In a recent article on Grantland, the ESPN and Bill Simmons-run platform for long-form sports journalism, writer Michael Weinreb chronicled the 2010-11 season for the Towson University men’s basketball team.
This season has been a lean one for the Tigers, who just picked up their first win of the season Jan. 28 and are currently 1-23, good enough for last place in the ultra-competitive Colonial Athletic Association.
The title of the article? “A Visit With the Worst College Basketball Team in America.”
While no reasonable spectator of the game would look at Towson and see anything more than what the Tigers are, a bad team, the standings of all Division-I college basketball teams is one category in which Towson doesn’t finish last.
That dubious distinction belongs to Binghamton University, a program that stands as the lone winless team among 344 squads in Division-I basketball with a 0-22 record on the season.
And unfortunately, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel is not getting much closer for the Bearcats as they are set to face off Saturday against the number three team in the America East Conference standings, the Boston University men’s basketball team.
After a season-high seven-game win streak, the Terriers (11-13, 7-3 America East) have dropped their last two games, against the top two teams in the conference standings, Stony Brook University and the University of Vermont, by a combined 10 points.
Most recently, the Terriers fell to Vermont 68-67 Wednesday night at Agganis Arena, a final score that few would have imagined with just five minutes remaining in regulation.
Trailing by 17 points with just over four minutes remaining, and having been shut down offensively for almost the entirety of the game, BU started to catch fire from beyond 3-point range and used a full court pressure defense to fluster Vermont, forcing the Catamounts into four turnovers in the last three minutes of the game.
In all, it was a 27-11 run for the Terriers, but the comeback fell just short on the team’s last possession as sophomore point guard D.J. Irving and senior guard Darryl Partin both missed two 3-point attempts that would have tied the game.
Despite the comeback, BU head coach Joe Jones saw a litany of problems with his team in the loss.
“We took some bad shots in the game,” Jones said after the game Wednesday. “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.”
Even with the recent losses and the Terriers’ apparent decision-making woes, the team is in a prime position to get back on a winning track as it travels to take on the listless Bearcats.
Now two years removed from an embarrassing and all-encompassing scandal that involved the suspension of several key players and the dismissal of former head coach Kevin Broadus, Binghamton is still far from the form that it displayed with its first America East championship and NCAA Tournament appearance in 2009.
An 0-22 record certainly speaks for itself, but not even the Bearcats’ win-loss record tells the full story of its futility this season.
After losing five of its top six scorers from a team that finished just 8-23 last season, Binghamton is statistically one of the worst offensive teams in all of college basketball.
The Bearcats, averaging 55.6 points per game, are the eighth-worst team in Division-I in scoring per game and rank in the bottom 15 of 344 Division-I teams in field goal percentage (38.6 percent), 3-point field goal percentage (28.5 percent) and rebounds per game (29.8). Additionally, the team has a negative assist-to-turnover ratio, with 1.34 turnovers for every assist.
Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m., at Binghamton’s Events Center.
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