In the HBO drama “The Wire,” among many of the show’s central themes was a simple, succinct phrase – “All the pieces come together.”
Much in the same way, a basketball team is dependent on dissimilar parts coming together to form a coherent, successful product.
After spending the last four days in the Baltimore area, the Boston University men’s basketball team is hoping for all of their pieces to come together at just the right time. Currently riding a two-game losing streak, the Terriers will look to get back on track as they take on the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.
BU (14-15, 10-4 America East) is fresh off of a 69-56 Sunday loss to Loyola University (Maryland) in the annual ESPN BracketBusters game. It was BU’s first BracketBuster loss in three seasons, and it came on the road against one of the better and more undervalued mid-major teams in the country. The Greyhounds’ win over BU was their 20th of the season and they currently find themselves ranked No. 92 in the most recent RPI standings.
“It was a much closer game than the score would tell,” said BU head coach Joe Jones of the loss.
Indeed, BU hung with Loyola for much of the game. The Terriers were down just a point, 29-28, at halftime and trailed 54-50 with just under six minutes remaining in regulation. From there, however, the Greyhounds pulled away on a 15-6 run, a stretch in which Jones said his team “never recovered.”
A few different factors led to the loss, with 3-point shooting being a major factor. The Terriers went 3-of-18 from beyond the arc which, including their woeful performance against the University of New Hampshire, means the team has gone 5-of-40 (12.5 percent) from 3-point range in their last two games.
For Jones, whose team is third in America East in 3-point percentage in conference play, the last two games stand as an anomaly that always comes about in such a long season.
“During the course of the season, that happens,” Jones said. “We’ve got to make sure we take some good ones and the right guys take them. We will. I always feel confident.”
As has become standard procedure this season, senior guard Darryl Partin and sophomore point guard D.J. Irving were the team’s leading scorers with 17 and 16 points, respectively. The Terriers’ starters accounted for all 56 of the team’s points as the 50 minutes logged by the six players on the BU bench wielded no points. It was just the second time that the BU bench has been held scoreless this season.
For a team looking to rebound and resume its seemingly never-ending battle with the .500 mark this season, there’s hardly a better sight for sore eyes than UMBC, a team that is statistically not only one of the conference’s worst, but also one of the nation’s worst.
The Retrievers (4-23, 3-11 America East) have been in something of a downward spiral since the program’s lone NCAA Tournament appearance in 2008. In the past three seasons, UMBC has gone 13-74, winning no more than five games in a given season. Two of the team’s wins this season have come over two one-win teams – Binghamton University and Towson University.
Of 344 teams in Division I basketball, the Retrievers are currently ranked 337th in the most recent RPI standings.
While UMBC may not be the most difficult of opponents, the Terriers have gone just 2-4 in their last six road games there, including a shocking 71-67 loss last season.
With just two games remaining for the Terriers in the 2011-12 season, Jones insisted his team is intensely focused on those contests, with no opponent being looked over whatsoever. In order for the Terriers to get where they want to be when the season ends, all of the pieces have to come together.
“I’m much more concerned about that than the overall record . . . We’re not defending as well,” Jones said. “We tend to defend better when we make shots. We’ve got to grind teams out and play harder.”
