Ever since his return on Dec. 2, junior guard Eric Fanning has paced the Boston University men’s basketball team’s offensive efforts.
Not only does Fanning lead the Terriers (15-11, 8-5 Patriot League) in points with 15 a game, he also acts as a barometer to the team’s play. During the Terriers’ current five-game winning streak, Fanning leads the team with an average of 16.8 points per game. In BU’s two losses that preceded that, his points per game sat at 11.
The Fanning effect was in full force for the Terriers when they defeated American University 71-51 Wednesday night.
In a first half that saw his team shoot an astronomical 71.4 percent from the field, Fanning led the way with 12 points, including a perfect 2-of-2 from 3-point range.
“In the first half, we weren’t playing as hard even though we had the lead,” Fanning said. “And in the second half, I don’t know what was going on for the first 12 minutes. It was bad.”
While keeping up that blazing pace was desirable, the Terriers did come back from the stratosphere, and so did Fanning. The Trenton, New Jersey native made two of his five shots in the second half, and BU only shot 33.3 percent from the field.
“We were all screwed up,” said BU head coach Joe Jones. “[With senior forward] Nate [Dieudonne] not being able to play and [sophomore forward] Nick [Havener] getting into foul trouble, we couldn’t run any offense. When we run small with Fanning at the four, we hadn’t done that in a while and we were reeling. I wanted to play Nick and [junior center] Blaise [Mbargorba] together, but since Nick got into foul trouble, we were really thrown off. “
Jones referred to a first-half ankle injury that forced Dieudonne out of the game and forced the Terriers to reevaluate their strategy. After the injury to Dieduonne, the Terriers were disjointed, and Fanning said he handled the situation very poorly.
“Today, it might not show, but I did a real crappy job of handling myself,” Fanning said. “I got real frustrated with my guys, especially when [senior guard] John [Papale] is battling through injuries and Nate’s out.”
This was not evident in his performance, as Fanning battled back from the second half to hit 9-of-10 free throws down the stretch to wrap up the Terrier victory.
While other contributors such as sophomore guard Cheddi Mosely, who finished with 20 points, continued to be integral to the offense, none seemed as important as Fanning.
In the Terriers’ offense onslaught against the Eagles (7-17, 5-8 Patriot League) they were 8-for-14 from deep, something Jones attributes to the teams ability to rotate the ball to the 3-point line.
This is just one example of the Terriers’ recent success, despite losing many players to injury throughout the season.
“We’ve been playing well, especially since everyone’s been down,” Fanning said. “It’s kind of like addition by subtraction. We know [junior guard Cedric Hankerson’s] our best player and he goes down, our starting big man [senior Justin Alston] goes down, everyone’s panicking. The only one who didn’t panic [were] Coach Jones and our coaching staff. They were like, ‘You guys are fine. You got more than enough talent to do this.’”
Fanning added that it’s been a collective effort to make up for the absences.
“We just picked each other up, and everyone’s been able to step up,” he said. “Five in a row feels good, to see our hard work and all the adversity we faced finally paying off. We know what we got to do, and we’re rolling right now.”
With Fanning leading a suddenly lethal Terriers offense, the team seems in prime position to make a Patriot League Tournament run, as it sits at second place in the conference.
Their tournament hopes may take a large hit if Dieudonne is lost for an extended period of time, yet Fanning knows what will have to be done in that case.
“I got to be one of those guys that encourages people, and I didn’t do that today, but now since Nate’s gone … then we all have to remain positive all the time and pick up the slack,” Fanning said. “It’s a lot of slack if we lose Nate.”
