John Holland would not be held down on the offensive end in back-to-back games. Bouncing back from a poor shooting performance has become a habit for the junior forward from the Bronx.
Last Saturday against the University of Hartford at Case Gymnasium, Holland had one of the worst halves of his collegiate career &- going 0-for-5 from the field (one-of-two from the free-throw line) and netting just one point.
He finished the contest with 11 points on 21.4 percent shooting, seven rebounds and three steals in 34 minutes.
Wednesday night was the polar opposite of Saturday afternoon.
Holland started the game on a torrid streak, hitting his first three shots &- two jumpers and a 3-pointer &- to give the Boston University men’s basketball team a 7-0 lead over Binghamton University in the opening minutes.
“I told him as soon as he hit that 3 to give him seven points, I was like, “Get hot,'” said senior co-captain Tyler Morris. “I can say honestly we’re a collective team now. So no matter who’s hot at a certain point, we’re all willing to give the ball up and we’re all willing to feed off that certain guy’s energy, no matter who it is.
“It’s been [junior forward] Jake [O’Brien] a lot this season. It’s been John a lot this season. As of late, it’s been [senior guard] Carlos [Strong]. We don’t have any problems giving the ball up. I was like, “John, get hot, you’re in the zone, let’s go.'”
When asked if he made a concerted effort to get Holland the ball in the early going, BU coach Patrick Chambers didn’t hesitate.
“There’s no doubt,” Chambers said. “Our first play of the game was for John and it was to try to get him to the basket, try to get him to draw a foul or get to the foul line because he’s an excellent driver.”
At the 9:20 mark in the first half, Holland made BU basketball history.
By draining two free throws &- his eighth and ninth points of the ballgame &- he became the first Terrier since Tunji Awojobi, a 1997 alumnus, to score at least 500 points in consecutive seasons.
In only 25 minutes on Wednesday, Holland posted 20 points, three rebounds, two assists and two steals to lead BU to a convincing 93-51 victory over the Bearcats at Agganis Arena.
“He’s a heck of a player and I can honestly say that he’s a guy who just keeps plugging, whether things are going good or bad for him or the team, whatever the circumstances may be,” Morris said of Holland. “That’s a credit for him. I think that over the past five or six games, he’s really matured to a point where he has minimized the amount of bad shots he takes.
“He’s starting to find open people and is really becoming a great all-around player, so that’s a credit to him.”
Holland &- the America East conference’s leading scorer at 18.9 points per game &- has struggled with his shooting stroke and has been off the mark in a few contests this season.
On Jan. 30 against Stony Brook University, he contributed just six points on 2-of-9 shooting in a return to his home state of New York. The Terriers lost to SBU, 71-55. But he has always found a way to rebound from a poor offensive showing. The following week, he recorded a game-high 23 points in BU’s 69-47 win over the University of New Hampshire.
“When John Holland is making plays and scoring baskets. . . he can be a big-time player in this league, a big-time player,” Chambers said.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
