Ben Coblyn used to be The Man. He was the guy his high school coach would always go to, and he knew that with the game on the line, the ball was his. There was no if. There was only when – and once it happened, there was no stopping him.
Corey Hassan used to be The Man, too, ripping through defenses seemingly at will. So did Ibrahim Konate, Brendan Sullivan and just about every other player who is now a part of the youth-infused Boston University men’s basketball team. Thirty points was never an obstacle for these guys, and neither was a win.
But suddenly, that’s all changed. Suddenly none of them are The Man, and though it’s taken some getting used to, none of them seem to mind.
“It’s like playing a different sport,” said Coblyn, a redshirt freshman who led his high school team to a state championship three years ago. “It was like a one-man show in high school, but now everybody’s just as good as you are.”
Coblyn is one of nine freshmen and sophomores that together constitute one of the youngest teams in Terrier history. They are inexperienced. They are unproven. And unlike many of the top groups of young players around the country, they are not just the future of their team – they are the present, too.
The Terriers likely saw it coming. After coasting through four of the best consecutive seasons in team history, BU took a tumble in the America East Conference Tournament last spring and suddenly found itself saying goodbye to both the star seniors who helped mold the Terriers into a conference power, Rashad Bell and Chaz Carr. The two led last year’s team in scoring, comprising 46 percent of the total points, in their final year of four straight 20-win seasons – an unprecedented feat in men’s basketball at BU.
Toss in the transfer of third-leading scorer Etienne Brower to the Atlantic 10’s UMass-Amherst, and suddenly BU was in trouble.
“They were the focal point,” said senior captain Kevin Gardner, who along with classmate Shaun Wynn is being asked to fill a large part of the void left by Bell and Carr. “Losing them is going to hurt.”
To say the least. In reality, it was like ripping the heart and soul out of the team. Gone were the points. Gone were the leaders. Gone was everything that had shaped BU basketball for almost half a decade. And in its place was one huge hole.
Cue the freshmen.
The Terriers desperately needed help from somewhere, and the answer came in one of the deepest first-year classes in recent memory.
There was Coblyn, a physical post player who sat out almost all of last season with a nagging lower back injury. There was Konate, a fellow redshirt who didn’t play a single game last year after an injury forced doctors to put a pin into his leg. There was Hassan, a sharp-shooting true freshman who averaged almost 30 points a game during his senior year of high school.
And that was just the beginning. Toss in fellow first-years Brendan Sullivan and Marques Johnson, join them with returning sophomores Matt Wolff, Bryan Geffen and Tony Gaffney and add in junior college transfer Brian Macon, and suddenly three-quarters of the Terrier roster has no more than a year’s experience on a Division I basketball court.
Those were the players being asked to carry most of the load that Bell, Carr and Brower left behind, and nobody was sure if they could do it.
Things weren’t getting any easier, either. Without any clue as to how they would fare in their first game together as a team, the untested Terriers traveled to Cameron Indoor Stadium, arguably the toughest place to play in all of college basketball. Their mission was simple, and admittedly daunting: to open their season as a 34-point underdog against the top-ranked team in the nation, Duke University.
They didn’t win that game, but they didn’t have to. In sticking with the Blue Devils for almost the entire 40 minutes, BU proved that the 2005-06 season did not have to be a rebuilding year – this team could win now, even without Bell and Carr and Brower. And even more encouraging was that the freshmen were the ones leading the way, defying what many thought impossible from their team.
“Expectations are a funny thing,” said BU coach Dennis Wolff, who was widely praised on national television after the Duke game. “I think we went in there not really sure about who we were and who we are, and we played very hard and pretty well for most of the game.”
Regardless, Wolff realizes there is a lot of work left to be done.
“I think they showed a lot of poise in that game, but I’m not ready to start anointing them the best team in the America East,” he said.
Much of that uncertainty stems from the fact that no one person has stepped up as a go-to scorer, a problem that became even more apparent during the first three games of the season. A different player has led the team in scoring each of the contests, with no Terrier yet to tally more than 15 points in a game.
Yet the lack of a reliable scorer is one thing BU is not worried about – if anything, the team’s embraced it.
“We could have a different guy score 20 points each game for a month,” said Hassan, whose range from behind the arc makes him a leading candidate to emerge as one of the Terriers’ top shooting threats this season. “We just want to take advantage of whatever mismatch we have.”
Scoring, however, is only a part of the void that Bell and Carr left in the program. The co-captains were also important leaders, and their loss is amplified on a team that, because of its youth, needs leaders now more than ever.
And suddenly Wynn and Gardner, the only two returning starters from last year’s club, have found themselves in an unfamiliar spotlight as the co-captains of this year’s team.
“It adds a little pressure having a lot of guys looking up to you,” said Gardner, who along with his classmate has embraced his new challenge.
“It’s fun because you see a lot of eager faces coming into the locker room every day,” said Wynn. “They bring that youth and energy into the game … it’s made my senior year a lot more fun.”
“Fun” might not be the word Wolff would choose, though the coach admits having such a young team has helped him to grow as a leader as well.
“I think with this group I’ve had to be more patient … I just don’t want to make them nervous when they’re playing,” said Wolff. “Having the younger guys has helped me improve upon that.”
All of that patience and leadership is vital for the Terriers, whose growth as a unit will ultimately decide the direction the team takes over the next four years. With the vast majority of this year’s squad expected to be around for at least the next three seasons, the chemistry that they build this year both on and off the court will likely predict their success in the near future.
“It reminds me a lot of high school, where we all played AAU together, we all grew up together,” Hassan said. “We’re a real young team so we know we’re going to be together for the next three or four years, so it helps to have that chemistry.”
Wynn agreed with his teammate, knowing the success that his team is capable of in the years following his own graduation.
“It’s great every day just seeing the way guys play, and the way they’ve been progressing,” he said. “With those guys playing together for the next couple of years, they’re just going to get better.”
For now, though, the team is focused on this season and is confident that its youth is not necessarily a bad thing entering a winter in which the top of the America East is wide open, with a conference title – and an NCAA Tournament berth – very much up for grabs.
“We have some guys that are oblivious in a good way,” said Wolff, relating how the team has not placed limits on what it can achieve. “We’re going to continue to force feed them what we think they need to know to be good college players, and at the same time … teach them some of the other little things they need to grasp as they go along.”
If nothing else, the Terriers know that they have the talent and the desire to win now, as both the freshmen and the seniors begin to grow comfortable in their new roles.
“I’d like to have a few more guys with experience,” said Gardner, conscious of both the limits and the benefits of having such a young club.
“But as long as they come to play and go all out every day, that’s all you can ask of anyone.”