On Monday, the Boston University men’s basketball team will officially kick off its season with the Scarlet &’ White scrimmage at Agganis Arena. While fans won’t have the chance to see the players compete in a dunk contest this year &- apparently that event was retired after dunk champ Carlos Strong’s graduation &- the scrimmage will still generate excitement for a team that comes into the season with high expectations.
BU came up one game short of the NCAA tournament last season, but BU coach Pat Chambers’ first year in charge can still be considered an overall success.
Chambers faced the challenge of acquiring a squad with eight seniors who had underperformed under inflated expectations for three consecutive years. When the team started 2-6, those players could have easily let their frustration affect their play the rest of the way.
Instead, BU ended the season winning six of its seven games and let that momentum carry over to an impressive America East tournament before losing to University of Vermont in the title game.
At this point, BU again had a chance to mail it in. No one was paying attention nationally – the College Basketball Invitational is basketball’s equivalent to college football’s opening weekend of bowl games. After the team’s opening win over Oregon State University, star senior guard Corey Lowe was kicked off the team.
But instead of folding, the team pulled out a dramatic overtime victory over Morehead State University to reach the CBI semifinals before finally bowing out to Virginia Commonwealth University.
Even though very few people around the country saw BU’s performance in the CBI, the Terriers’ postseason was more than just an afterthought to a successful season.
Without Lowe, the duo of junior guard John Holland and sophomore forward Jake O’Brien combined to score 43 points in the overtime win against Morehead State. This year, BU will need those two players to lead the team with so many key members of last year’s team gone and seven freshmen and three transfer players arriving.
Despite the fact that Holland and O’Brien both played more than 30 minutes a game and averaged 19 and 14 points per game respectively last season, Chambers chose to name just O’Brien as one of the three captains, not Holland.
It would be fruitless to overanalyze this decision. Some players are simply better suited to the captain’s role than others. O’Brien’s co-captains, juniors Patrick Hazel and Matt Griffin, have not played a game for BU yet, but both spent all of last season with the team after they transferred from Marquette University and Rider University.
The choices of captain may have been the right call for Chambers, but if the team gets off to a rocky start, and especially if Holland doesn’t play at the level he did last season, critics will point to that decision.
The roster turnover doesn’t necessarily mean the Terriers are going to experience a transition season. While Holland, O’Brien and junior big man Jeff Pelage are the only returning players who will play a major role on this year’s team, Chambers brought in an impressive new crop of freshmen that will give BU a shot to compete for its first NCAA tournament berth since 2002.
Travis Robinson, one of three new players from Friends Central High School in Philadelphia, is a skilled and athletic scorer who will fit into BU’s fast-paced game nicely and could become a future star.
Mat Piotrowski is the first 7-footer to play for BU in a long time. He will anchor BU’s low-post game and help reverse the team’s rebounding woes of last season.
O’Brien and Pelage were the tallest players on last year’s roster at 6-foot-8, and O’Brien does more offensive work on the 3-point line than the low block. This year, O’Brien and Pelage are joined by four more players 6-foot-7 or taller.
The new players present a new test for Chambers. Last season, he was able to convince a veteran team to buy into his system and himself as a coach. This year, he will have to take a team that has not played together long and find the right rotations to make them into a cohesive unit.
The roster turnover will be a challenge, but it could actually have advantages. Rarely does a second-year coach have the chance to fill out a roster with players he recruited and that fit into his system. Chambers did that by bringing his crew of Philadelphia-bred talent this season.
No recruiting class has come in with more expectations than this year’s since Corey Lowe, Carlos Strong, Scott Brittain and Tyler Morris arrived in 2006. Those players departed last season without a regular-season America East conference title or an NCAA tournament berth.
To avoid repeating this pattern, the few holdovers from last year’s squad will need to become this year’s leaders and Chambers will have to learn how to turn a host of young, talented players into a team.
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