The Boston University men’s basketball team didn’t have the America East Rookie of the Year, but they had sophomore Corey Lowe and a new-look defense, which proved to be more than enough to overcome a slow opening 10 minutes.
For the first time in five years, the Terriers (1-0) won their season opener, dropping St. Bonaventure University (0-1), 68-57, on the strength of a 17-2 first-half run in front of 1,205 fans at Case Gymnasium on Friday. Lowe’s 28 points tied a career high while co-captain Matt Wolff returned to the floor for the first time in two years to contribute five steals and a game-high seven assists.
The Terriers found themselves down 21-15 midway through the first half, thanks in part to the deep shooting of Bonnies forward Michael Lee (24 points, 9-13 shooting), but over the next nine-and-a-half minutes, the Terriers outscored SBU 17-5 to take a 32-26 lead going into halftime.
Lowe, the America East Player of the Game, contributed 10 of the 17 points, bookending the run with 3-pointers on his way to six treys and a performance that equaled his best of last season.
“Lowe was terrific,” said first-year SBU coach Mark Schmidt. “We wanted to make sure he took more shots than he had points, and as I look on the stat sheet, we didn’t do a very good job. I thought he hit big shots.”
Sophomores Carlos Strong (11 points) and Scott Brittain (10) and junior Marques Johnson (3) would all add a basket as the Terriers gained a lead they would never relinquish.
BU had found itself in the hole initially thanks to a 58.3 field-goal percentage from the Bonnies through the first 12 minutes while the visibly excited Terriers were converting at just 29.4 percent clip — Lowe starting the game 0-for-5. But BU coach Dennis Wolff let his team play through the early emotions as a dunk apiece from Strong — a thundering throwdown off a Matt Wolff steal — and freshman John Holland — providing a spark off the bench with 12 points — would help the Terriers shake off any remaining rust.
“Corey had some real good looks early in the game, and it would have been a very easy thing to give in to the fact that you’re not shooting well,” Wolff said. “At whatever point he had to start focusing a little more, and he made a lot of big shots throughout the game.”
“Last year I let [early misses] bother me. This year I just fought through it,” Lowe said. “Coach told me to keep shooting, my teammates told me to keep shooting, so I just had to tell myself to keep shooting.”
While the fans ate up the aerial acrobatics that were rarely seen from last season’s Terrier squad, perhaps the biggest victory came from a philosophy modification from Wolff, putting his normally strict man-to-man team into a highly successful 1-3-1 zone that would produce 10 steals.
“At times we attacked their 1-3-1 like we knew what we were doing, and at times we attacked it like we didn’t know what a 1-3-1 was,” Schmidt said.
The commitment to defense from the scarlet and white forced 20 turnovers from the Bonnies, turnovers that would result in multiple fast-break opportunities. On one play in the second half, Brittain found Holland cutting for the baseline jam. On another, Lowe found Brittain with half the court ahead of him for a gimmie bucket, and while the ball would slip out of Brittain’s hands, the play would capture the desire to push the ball and get easy buckets of this year’s iteration of the Terriers.
“That’s what we worked on all summer, just quickening our pace,” Lowe said. “We can outrun a lot of teams because we aren’t really the biggest team, but we have long athletic runners like Scott and [starting junior] Max [Gotzler]. They can all get up and down the floor better than the other team’s bigs.”
The game was the first in a three-game opening stretch against Atlantic 10 conference foes. Next up is George Washington University on Nov. 14 in Washington, D.C. before the Terriers come home to face St. Joseph’s University at Agganis Arena on the 17th.