After dropping four straight games — by a combined margin of 10 points — and five of their last six, the Boston University men’s basketball team was beginning to feel the pressure such losing streaks produce.
The type of pressure that grows game by game as the losses mount up. The kind where a furry, little primate starts to make his home perched on your back.
Luckily for the Terriers, the monkey on their collective backs wasn’t allowed to grow into the four-story creature you may have seen at your local theater over winter break.
That’s because BU (6-11, 3-3 America East) downed Stony Brook University (3-13, 1-5), 73-65, last night, ending the four-game slide and axing any chance of a King Kong sighting.
“I think it feels very good to get the win,” said BU coach Dennis Wolff. “We’ve played very hard lately but we haven’t been able to get results. We were able to get the monkey off our back.”
And BU did it without Kevin Gardner. The Terriers’ co-captain and leading scorer sat out with a hamstring injury sustained last week.
As Gardner watched from the sidelines, Tony Gaffney played 33 minutes and churned out a career game. The 6-foot, 8-inch sophomore not only set a career-high in minutes, but also poured in a career-best 20 points.
Gaffney shot a mind-numbing 90 percent from the field (9-of-10 shooting) and hit his first seven shots of the evening.
“This is the best game he’s played in college,” Wolff said. “He was very efficient, very active on both ends of court. He did a real nice job.”
Wolff said that he could see Gaffney, suspended earlier in the season and used sparingly upon his reinsertion into the rotation, get more minutes after his stellar performance.
“I started him in the second half, that’s how it works,” Wolff said. “If you produce, you play.”
Gaffney’s effort was complimented by a strong showing from Corey Hassan. The freshman marksman shook off his recent shooting woes to hit 4-of-9 from downtown en route to a 16-point night.
Brian Macon chipped in with 13 points and Bryan Geffen — who didn’t play against Binghamton University Sunday night — came off the bench for seven points in 13 minutes.
“I think Hassan, Geffen [and] Macon all played very well,” Wolff said. “Considering that Gardner didn’t play, this was an import game.”
Not important enough for it to be in the “must-win” category, though. Wolff said that because his team was within striking distance in all its recent losses, he never considered pressing the panic button.
“I didn’t think about [it being a must-win game],” he said. “We could have won in the four games before. We were in position to win those, but we didn’t.”
The Terriers were in a good position to start the second half, up seven with the red-hot Gaffney on the floor. But Stony Brook responded by scoring the first five points of the half to cut the BU lead to 31-29.
But BU battled back. Two buckets from Gaffney sandwiched between 3-pointers by Hassan and Macon headed a 12-4 Terrier run that effectively ended any hope of a Stony Brook comeback.
So now the Terriers, with the monkey vanquished, look to start a new streak, this one of the winning variety.
It all starts Sunday for BU. Gardner should be back — Wolff said he would be back practicing tomorrow — and the University of Vermont will be in town as the Terriers return to Agganis Arena for the first time since a Nov. 29 loss to the University of Rhode Island.
They’ll square off against the Catamounts in what will be a rematch of last season’s Agganis opener — a thrilling 61-55 BU victory in the first basketball game ever played in the new digs.
But this year’s Vermont squad is a lot different than last year’s. Gone are all-conference studs Taylor Coppenrath and T.J. Sorrentine. Gone is the well-respected coach, Tom Brennan. And with them went the dominating Catamount team the conference has grown used to seeing over the past couple of years.
In its place is a mediocre 8-8 team (4-2) headed by a first-year coach (Mike Lonergan) and backed by a new center-guard combo (Martin Klimes and Mike Trimboli).
Klimes, a junior center out of the Czech Republic, has averaged 13.6 points to go along with 6.1 rebounds per game, good for sixth in the conference.
The 6-foot, 1-inch Trimboli has started to establish himself as one of the best — if not the best — point guard in the conference. The freshman leads the America East with 6.5 assists per game and is sixth in scoring with 15.3 ppg.
But neither he nor Klimes can really put a scare into the Terriers. After all, they’re not primates.