The secret’s out – the America East conference is going to be a crapshoot. If they hadn’t been tossed aside already, it’s officially time to ignore the preseason rankings and recognize just how intriguing the league has become.
After four games (three for some teams), every member of the nine-team conference has at least one win and one loss. The leader and team with the best record (the University at Albany, 11-6) lost to a team tied for last in the conference (the University of Hartford), but rebounded to beat Boston University, the University of Vermont – widely regarded as America East’s best team – and Binghamton University to jump ahead.
When a University of New Hampshire team that was blown out by BU (playing without two of its top five scorers, no less) trounces the defending champion University of Maryland-Baltimore County three days later, it becomes anyone’s guess as to which team will end up on top by season’s end.
And that’s fantastic news for the Terriers, who had strung together two encouraging games to begin conference play, but then regressed slightly with a 14-point loss to Vermont at Agganis Arena Wednesday.
Despite all the team’s been through in the last two week, BU (6-8, 1-2 AE) has a chance to even its league record at .500 with a win over Binghamton (10-6, 3-1) on Saturday at the Events Center. The Bearcats had a six-game winning streak snapped by Utah Valley University, followed with a loss against Albany.
Despite Binghamton’s current two-game slide, the Bearcats have emerged as one of the better teams in the conference. Led by the league’s leading scorer, D.J. Rivera (20.9 points per game), the rest of the Bearcats can be streaky shooters. In fact, Binghamton has recorded five games this season in which it shot below 40 percent from the floor and only once converted above 50 percent of its field goals. The team has also played two games without hitting a single 3-pointer despite more than 10 attempts from beyond the arc in each of those contests.
‘I think we’ve got to be concerned with Rivera. I think we’ve got to be concerned with Malik Alvin, and [Reggie] Fuller has played well,’ BU coach Dennis Wolff said. ‘They’re pretty active defensively on the perimeter. You can get them into bad shooting nights, so hopefully we can try and get them to be off.’
In order to do so, the Terriers will need to play more controlled basketball than they did against Vermont. While BU’s matchup zone was effective for periods, Vermont was eventually able to solve it and close the game with ease.
Like UVM, Binghamton is another team that can score in bunches (70.1 ppg) and given Wolff’s comments following the loss to the Catamounts – regarding how the team begins to act like the game is over when trailing by five or seven points – quick scoring bursts must be kept to a minimum. That won’t happen, however, unless the Terriers begin to execute gameplans better.
‘A lot of those turnovers, in my mind, could have been avoided if we were a little more fundamentally sound,’ Wolff said. ‘I thought there were way too many situations where we didn’t execute the way we had talked about, whether it was press-break or out-of-bounds [plays].’
In addition to tightening the matchup zone (which it appears Wolff will stick with for the rest of the season), the Terriers will need to be more effective starting and finishing offense in the low post.
‘[Sophomore forward] John [Holland] made some shots, but we didn’t establish ourselves inside at all, even from the beginning. That was a problem and then it magnified itself more in the second half,’ Wolff said. ‘I think we still have to start offense in the post. What we need is stronger possessions when the ball gets in there.’
Junior forward Scott Brittain is a catalyst to BU’s interior attack, who finds himself hoisted into the starting role as a result of the injuries to redshirt junior guard Tyler Morris and junior guard Carlos Strong. Brittain (who has 34 points and 11 rebounds in three starts) will need to establish a consistent level of high, aggressive play on a nightly basis – scoring- and rebounding-wise – in order for BU to be as successful as it was before the injuries.
Brittain has shown he’s capable of being an effective player in his first two seasons, but BU can’t afford many off nights from him given the increased pressure placed on the forwards. Senior co-captain Matt Wolff as well as freshman forward Jeff Pelage must also accept that challenge if the Terriers hope to avoid becoming one of the more predictable teams in a parity-ridden America East.
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