Boy I'm glad I paid 40 bucks for my jersey: The Albany Preview

We got thrashed on Sunday, early and often. And for once, it wasn't man-beast Marqus Blakely doing the damage, since he ended up with only 11 points and 3 rebounds. We couldn't hit a damn thing for the first half of the game, and after that it didn't matter.

It was a disheartening loss and an embarrassing one, as I had a bunch of people come over and watch it in my apartment building's lounge. This included having get there and stake a claim on the main TV to ward off Cowboys fans. However, I don't think the loss was truly a reflection of our team. Consider:

1) We were coming off 4 games in a week, 3 of which were road games. Vermont came off a week of smoking doobies in the dorm rooms.

2) The Terriers actually showed some fight in the second half, playing hard until the final buzzer and keeping it a respectable 20-point loss (respectable, in that it could have easily been 30 or 35 points).

I don't think this was as bad as it looked. We're still 4-2 in the league, our stars still (eventually) shined and it represents the hardest our schedule gets all year and the most tired our team will be all year.

Well, up until tonight. We end this horrific stretch against Albany at The Greek tonight. It will be the 5th game in 10 days. I mean, come on. Will we have anything left in the tank?

I'm hoping a large crowd greets our weary warriors. They better show up, since the Athletic Department is springing for 1,000 BU basketball jerseys to give out. This is a fantastic thing! This blows every other giveaway they've ever done out of the water. If they gave out stuff like this all the time, people would actually show up... I mean it would bankrupt the Athletic Dept, but whatever.

Best of all, this could hopefully stem the tide of the most outrageous of Terrier fan faux-pas.... of course I'm speaking of the hockey jersey-wearing basketball fan. This phenomenon angers me like nothing this side of genocide, and it's an epidemic at BU. I want to knock these people out on sight. It's a basketball game, wear a basketball jersey or at worst a red t-shirt. If you wear a hockey jersey to basketball, you're not a real fan.

Now, thanks to this giveaway, nobody who calls themselves a BU basketball fan will have any good excuse. It's a FREE freakin jersey. Take one, wear it with pride, and save the hockey sweater for the next loss to UMass-Lowell.*

*Disclaimer: I do like the BU hockey team a lot, just not the people who wear the jersey to other sports.

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.

Nerds Get Shut Out of NYC Hotspots: The Cornell Preview

Quick hockey story as we get ready for tonight's game against Cornell. I know, I know - this is a basketball blog. But it's a good story.

Last year, BU played Cornell in hockey at fabled Madison Square Garden. It was over Thanksgiving break but I couldn't make it for some reason. But the BU athletic department was really flogging this for a long time, to get the best attendance that they possibly could - after all, Cornell was an old school 1970's hockey rival of ours, so this was a big deal. And it worked: tons of BU students and alumni flocked to the worlds most famous arena for the game, which BU won in convincing fashion.

Before the game, friend-of-the-blog Dean Elmore found a bar near MSG that he thought would make a good meeting place for BU to get together after the game. He spoke to the manager and asked if it was ok to let people know about the bar, and the manager said it was fine.

Elmore does his thing at the game, and afterward the place is just overrun with jubilant Terriers fans. Place is straight PACKED - Boston jerseys from wall-to-wall. Come to find out, Cornell had booked and paid for the bar's basement private party room. But because of capacity, the bouncers wouldn't let any of the Cornell people into the bar. They couldn't give two shits that Cornell had already paid for the party room. Elmore's like, "Ummm... my bad."

Cornell administration is PISSSSSSED! Because of this whole thing, they threaten to never do the MSG thing with BU again! I'm not sure how the whole thing was resolved, but it's nice to hear about the high-and-mighty Ivy Leaguers crying and whining. Good for you, Dean Elmore.

Anyway, just a fun story about BU vs. Cornell - let's hope tonight's game makes them regret playing us in basketball too.