Almost halfway through the America East Conference season, two teams – Boston University and Stony Brook University – have separated themselves from the bottom of the pack as each team only has one loss in the conference.
Friday night, inside the 1,700-seat confines of Pritchard Gymnasium on Stony Brook’s Long Island campus, the score will be settled and one team will put itself in prime position to win the conference’s regular title as the Terriers (11-11, 7-1 America East) and Seawolves (12-7, 7-1 America East) tip off.
The Terriers enter the game on their longest win streak of the season – a seven-game unbeaten run which has vaulted them from a 4-11 record back to the .500 threshold and in the driver’s seat to snag the league’s top seed for the conference tournament, even at this relatively early juncture in the season.
The current run is not indicative of BU being a streaky team – rather it is more of a referendum on a conference that the Terriers have found a significant level of success against in the last several years. Each of the Terriers’ seven wins have come over America East foes.
Last year, BU went on a similar, albeit more pressure-filled and glorified, run as it won its final 11 games against conference opponents to make its first NCAA Tournament since 2002. At the end of the 2009-10 season the Terriers won six straight America East games en route to the conference tournament championship, where it lost to the University of Vermont.
In fact, BU has finished no worse than 11-5 in conference play over the last four seasons.
The game on the road against the Seawolves represents what will perhaps be the greatest challenge to the Terriers for the remainder of the regular season.
Stony Brook has the best overall record of any team in the conference and to make matters worse for BU, the Seawolves have yet to lose a game at home this season, having gone a perfect 9-0 with an average margin of victory of 18.25 points in those wins.
Even for a team like Stony Brook that performs exceptionally well at home, this game represents something entirely different, as revenge is fresh on the minds of Seawolves players and fans alike.
The Terriers have already beaten Stony Brook this season, 61-55 at Case Gymnasium on Jan. 14, and of course there is still the matter of the 2011 America East Tournament championship game in which BU came back from a 14-point deficit with under 10 minutes remaining to capture the game, a 56-54 final, and the conference’s lone bid to the NCAA Tournament.
The Stony Brook athletic department has reported that the game is sold out.
BU is coming off of a dominant 83-48 win over a lackluster University of Maryland-Baltimore County team Tuesday night at Case Gym. Senior guard Darryl Partin led all BU scorers for the third consecutive game with 17 points against the Retrievers.
Though a fair share of the points came with the outcome of the game largely decided, the BU bench tallied its most impressive and far-reaching performance of the season, contributing 33 points spread out among six players.
“[The success of the bench players] is definitely really big, because I know they work hard every day, just like some of the more heralded players,” said sophomore forward Travis Robinson after the game Tuesday. “To see them get the chance to play some big minutes and play well, it’s real big for us and their confidence, too, going on in the season.”
The Seawolves are perhaps the most well rounded team in the league, possessing the conference’s top-ranked defense at 60.7 points per game allowed and the third-ranked scoring offense at 67.3 points per game.
Stony Brook is led by a balanced attack on offense, one that features five players that average at least eight points per game, highlighted by guard Bryan Dougher’s 13.2 points per game.
Finally back to the .500 mark, the Terriers hope to continue their streak against Stony Brook, but regardless of the result, the team knows that it has made great strides this season.
“We have some guys who really like to compete, even in practice when we’re playing,” said BU head coach Joe Jones. “If I take guys out and I want to rest them, they want to go onto the scout team and play. They just always want to be playing.”
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