Terriers bust up Canisius

Second-year coach Patrick Chambers viewed Saturday’s matchup as a measuring stick.

He relished the opportunity for his Boston University men’s basketball team to take a breather from America East Conference play and compete in the Sears BracketBusters against an unfamiliar Metro Atlantic Athletic opponent. His squad responded with a gutsy 70-62 victory over Canisius College before a crowd of 875 at Agganis Arena.

“I really enjoyed this game,” Chambers said. “I really enjoyed preparing for it. They’re a very aggressive team. They’re an older team [with] five seniors. They’re a physical team and they’re a tough team. I wanted to see where we were. Are we as tough as them? Are we tougher than them?

“They beat us to a lot of 50-50 balls. I always tell you guys, ‘We’re going to tap at the stone. We’re going to tap at the stone.’ We’re just not there yet. Today, we’re not there yet. I knew going in this was going to be a battle. I knew it because of the way they play and the way they make you play.”

Senior forward John Holland poured in a game-high 28 points and grabbed a team-high six rebounds, while junior guard Darryl Partin added 20 points for BU (16-13), which has now strung together a season-high six straight wins.

Forward Elton Frazier scored 16 points and forward Greg Logins had 13 to pace the Golden Griffins (13-14), who dropped their third consecutive game and committed 14 turnovers that yielded 15 BU points.

Frazier – Canisius’ 6-foot-8, 208-pound senior who fell two boards shy of a double-double – left quite the impression on Holland.

“He’s great,” Holland said. “He’s really athletic. We knew that coming in. He had some great, great highlights. He’s awesome.”

BU followed up last Tuesday’s blistering 50-percent shooting effort against University of Maryland-Baltimore County by converting nine of its first 17 field goal attempts and jumping out to a 25-16 advantage at the 15:12 mark. But Canisius would answer right back in a flash.

Coach Tom Parrotta’s Golden Griffins unleashed an all-out blitz on the Terriers’ comfortable nine-point advantage and reeled off a 16-2 spurt, which included a trio of 3-pointers from Logins, to seize a 32-27 lead with eight seconds remaining in the first half.

Freshman forward Dom Morris tallied all of his six points in the opening period and set the backcourt screen that enabled freshman forward D.J. Irving to knife through the Canisius defense with relative ease and hit a layup before the halftime buzzer sounded.

Frazier showcased his talented skill set immediately after the Golden Griffins emerged from the locker room by slamming down a two-handed dunk just 20 seconds into the second half.
BU and Canisius exchanged buckets over a span of eight minutes that saw the Terriers tie the ballgame on four separate occasions. Holland’s tip-in at 9:27 gave BU a brief 47-45 edge, but guard Julius Coles countered seconds later with a floater from five feet out.

Partin’s catch-and-shoot trey on the ensuing offensive possession awarded the Terriers with a lead they would not relinquish for the remainder of the contest.

Partin and Holland made it a pressing issue to drive into the lane and draw fouls, especially down the stretch as the duo canned 10-of-11 attempts from the charity stripe in the last five minutes.

“Coach has been asking us to do that since the game started,” Partin said. “But you get into a rhythm out there and you’re used to jacking jumping shots. That’s not the way we play. We want to be inside-out, shoot the 3s when they’re open. We want to attack, be aggressive and we started doing that late.”

In perhaps the final home game of his illustrious career, Holland didn’t disappoint.

The Bronx, N.Y., native put on a dazzling display of offense, piling up 23 of his 28 points in an explosive second-half showing.

“I don’t really think about it,” Holland said of the possibility of Saturday’s matinee being his last game on Commonwealth Avenue. “It’s been fun the time I’ve had here. I’ve really enjoyed it. I thank God for it. Whatever happens, it happens. I’m not really focusing on that. I’m just focused on our next game, our next practice and moving forward.”

With two road games at Binghamton University and University of Vermont standing between BU and the AE tournament in West Hartford, Conn., Chambers stressed the importance of finishing the regular season out strong.

“I want to win the next two games,” Chambers said. “First, it’s Binghamton. We have to win that game. We just have to keep getting better. We’ve been under .500 for so long, so it’s nice to be over it. Now let’s keep going. We still have a lot of room for growth.”