The Boston University men’s basketball team used a hot-shooting first half Wednesday night to overcome late free throw woes and defeat the United States Military Academy 63-57 at Agganis Arena. With the win, the team clinched a first round bye in the upcoming Patriot League tournament.
Within the first five minutes of the game, sophomore guard Cedric Hankerson had eight of his 12 points of the night on 3-for-3 shooting to give the Terriers (13-15, 9-8 Patriot League) an early 15-2 lead.
“The thing we’ve been working hard on is defense,” said BU coach Joe Jones. “If you had to say to me a month ago, ‘Alright, what are your issues?’ it’d be our defense. We’ve gotten a lot better that way. Even on Sunday when we stumbled, we still held them to 46 percent and not 55.”
Things evened out from there as the Black Knights (15-13, 6-11 Patriot League) went on a 10-1 run to bring the score within four points before a dunk by junior forward Justin Alston increased the Terrier lead.
BU finished the half with a 36-24 advantage, holding the Black Knights to 30.4 percent shooting. Hankerson produced two of BU’s five forced turnovers as he had two steals in the half. Army’s nine turnovers in the first resulted in 14 points for the Terriers.
“We don’t play with a prototypical point guard, so there’ll be stretches of possession, quarters and even games where we just don’t look good,” Jones said. “You can say whatever you want. It just is what it is.”
The one positive for Army in the half, and for the game, was the play of forward Tanner Plomb. Plomb had 12 points in the half to lead all scorers in points on 4-for-8 shooting. Hankerson and Plomb both came into the game ranked the top five in the Patriot League in scoring.
A 10-2 run to start off the second half put the Terriers’ lead at risk as it was reduced to four points, which it would hover around for the whole half.
The teams would then go back and forth for five minutes with many opportunities for both teams to either extend or cut the lead, before the Terriers seized control yet again.
“We have a good team, great kids, but we’re going to have some nights where we’ll struggle to get reads, set offenses,” Jones said. “I don’t think we did a good job of generating good looks in a game. They did a good job of defending us.”
Six straight Terrier points put the lead back up to seven on the back of Alston. The Washington, D.C. native finished the night with a career-high 18 points on 8-for-12 shooting.
“I played very aggressive,” Alston said. “My teammates found me early, and they had the confidence in me. It was all my teammates. They made the passes, and I just finished tonight.”
The Black Knights kept with the Terriers though. A 3-pointer by Plomb trimmed the Terrier lead again to three points with 4:02 remaining in the game.
From there on, the teams traded barbs as the Terriers’ lead rose as high as seven points and sank as low as two.
The key to Army’s comeback was missed free throws by BU. In the last minute-and-a-half, the Terriers missed eight free throws, including missing five pivotal shots that could have put the game away.
With 17 seconds left, sophomore guard Eric Fanning missed a free throw, but junior forward Nathan Dieudonne grabbed the rebound from Plomb and sealed the win for the Terriers.
“Teams at this time of year have a good idea of what we’re trying to do,” Jones said. “We didn’t do a great job of moving the ball, especially in the second half, and we didn’t do a good job of making free throws. The combination of those two things really made for an interesting game down the stretch. If we made those foul shots, it’s probably a 10-point win, but missing those foul shots really hurt us.”
Though the game got close toward the end, Alston said he had no doubt that his team would come out on top.
“We’ve been in enough situations where we’re together now,” he said. “At the beginning, we were more apart, but now we’re together, so we’re getting more comfortable in time for the big games.”
