheads."



Read the Hot Dog's full account here, if you don't mind feeling uncomforable just sitting in your chair. Now, I'm not going to say we were all choir boys and angels back in my day, or always showed up ready to pass a breathalyzer, but we never personally targeted other fans or got in anybody's face. Especially for 40 straight minutes. These losers had zero interest in the game, just in making life miserable for the die-hard fans who made a 2-hour trip to cheer on their team. Idiots.

As for the game: sigh. In the excited build-up to every basketball season, especially this year with Coach Chambers getting everybody whipped into a frenzy, you forget how quickly you can be brought back down to earth by one uninspired opening performance.

This year it was BU losing by 9 at Iona, 82-73. One thing was crystal clear from this game: this is no longer Dennis Wolff's team. If the teams were Elton John songs, this is "Crocodile Rock" to last year's "Candle in the Wind." No more walking the ball up the floor to a half-court set offense. No more low-scoring games. And really, not much defense to be seen.

The Terriers ran up and down the floor non-stop. While this makes for an exciting, back-and-forth basketball game, I've got to criticize the strategy a bit. We had only 6 regular rotation players available... plus Vlad Sirutis and Sherrod Smith. Going up against a rotation of 11, this puts us at a disadvantage. Not only would we get tired more quickly, but the fouls mount up - which is exactly what happened. We had 6 guys finish with 4 or more fouls. Add it up and you've got a defense that resembles... the BU hockey team (sorry guys).

No strategy is going to work unless the shots fall, which they didn't. We shot under 40% for the game, and worse, made only 4 of 9 free throws in the second half. Turning the ball over 22 times doesn't help.

Bright spots were there. Tyler Morris looked like the 2006 version of himself. Carlos Strong had the first double-double of his career. The guards (Carlos, C-Lowe and Holland) rebounded the ball well, which will be important for our perimeter-oriented team.

The team's injuries hurt the depth, but even so we could have won the game. This much was glaring: the team desperately misses Scott Brittain's presence inside.

Where Amaker Buys His Apples: The Harvard Preview

I'm ready to get over this one.

At exactly 8:51pm on Saturday, November 29, I turned off the BU vs. Mount St. Mary's game, drove to airport and boarded a Delta 737 that took me directly (via layover in Cincinnati and Houston) to the Le Blanc Spa & Resort in Cancun, Mexico to partake in some relaxation, refreshment and rejuvenation for my mind, body and spirit. I was in a knot after that game, and a Shiatsu massage, seaweed body wrap and a 50-minute Steam-Vichy Rain Journey were just what the doctored ordered to calm my hoop-rage.

Or, not. I couldn't drop the 3 grand it would take for rejuvenating therapy, so I had to rely on the old fashioned Frank Costanza method:



It was a frustrating game - to listen/watch, to play in, and to coach. Mount St. Mary's is a good team, and they played well enough to win on Saturday - but I don't think they are necessarily the better team. I think the teams were evenly-matched to the point that whoever was the home team would win. MSM jumped out to a big early lead, but BU was able to grind it down throughout the entire 2nd half to tie the game with 5 minutes left.

Much of the trouble in this one came from FREE THROWS and REBOUNDING. We were dominated in both aspects. I think that's where much of the frustration came from. Plus that one really frickin fast guy they have.

It appears as though D. Wolff blew a gasket in this one. The refs blew a shot clock violation on MSM with about a minute to go that could have altered the outcome of the game, and the refs basically admitted they blew it by not T-ing up Wolff during his ranting. The players got fired up too, with news coming that the two teams nearly erupted in fisticuffs near the locker rooms after the game.

But it's time to forget about that now, and I can only hope that much of that fire carries over to tonight's game against Harvard. This is another team that is easy to underestimate but not very easy to beat. BU has pwned the smart kids lately, winning 14 of the last 15. And Tommy Amaker has nightmares about the Terriers, dating back to his back-to-back home losses to BU back at Michigan.

He's starting to bring some good players to the Crimson though, and it's showing in the standings. Harvard is going to challenge for the top couple spots in the Ivy League by the end of the year.

There are plenty of reasons to hate them though:

1. New York Times exposes dirty recruiting by Harvard

"In a New Era at Harvard, New Questions of Standards"
The New York Times
By Pete Thamel
March 2, 2008

"It is also because Harvard is willing to consider players with a lower academic standing than previous staff members said they were allowed to. Harvard has also adopted aggressive recruiting tactics that skirt or, in some cases, may even violate National Collegiate Athletic Association rules [...] In the race to become competitive in basketball, Harvard’s new approach could tarnish the university’s sterling reputation."

And this is funny...

"In another case, Amaker approached the parents of an athlete in a grocery store and urged that their son visit Harvard..."

See ya in the produce aisle, Tommy!

2. Harvard encroaching on BU's territory

"Residents mobilize against Harvard"
Allston-Brighton Tab
By Karen Elowitt
February 15, 2007

Allston may be smelly and disgusting, but this side of the river is ours, bitches!

3. Apples

OK, We Suck

I've been putting off saying this for as long as possible, because I've been hoping that it just wasn't true, but we suck.

I should have noticed this last weekend when I was excited that we squeezed out a win against Stony Brook.

Let's take a look at the evidence from tonight's loss to UMBC:

Exibit A - 5 points in the first 12 minutes. We have GOT to stop doing this. We put ourselves in a hole from the outset of almost every game. Someone's not preparing our team for the start of the game (**cough**Wolff**cough**).

Exibit B - We had a stretch of over 10 minutes without a bucket. I forget that this is a sign of suckiness because it seems to happen once a game. Oh, and the final 7 minutes of the game, too.

Exibit C - Aside from a ball that went out of bounds off the hand of a UMBC player, we had Zero offensive rebounds in the first half. ZERO! That's pathetic. That means that every time we had the ball on offense, it was one shot, usually a miss, and UMBC got the ball back.

Exibit D - 5 second chance points, 10 points in the paint. These two figures show that we have no inside presence. Big problem.

Exibit E - The play by play guy for 1590 The Zone said it pretty well after Scott Brittain fouled out with no points: with Corey still out and Carlos held to 5 points, our three leading scorers tallied 5 points tonight.

Exibit F - Um... 25 % shooting percentage? Are you fucking kidding me?

Exibit G - We just had our asses pounded at home to UMBC.

I don't want to think about basketball until the Vermont game. See you at the Greek at 9PM on Friday, folks.

Honey, can you pick up some Windex on your way home from work?

The Terriers need some serious help in the glass-cleaning department. In fact, the Case Gym glass is so filthy it seems like it hasn't been cleaned all year (at least not by BU).

Figure this: BU has 4 "big men" (although at times that seems like a stretch) - Scott Brittain, Vlad Sirutis, Max Gotzler and Ibe Konate. During the 9-point loss to Hartford on 1/12, that Fearsome Foursome gathered a grand total of THREE rebounds. Not three apiece, not an average of three between them... but THREE total. And all four of them got playing time! Kudos to Ibe for pulling down 33% of the group's rebounds in just 4 minutes of action.

The group responded to that performance with a FIVE rebound effort this past Wednesday against Albany (this time, Ibe didn't see any action). It was sad to watch that display, as the disparity on the boards was 38-20 in favor of Albany - missed shots seemed to head directly into the hands of our big men, then be promptly taken away by Albany and deposited into the basket.

These guys should be averaging 4 rebounds per game EACH, not as a group. Might this problem (ranked 8 out of 9 in rebounding margin) have a little to do with our losses this year?

Boxlines

It's a few days late, but here is the Boxline of the Week:


Corey Lowe, vs. Albany 1/16

FG-FGA FG-FGA FT-FTA OF DE TOT PF  TP  A TO BLK S MIN

6-19   5-12   3-4    0  1  1   4  20  4  3  1  3  40

Not all that impressive, I know, but according to BU's website, Corey played 40 minutes on Wednesday, so that's why his is the boxline of the week. Plus it wasn't that impressive a week on our side anyway.

And your Boxline of the Weak:

Valdas Sirutis, @ Hartford 1/12

FG-FGA FG-FGA FT-FTA OF DE TOT PF  TP  A TO BLK S MIN
0-0    0-0    0-0    0  0  0   0   0  0  1  0  0  12

No points, no boards, no assists, not even a shot. Just one turnover. What the hell was he doing in there for 12 minutes? Discussing the best places to eat in Eastern Europe with Max Gotzler?

Oh, and here's a couple stats from last night's game that might make you puke:

Rebounds: BU 20 - Albany 38
Shooting %: BU 35.3 - Albany 54.5

I guess at the very least we can call it a breakout game for John Holland with 19 points.

Murmurs of Basketball Stuff

It was a relief to see BU remembered how to score points. They nearly reached their previous games total by half-time as they outplayed UNH to win 82-72. Corey Lowe ended up with thirty points after scoring the first 12 points for BU, all on threes. Carlos Strong had 14 points, and Max Gotzler had 11, a career high.

Jesus, where to being.

First of all, the starting line-up:

Max Gotzler, Matt Wolff, Valdus Sirutis, Tyler Morris, and John Holland.

Weird, right? But it somehow worked. I'm still trying to figure it out.

Corey Lowe took 22 shots. That's a hell of a lot but it seemed to work so I say keep doing it.

Ibe and Marques Johnson barely played. 12 Minutes between the two of them. I'm sure that had something to do with how well we played.

Tyler took a lot of shots, and missed a lot. But he's been trying to shoot his way out of his slump, and he will, as long as he keeps shooting. He still managed 10 points, with 8 from the free throw line. He's starting to get back into, and I like that Wolff isn't overworking him too soon.

John Holland had six steals, showing how much this kid hustles on every play. We need someone like him on the court as much as possible. He is sick on defense. Defensive Player of the Year in a couple years, I'm calling it right now.

As a team, we out-rebounded UNH, and I can't remember the last time we did that. 36!

And how 'bout that Max Gotzler? He played 35 minutes! And judging by the box score, he didn't do too badly either. But there's a reason he got so much playing time. Scott Britain didn't play today, and it's much worse than we could have thought possible:

BU, which now holds a 52-6 advantage over UNH in conference play, was playing without leading rebounder and third-leading scorer Scott Brittain, who pulled a gluteus muscle in practice Tuesday.

I quoted the recap from ESPN because I didn't want to have to think of a way to say that, but it sounds bad. I have no idea if this is a short-term or long-term injury, but if someone knows, or if anyone knows specifically what is going on with Scott, leave a comment.

Anyway, this was a big win for us. We needed it bad after four straight losses. We go hammered by SUNY (I started using SUNY when talking about Binghamton because it was getting too confusing with two BU's. Plus I think they hate the name SUNY), and we were in danger of starting conference play 0-2. It's good to see some life in them. I hope they keep this up.

And around the America East? What a strange couple of days.

Sunday:

BU took a serious beating from SUNY, who I had predicted only minutes earlier would finish 8th in the conference. That was a real wake up call.

After looking so sharp the entire game, Vermont loses in overtime to Albany by a point. What an exciting game that was.

Stony Brook totally hands it to Maine. Didn't think they had it in them.

Wednesday:

Down 7 at the half, Hartford rallies back with 48 points in the seconds half edge out Binghamton by one point.

UMBC crushes Vermont 78-60. Right after Vermont looked so sharp at Albany, too.

And the standings look incredibly odd right now. Everyone has at least one win, except Maine, and everyone has at least one loss, except Hartford, who only played one conference game, and UMBC, who is 3-0. I think I can honestly say that right now, it looks like almost anyone could win this conference.

And UMBC? Didn't see this coming. Hodges is having himself a great season, and he's got a great team around him. Yeah, it's early, but I can't recall UMBC ever having a decent season. Maybe this is the season they finally make some noise.

Too early to know too much, but we know this: this is going to be one ridiculous season.