It wasn’t so much lost as it was playing hide-and-seek, but Saturday afternoon at Agganis Arena, Corey Lowe officially got his groove locked down.
While the Boston University men’s basketball team lost to Marshall University, 84-80, the actual outcome could end up mattering far less than Lowe’s dominating ‘-‘- and diverse ‘-‘- 36-point performance against the Thundering Herd.
That point total may appear to mark the proverbial rebound from his abysmal 2-for-15, seven-point season opener against George Washington University, but Lowe had already been playing ‘great’ since then (19.8 points per game in the five games prior to Marshall), according to BU coach Dennis Wolff.
The true significance lies in the venue ‘-‘- Agganis ‘-‘- where Lowe, with his 16.1 career scoring average, had put up just 8.6 points on 25.7 percent shooting in six games.
‘I kind of came into [Saturday] just trying to put all the previous games that we’ve played in here behind me,’ Lowe said. ‘Coming in, I know there was talk this week about the Agganis hex or whatever. I just tried to think back to the things I was doing in those games and try to focus and have the same mindset I do in every other gym.’
In hitting seven 3-pointers ‘-‘- tying Chaz Carr for fourth place in Terrier history with 177 career 3s ‘-‘- against every variety of defense Marshall could throw at him, Lowe certainly fulfilled the goals of his ‘traditional’ mindset.
‘I was very impressed with Corey Lowe, obviously, he had a terrific night and we had no answer for him,’ Marshall coach Donnie Jones said. ‘We’d play farther out on the 3-point line, and he’d just take a couple more steps back and let them go.’
But, late in the second half, continuing a trend that developed during America East play last season, Lowe stopped taking steps back and drove forward, scoring eight of his final 14 points either at the rim or the free throw line. And each of those scoring plays came with the two teams separated by three points or fewer.
‘Sometimes I find myself, even if I’m hitting shots, I still get forced sometimes when guys are running at me,’ Lowe said. ‘I mean, they’re running at me, so I just want to go by them.’
With four games at Agganis remaining this season ‘-‘- three against conference opponents ‘-‘- the Terriers might soon look back on the loss to Marshall not only for the disappointing outcome, but as the game when Lowe shed the monkey and finally settled into BU’s second home.
But for the junior co-captain, that time was not Saturday.
‘The points don’t really mean anything at this point because we lost the game,’ Lowe said.
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