Men’s hoops impress on defense against Harvard

While a 70-56 loss at the hands of Harvard University Monday night gave the Boston University men’s basketball team its second straight loss, the Terriers still managed to have a few positive notes to take away from the contest at Lavietes Pavilion.

The Crimson (7-1), who came into the match hitting 48 percent of their shots from the field in their previous seven games, only managed to put together a shooting performance of 20-for-51 (39.1 percent) — standing as just the second time during the 2014-15 campaign that Harvard was held to under 40 percent shooting from the field.

This was due to an opportunistic zone defense employed by the Terriers (2-6) and their coach, Joe Jones, who constantly harassed the Crimson’s players across the court. BU was unable to come away with the victory over the Crimson, but Jones praised the efforts of his team on the defensive side of the ball.

“We played mostly zone. Our guys were really active,” he said. “They did a good job of understanding the game plan and what we needed to do. We caused Harvard to miss their first shot a lot, but did not do a good job with rebounding. But we had just played better overall than the last game. Right now, we’re trying out different defenses.

“We have to continue to work on our man-to-man defense, but you can’t just have one defense that you play the whole year. I believe in having a few different things you can throw at people, so we’ll have to sit down as a staff and talk about what we want to do going forward.”

Mbargorba stands tall for Terriers

Despite their loss to Harvard University Monday, the Terriers received a big boost off the bench from sophomore center Blaise Mbargorba.

The Hightstown, New Jersey native — who transferred from Southern Methodist University after the 2012-13 season — scored a career-high 13 points while collecting two blocks in just 19 minutes of play.

Mbargorba, who had yet to score in double figures over BU’s first seven games of the season, did not play in two of the Terriers’ four contests leading into their match against the Crimson, but Jones acknowledged that the 6-foot-11 center earned his spot out on the hardwood.

“He’s [Blaise] been practicing well. He deserved the opportunity to play and he played very well,” he said. “One of the things that we thought about was since they [Harvard] have so many athletic front line guys that he might be better served in this game, and he was. He did a nice job.”

Free-throw woes doom Terriers

Despite both impeding the Crimson’s offense with a stingy zone defense and outscoring their Ivy League opponent in the paint by 24-22, the Terriers failed to capitalize at the free-throw line, finishing just 11-of-20 from the charity stripe (55 percent).

Through eight games this season, BU ranks eighth in the Patriot League in free-throw percentage at 66.7 percent. A majority of the Terriers’ points from the free-throw line have come from sophomore guard Cedric Hankerson, who has notched 50 of BU’s made 114 free throws this season despite only shooting at a 66.7 clip in the process.

Despite the fact that only one player on BU’s roster with a minimum of 10 free-throw attempts has a percentage over 80 percent — sophomore guard Eric Fanning at 80.6 percent — Jones said he’s not worried about his team’s slumping performance from the line.

“We’re fine. You’re going to go through times in the year when you’re going to struggle at different things,” Jones said. “It’s not something we should be overly concerned about. We can just work on taking them more in practice and when we’re fatigued, but we’re a very good shooting team, so I think that will pass.”