A Boost for Our Bench Scoring: The Maine Preview

I am currently watching Georgetown-Notre Dame on CBS, and they flashed a stat onscreen that caught my eye. It said that Georgetown is ranked #345 out of 347 D-I schools in bench scoring with 17 points per game, and Notre Dame is last in the nation at #347 out of 347 with 13.6 bench points per game.

I immediately called bullshit. As a Terrier fan, I know that absolutely NOBODY has worse bench production than us.

Basketball State doesn't show bench scoring, so I had to add this up myself. All told, even including 5 or 6 games at the beginning when John Holland was coming off the bench, BU non-starters only scored 290 points in 28 games - an average of 10.3 points per game. So SUCK IT CBS, I had no idea where you got that stat from. I'd love to know what they were talking about.

Things could change today, as it's Senior Day and all our senior bench guys will start, meaning we will have Jake O'Brien and John Holland coming off the bench. Here's how I see our starting lineup:

G Mike Schulze
G Tunde Agboola
F Sherrod Smith
F Valdas Sirutis
F Brendan Sullivan

Anything else would be a travesty. Lowe, Strong and Morris don't need to start this game. All 5 of those bench guys should get at least 4 minutes, since this game is essentially meaningless. It would be really awesome if Scott Brittain could suit up for this one too, but I don't see it happening.

So let's have these guys go out and win this Senior Day for Scott.

Halfway Home: The Maine Preview

How exciting is this! We're halfway through our conference schedule, and tonight we're playing for first place. Something odd though - the game isn't against Vermont, and it isn't against Albany or Binghamton. It's against Maine. That's right... terrible, basement-dwelling, joke of a team Maine. I know, I can't believe it either.

But right now, let's focus on the halfway through part. How did the first half go?

Well, we're playing for first place, so not too badly. We cleaned up against the crap teams, and we crapped the bed against the good ones. But in the words of the immortal Brian Johnson, 6-2 ain't a bad place to be.

The Story of the First Half: Coping With Injuries

Already without Scott Brittain and BJ Bailey, we lost Tyler Morris after the first AE game. At that point, many BU fans labeled the season a lost cause and were ready to write the season off. I publicly wondered who would run the point for BU.

Since then, the Terriers starters have pulled together and stepped up their game. And I've got two of them in mind in particular, and that's Corey Lowe and Carlos Strong. 'Los has really stepped up rebounding and on the defensive side of the ball, while still shooting 47% from 3 point range. And Corey has been all-around ridiculous; upping his points and assist numbers, while becoming a real leader on the floor.

The bench has been a problem all year, mainly because of those injury problems. But we're finally beginning to see a glimmer of hope (aka production) there, and from the unlikeliest of sources: Sherrod Smith (7 rebounds against UMBC!!!), Brendan Sullivan (5 rebounds against Binghamton!!), Tunde Agboola (shooting 67% for the year!!!) and yes even Mikey Schulze (a big '2' in the scoring column against UMBC).

What Can We Expect the Rest of the Year?

That all depends on how long our 4 main guys can keep up this pace. They are going to get TIRED. However, 5 of our final 9 are at home, so that helps.

It depends on whether the bench can continue to improve.

It depends on how good Tyler is, and to a lesser extent Brendan Sullivan, coming back from injury.

And it depends on how bad these 9 seniors want to finish out their careers on a good note.

My Prediction: Another 6-2, for a grand total of 14-4 and 2nd place.

I think the tired legs will make an impact at some point. But the experience and talent of the team will get it most of the way there.

It starts tonight in Maine. This is a team that is somehow good. They have a player, Gerald McLemore, who is maybe the next Corey Lowe in this league. And they've got some beefy guys who can patrol the paint. I'm hoping we can hold this one down, and be able to stand on top of the AE mountain for a few days.

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.

Tourney Time: UMBC, we comin for you

The Terriers seemed to be ending the regular season on a high note, then almost a disastrous note, then finally on a relieved note. But eventually, BU finished off the spunky Hawks of Hartford in OT and did not put all of their fans on suicide watch.

The highlight of this game was, obviously, The Rod. We here at BU Hoops Blog have been clamoring for The Rod all season long and especially when the injuries hit, but DWolff went for a miniscule rotation instead of adding Sherrod to it. It's gotta hurt when your coach would risk severe exhaustion and burnout of his stars just so he doesn't have to put you in the game. But The Rod proved him wrong with stellar play, subbing for the quickly injured Matt Wolff.

The latest reports say Matt has recovered from his concussion and is back to practice, but will Sherrod still play a part in the Terriers' first round game? Luckily, we're playing the only team with less depth than us.

UMBC beat Albany on Sunday and earned a date with us. This worked out really well in a lot of ways:

• We get to miss the host school, Albany, who even though they suck will have tons of people rooting for them.
• UMBC's aforementioned depth troubles.
• BU handled them twice already this year, even if one of the games went to 2OT.
  
• We avoid Stony Brook, who beat us already and is my pick for a big-time tourney upset.

As the #3 seed, things work out well except that we meet up with Vermont in the semis. But, in order to be the best, you have to beat the best - and I'd rather get a crack at them in Albany in front of a semi-neutral setting. I'd feel more comfortable at Binghamton in a final than at Vermont.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I like the idea of knocking out the defending champs. Retrievers, you're up.

Bracket Bluster: The Iona Preview

Today is BracketBuster Saturday. While Vermont is on The Deuce (do people still call it that?) playing in a real Bracketbuster against Buffalo, at the same time BU will be stuck inside Case Gym playing a sub-.500 team in a "Bracketbuster Pool game." Unfortunately this does not mean they're playing Marco Polo.

Back during our 8-game winning streak (R.I.P.) I got cocky and complained about the quality of our opponent, Iona College. Right now, Iona is 12-15, under .500 in conference play, and sitting in 6th place in the MAAC. Their RPI is languishing in the low 100's. Basically, they're not very good.

But let's get real, we're not busting anyone's bracket they way we're playing lately. I predicted before the season that we'd get stuck with some shitty MAAC team, and we are, just like usual.

What BU needs more than a better BB opponent is some wins and getting back to playing the way we were before. And some rest. The guys look tired.

Corey is mad from being benched against Stony Brook. We could have won the game if he played, but I'm pretty glad he got some rest anyway. I hope it lights a fire under his ass for the rest of the season. Last time he was benched, he came back to play the best ball of his life.

FCP says Wolff is planning to start Lowe against Iona, so everybody's back on good terms. Wolff also says he's planning to play all the starters their regular minutes. I suppose he wants to get them back into the flow of how we were playing before, but I can't say I wouldn't like to see quite a few minutes of Valdas, Pelage and --dare I say it?-- the Rod.

(Nah.... never happen)

Back to .500 in America East!

There's nothing like inviting UNH to town, if you want to ditch that 5-game losing streak.

Thanks to the Mild Cats, BU is back on the right track after a 31-point thrashing in The Roof. We didn't seem to be suffering ill effects, at least for this game, from the absence of TyLos. And we got a glimpse of how Dennis plans to run the team for the rest of the year without them.

Sadly, the Rod will not be a large part of the plans. Neither will Tunde. However, the Rod got a good 4 minutes of burn against UNH -- 4th man off the bench!! He's been a player Wolff has thrown in to a game in years past when he gets REALLY pissed at guys 1-8 in the lineup, and I expect that to continue this year.

In other news, John Holland is a man. Probably my favorite thing in the world is watching him play tight D at the top of the zone, watching him tip a pass and chase it into the backcourt -- and for about 2.5 seconds being overcome by goosebumps knowing that John Holland is about to throw down a ferocious breakaway dunk. Nice feeling.

Johnny scored 25 in both games last week - the 25 in the loss to Albany was almost more impressive since he was missing Corey Lowe and was trying to carry the team across the finish line by himself. But both games served notice that JH23 is out of his slump and can go toe-to-toe with any player in America East. For his efforts, John was rewarded with his second America East Player of the Week, and I salute him.

Debut of the New Look Terriers: The Albany Preview

I was planning to do a recap review of the entire out-of-conference season, but any games played before today hardly even seem relevant anymore.

I know that the BU Athletic Dept still hasn't confirmed any injuries, or the fact that Corey won't play tonight, but I'm taking the Hot Dog at his word. The kid once transported a t-shirt 350 miles for me, for crying out loud. So assuming he's right, how do the events of *Black Thursday* change this team?

Short answer is: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck... A slightly longer answer is: it will change the team a lot.

BU's bread-and-butter (when we were still making bread and butter at the beginning of the season) was always the perimeter game. Big time 3-point shooters. That's what opposing defenses focused on. Now, Corey Lowe is our only 3-point shooting guard. Yes, JH23 and JOB can go long-range, but they're are forwards, so they have other responsibilities too (ahem, rebounding, ahem...). And Corey isn't even playing tonight!!

Marques Johnson will be running the point from now on. Marques cannot shoot 3's with any regularity. Who else is there tonight? Sherrod Smith, Tunde, Sam Tully and Michael Schulze have a combined 2 career 3-pointers, both by Sherrod (who sports a .111 3FG%). Brendan Sullivan, not a guard but another walkon, at least has 5 in his career, albeit all during one magical night at Rider. Bottom line: We are not getting production from the 1 or the 2 positions tonight, unless one of the traditional starters (Holland or Matt Wolff) shifts over.

Probable starters, I'm guessing:
G Johnson
F Wolff
F Holland
F O'Brien
F Brittain (maybe Pelage?)

That's a big lineup - 4 forwards, 1 guard. This completely changes the offense into a post-oriented one. The emergence of JOB and Jeff Pelage, along with the leftover talent that we know Scott Brittain has (need ya know, buddy), makes that the strength of this team. Do we even have plays designed to get the ball into the post?!?!

For those wanting to see D'Wolff gone from the sideline, you'll get to see what kind of coaching mind he has tonight... for better or worse.


The High Roller is stuck at work and cannot blog, but weighed in on today's occurrences via text message. A few choice nuggets of wisdom:

• First off, im excited 2 c the rod get some decent time. I always like seeing him play
• I cant think of ne more positives. Thir is a horrible situation all around
• I still dont get why hes benching corey. If hes trying to make a point its not working
• Also I think marquez wil5 be a disaster

So there you have it. The High Roller has a knack for seeing the big picture, spelling errors or not.

And you know what? I'm so burnt out by all this stuff that I can't even thing about our opponent tonight, Albany. So no scouting report or anything. Just know that they lost their 3 or 4 best players from last year when we KNOCKED THEM OFF IN OVERTIME IN THE TOURNAMENT and so they've got a lot of new contributors. None of which I know much or anything about. Read what this guy has to say.

Anyway, it's still my job to root for the Terriers, so GO BU, and.... this should be interesting.

"No, the season didn't die... it just went to go live with a nice farm family"

Thanks to a scoop from the Hot Dog, we now know that:

A) I was wrong about Corey - he's BENCHED for the Albany game
B) Tyler Morris is OUT FOR THE YEAR with a torn ACL.
C) Carlos Strong is OUT FOR THE YEAR with a torn meniscus.

Fuck.

First, I feel for the guys who got hurt, especially Tyler. Ever since he got to BU, the kid can't stay healthy long enough to tie his shoelaces. He was the heart and soul of the team during his Rookie of the Year season, and it killed him last year when he wasn't able to contribute -- this is going to be even worse on him.

This team was going to have a hard enough road getting back to its old form... now it has to try it without two of our best players. For a season that started with so much promise and potential... this is a real shame.

Neither Carlos nor Tyler had been playing up to his potential yet this year - but they are important players that contribute a lot to this team. Suddenly, our backcourt -- which was the supposed strength of the Terriers -- is now missing two of its best shooters.

Marques Johnson will now play the point position for about 38 minutes per game. Before this happened, I was going to suggest getting Marques more minutes on the floor as a way to help the offense flow a little better - now we'll be getting it whether we like it or not.

But suppose Marques or Corey needs a break, or gets into foul trouble, or God-forbid gets injured... who comes into the game? Of the remaining guards on the roster, Sherrod Smith leads in minutes played with... 2. Total. For the season. And even he's more of a wing player. Could this be the emergence of the mythical, rarely-seen but never-verified Sam Tully, or --dare I say it-- Tunde??

Oh man, we're in trouble...