When the Boston University men’s basketball team scores fewer than 60 points, it loses.
It’s as simple as that.
Dating back to the 2007-08 season, the Terriers are 4-18 when scoring under that 60-point threshold. The last time BU won having scored so little was over two years ago on Dec. 10, 2008, when the Terriers defeated Yale University, 55-43.
The University of Maine, on the other hand, has done relatively well when the score resembles a high-school basketball game. This season the Black Bears are 6-4 when scoring fewer than 60, and have kept their opponents below that mark 11 times.
This all looks very good for the Black Bears when the top three scoring teams in the America East ‘- BU, the University of Vermont and Stony Brook University ‘- average about 68 per game. Maine has already beaten both the Terriers and the Seawolves by keeping them under that total, and now rests in front of all three of them with the lone share of first in the conference.
The Black Bears’ defensive might was on full display Wednesday when they defeated the Terriers in a critical conference matchup, 56-54. BU needed a win against one of the AE conference’s top teams ‘- it has already lost to both Vermont and Stony Brook.
That made losing to Maine even more deadly.
This also makes winning against the Seawolves this Saturday in Stony Brook, N.Y. an essential stepping stone for the final stretch of BU’s season. BU coach Patrick Chambers knows how critical the next month will be for his team, as he hinted in a preseason press conference. Chambers was asked how it felt being ranking No. 1 in the preseason AE coaches’ poll, a standing the Terriers have a long way to go before attaining again.
‘It’s an honor to be recognized by the other coaches in the league and I think that is something to be said about this tradition, something to be said about the talent of the players that we have here,’ Chambers said in early November. ‘But it really counts in February and March, what we do then and how we conduct ourselves. Hopefully we’re number one at that point.’
On a positive note, the Terriers can and most likely will score more than 60 points against Stony Brook in the aforementioned game. But that doesn’t necessarily guarantee victory. The last time the two teams played on Jan. 2, the Seawolves took home an 84-75 win. And that was at Case Gymnasium. At home, Stony Brook is 8-1.
The Terriers will have to be running on all cylinders if they want the conclusion of Saturday’s game to be different than their first against the Seawolves, who are currently second in the conference standings. Previously against Stony Brook, sophomore forward Jake O’Brien carried the team on his back, scoring a career-high 27 points and grabbing eight rebounds.
Junior forward John Holland was his usual productive self, scoring 17 on 37 minutes of work. However, senior guard Corey Lowe scored just nine. The Terriers will need all of their stars to produce if they want to pull out a win.
BU will also be without the help of senior guard Tyler Morris, who is still out with a broken hand. Morris scored 12 points and played 37 minutes for the Terriers in their first game against Stony Brook.
‘Nobody feels sorry for us, nobody cares about our injuries, nobody cares about our sicknesses,’ Chambers said in the same preseason interview. ‘We’ve just got to come out, know that, play as hard as we can, and let the chips fall. I’ll tell you what, if we play hard for 40 minutes, I have a good feeling that we’ll win a lot of these games.’ ‘