Men’s Hoops Take On Hawks At Roof

The Boston University men’s basketball team will look to extend its winning streak to seven games when it hosts the University of Hartford tonight at The Roof.

The Terriers (13-7, 7-1 America East) have won their last six games since the University of Vermont dealt BU its only conference loss of the season Jan. 5.

Comfortably in second place in the America East, BU will face a Hartford team tonight that also seems to be hitting its stride; the Hawks have won four of their last five, including a 67-65 overtime victory in a non-conference game against Dartmouth College last week.

Their recent resurgence has put the Hawks in third place in the conference (5-3), but at 8-13 overall with just three road wins, Hartford is just one of the many teams struggling to emerge from the quagmire that is the America East this season.

BU and Vermont, with one loss each, have clearly separated themselves from the pack and seem to be dancing all alone at the top of the standings. They are, in reality, the only two teams competing for a conference championship down the stretch — aside from Hartford, none of the six remaining teams has more than four wins.

Yet the Terriers are not prone to gloating. BU coach Dennis Wolff has made certain so far this season that confidence has not crossed the invisible fine line that separates it from cockiness. Still, BU may have difficulty tonight facing a team with vengeance in mind. The Terriers beat the Hawks on the road, 70-56, Jan. 7.

“We beat them the first time, and they’ve won a few games of late, so I’m assuming that [Hartford] is going to come in here anxious to make amends for us winning in Hartford,” Wolff said. “What we have to do is focus on the basketball aspects of the game. They’re an athletic team, they’re a team that has a number of guys that can score, so we’re going have to work to defend them.”

At 5-3, Hartford has reached a somewhat significant achievement in that it has posted a conference record above .500 after eight games for the first time since 1998. One of those wins came against Vermont, the unlikely powerhouse that BU was not able to beat in their first meeting.

And while coaches are prone to calling their opponents “athletic” often out of simple respect, Hartford is deserving of the label. Behind forward Pierre Johnson, the Hawks are one of the strongest rebounding teams in the conference, averaging more than 15 offensive boards per game and 24 on the defensive side. Johnson leads Hartford with four double-doubles on the season, his latest an 18-point, 13-rebound effort against Dartmouth.

“The second-most important thing is to rebound with them because they’ve been very successful rebounding against their opponents,” Wolff said. “[But] we’ve also been aggressive on rebounds, so I think our guys will give a good effort and fight on the boards.”

If the Hawks have an Achilles’ heel, however, it is their poor vision from the three-point line. Whether through desperation or design, Hartford has relied on its three-point shooting with poor returns — the Hawks shoot a league-worst 28.5 percent from beyond the arc. And it hasn’t been much better for Hartford from the field or even from the free throw line, where the team has shot just 38 percent overall and made an abysmal 63 percent from the line.

“They’ve been a little up and down on their three-point shooting, and we want to read how it goes as the game progresses. They haven’t shot it consistently, and we can hopefully change defenses to keep them off track,” Wolff said.

But the Terriers’ credo all season has been to focus on the task at hand, and tonight is no different. Having already beaten Hartford and entering the game on a long win streak, BU seems poised to make the Hawks nothing more than conference win number eight.

“We’re playing very hard and confidently, and we’re playing together,” Wolff said. “We’ve gotten good contributions from different guys at different times. We recognize that we’ve got some goals that are reachable if we keep at this, a game at a time.”