Mere minutes after his team failed to complete an end-of-game turnaround, Boston University men’s basketball coach Joe Jones walked into the media room at Agganis Arena, sat down in a red folding chair and began to discuss how his team failed to win the game.
There was one major issue on the coach’s mind.
“I did not think we were ready to play tonight,” Jones said. “I thought we had three practices where I didn’t feel like it was up to our standards. I did not think we were mentally ready to play tonight, and that’s on all of us – every coach, every player involved in the program.”
The Terriers lost to the University of Vermont 68-67 Wednesday night at Case Gymnasium – their first home loss of the conference season. The loss is the second of the Terriers’ first conference-losing streak of the year.
BU scored only 19 points in the first half, but turned around to drop 48 on the Catamounts in the second.
Jones blamed the loss on a lack of focus and patience, which caused his team to make mistakes in multiple areas.
One of the areas of concern for the Terriers was their shooting. BU made only 27-of-68 shots in the entire contest.
“We took some bad shots in the game,” Jones said. “We did not play well, we did not execute well, we did not share the ball. We didn’t play the way we are capable of playing, that’s the bottom line. We made some really poor decisions.”
In that 19-point first half, the Terriers made 32.1 percent of their shots, a 9-for-28 performance from the field. None of BU’s four 3-point attempts went in. The Terriers failed to get offensive rebounds, only earning themselves three second chances, which they managed to convert into four points. But BU also struggled on turnovers, turning seven opportunities from Vermont into only six points.
The second half saw a slightly more normal shooting performance from BU, at 45 percent. However, BU shot the ball 40 times, compared to 21 shots for Vermont.
In other statistical categories, BU was a more normal in the second frame. Terriers made 5-of-14 from beyond the arc in the second, with a number of key threes down the stretch that put them back in the game. They grabbed ten offensive boards and had 17 points off of nine turnovers.
Another area of failure came from foul trouble, which plagued BU throughout the game. Sophomore forward Dom Morris was called for two fouls in the first three minutes of the game and spent most of the first half on the bench as a result. He only played 16 minutes during the contest.
Sophomore forward Travis Robinson led the Terriers in fouls at the half with three which was half of Vermont’s total first half fouls. Senior forward Pat Hazel and red shirt freshman forward Malik Thomas also had two apiece by the end of the first.
“We tried hard in practice to help our guys understand how to avoid [Vermont’s foul strategies], but every team that they’ve played, for the most part, they’ve gotten that team into foul trouble, and we tried to avoid that,” Jones said. “There are some things that we could do a better job of – mixing up our defense a little bit so that put us in that situation – but simply they really put us in some tough spots and they made the refs make calls.”
In the second half, however, the Terriers found even more trouble with fouls. BU was whistled for infractions 18 times, allowing Vermont to take 18 shots from the free-throw line. The Catamounts made 13 of those free throws.
“I thought we made some foolish decisions, in terms of putting them on the foul line with foolish fouls down the stretch,” Jones said.
BU, in contrast, took 15 free throws in the entire game and only made eight of them. Vermont made eight free throws in the first half alone.
“I don’t think they’re trying to miss,” Jones said of his free-throw shooters.
Still, despite poor free-throw shooting, the coach maintained that all of the team’s problems originated from one source.
“I’m not as concerned about the foul shooting as much as I am concerned our lack of focus and not being prepared,” Jones said. “That’s what I’m mainly concerned about and mainly upset about right now, is that we were not read to compete the way we’re capable of competing.”
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