All the Boston University men’s basketball team wanted for the holidays was a win in its final game before Christmas. And it got exactly what it desired ‘-‘- an 86-77 victory over Mount St. Mary’s University Tuesday night at Case Gymnasium.
‘These are always the toughest games ‘-‘- right before Christmas, right after exams,’ BU coach Patrick Chambers said. ‘It’s such a great challenge for a young kid to try to stay here, play basketball for 40 minutes and try to stay in practice for two and a half hours. It’s the greatest challenge. You can look across the country ‘-‘- teams getting upset, or almost getting upset, or should have gotten upset. I’m just thankful we got a win.’
Junior forward John Holland and sophomore forward Jake O’Brien led the way for the Terriers (5-6), scoring 21 points apiece to lead all players and shooting a combined 13-for-20 from the field. For the Mountaineers (3-8), senior guard Jeremy Goode and senior forward Kelly Beidler poured in 20 and 17 points, respectively, with Beidler grabbing seven rebounds and Goode dishing out four assists.
With the win, BU extended its longest winning streak of the season to three games, while MSMU dropped its sixth contest in a row, finishing 0-6 on its six-game road trip. Chambers’ team caught the Mountaineers at an opportune time, as BU had not played in 10 days and MSMU was playing its sixth consecutive road game.
‘I give Mount St. Mary’s a lot of credit,’ Chambers said. ‘It’s tough to do what they’re doing. They’ve been on the road for a while, and their team really competed. They never gave up.
‘[The layoff] definitely helped us. They played some road games, they’re a little bit tired, but still they fought through. Give them a lot of credit, but we were fresher, no doubt.’
BU took the lead, 4-2, on a pair of free throws from O’Brien (6-of-8 from the charity stripe) with 17:46 left to play in the first half, and never looked back. The Terriers went on an early 9-0 run to take a commanding 13-2 lead midway through the first half, when the Mountaineers couldn’t make a basket for five minutes. But, led by junior forward Shawn Atupem, Beidler and Goode, the Mountaineers staged a comeback and trailed by only seven points at the half, 39-32.
BU came out firing on all cylinders in the second half, pushing its lead to 17 points at the 12:14 mark, 58-41. From that point on, MSMU would cut BU’s lead to single digits only once, 86-77, with seven seconds left in the game. But it was too little, too late.’ ‘
Holland scored 15 of his 21 points in the first half, highlighted by four dunks that brought the fans at The Roof to their feet. But in the final 20 minutes of play, he was 0-for-3 from the field, mustering just six points (all from the free-throw line).
Holland said he did not want to force bad shots in a game his team had taken full control of.’
‘It was just in the flow,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t trying to force anything. It just didn’t come. [I] just went with the flow of the game.’
BU shot 56 percent (28-for-50) from the field and 40 percent (6-for-15) from beyond the arc. There was plenty of offense to go around against the Mountaineers, as senior guard Tyler Morris scored 17 points, senior guard Corey Lowe had 13 points to go along with nine assists, sophomore center Jeff Pelage added five points and three rebounds, and senior guard Carlos Strong contributed eight points off the bench.’
‘As a team, we definitely went through spurts where we were playing really well,’ O’Brien said. ‘I think when we play unselfish basketball, we can really do a lot of damage offensively.’
Though pleased with his team’s performance, Chambers still sees room for improvement and expects his squad to only get better as the season progresses.
‘If we can put it all together, this can be a fun team to watch,’ Chambers said. ‘If we can have the execution, with the defending and rebounding, it’ll be something nice. It’d be a great team. We’ll get there. We have to get better every day, like I said. I sound like a broken record. We have to get better, and we will. We’ll get there. We’ll be the best team we can be by the end of the year.’
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