The general convention in college basketball is to begin the second half with the same five players on the court who were out there for the opening tip. Last night, however, Boston University men’s basketball coach Dennis Wolff significantly diverged from that norm.
Junior guard Corey Lowe, the face of the program for the last three seasons, sat on the bench to start the second half of a 66-54 loss to Stony Brook University with three fouls. At first, it appeared Wolff was protecting his guard from picking up his fourth personal, but as the minutes dwindled down, it became apparent that Lowe (17.5 points per game) wasn’t coming back.
The Newton native played a career-low 11 minutes (his previous low being 21, which he recorded twice) – all in the first half.
‘I went with the guys that I thought would give us the best chance to win,’ Wolff said when asked why Lowe didn’t play in the second half. ‘My only comment in regard to him tonight is what I just said.’
One contest removed from a 2-of-15 shooting performance in which Wolff still designed a final play to place the fate of the game in Lowe’s hands, Wolff didn’t use his starting point guard (who scored 33 the last time the Terriers faced Stony Brook in a quadruple overtime victory and went 3-of-4 from the field in the first half) for a shot in the final 20 minutes, let alone 20 seconds. Senior guard Marques Johnson (3 points, 4 assists) logged 32 minutes (20 in the second half) as Lowe’s replacement.
Lowe was playing the best basketball of his career during BU’s eight-game winning streak, but had played some of the worst over the course of the Terriers’ current three-game slide. In the first half against the Seawolves (15-12, 7-7 America East), he turned the ball over five times and didn’t assist a single basket. In the half that Lowe played, BU was outscored, 41-29, while the Terriers and Seawolves each put up 25 in the second.
It’s the second-consecutive game Wolff has benched a starter averaging more than 34 minutes a game for most of the second half, as senior forward Matt Wolff didn’t play the final 16 minutes against Binghamton University last Saturday.
Similar to the loss against the Bearcats (and reminiscent of multiple games this season), BU (14-12, 9-5) was lethargic to begin the game.
‘We didn’t come out playing with nearly the right intensity, and the approach we had in the second half was way better,’ Dennis Wolff said. ‘We’re a little bit off-kilter right now, and we need to get ourselves straightened out.’
Conversely, SBU senior guard Michael Tyree scored 20 of his career-high 25 points in the first half after getting the starting nod for Senior Day. Prior to shooting 10-of-13 (5-of-7 from 3-point range) Wednesday at Pritchard Gymnasium, Tyree had played in seven games, going 3-of-23 from the floor.
‘He’s been a good shooter in the past. He made a few, we didn’t guard him hard enough, and he got confidence,’ Wolff said.
To pick up the slack for Lowe’s absence, sophomore forward John Holland scored a team-high 19 points on 7-of-20 shooting, but didn’t pull down a rebound for the first time this season after averaging 5.7 per game. Wolff led the team with eight rebounds and also delivered a career-high-tying seven assists, despite the Terriers shooting 19-of-50 from the field.
Feb. 7 seems a distant memory, left in the blue and white seats of Lundholm Gymnasium – marking the last time the Terriers won, and the eighth victory of what appeared to be a season-changing winning streak. Now, only minute traces of that exceptional play remain, and an offense that averaged 78.9 points per game during that stretch has mustered 53.3 over the last three losses.
The Terriers pulled within one of SBU with 13:18 remaining in the second half on a layup by freshman forward Jake O’Brien (11 points, 5 rebounds), but a dunk by Demetrius Young (10 points, 7 rebounds) stole the momentum and the Seawolves held on for the win.
Despite the loss, the Terriers secured the third seed in the America East Tournament as they are unable to be passed by Stony Brook by virtue of a tiebreaker, and can’t claim either of the top two seeds (which are currently held by the University of Vermont and Binghamton).
With three games remaining (two against AE opponents) and the conference tournament two weeks away, the mission at hand is easier said than done: return to winning and avoid fatigue.
‘I think it’s more mental fatigue [than physical], and we just need to reorganize and toughen ourselves up,’ Wolff said.
As for Lowe’hellip;
‘I expect him to come back and play the way he’s capable of, and play the way everybody else is trying to play,’ Wolff said.
Game Notes: The Terriers are 0-11 when trailing or tied with their opponent with 5:00 remaining in the game. ‘hellip; Stony Brook’s bench outscored BU’s, 22-5. ‘hellip; BU is now 13-4 all-time against the Seawolves. ‘hellip; SBU has the best scoring defense in the league, allowing 61.5 points per game. ‘hellip; BU’s only win against a team with an RPI of more than 100 this season came against Northeastern (95) on Nov. 25. Their next-best win (RPI-wise) was against Binghamton (172) in January.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
