WHITROCK: Bearcat Fall Puts Pressure on Chambers

The arrival of a new head coach is frequently accompanied by much fanfare. Pat Chambers’ grand entrance at BU was no exception. The prospect of a young, energetic head coach cherry picked from Villanova’s prestigious basketball program, coupled with the current roster’s promise and the possibility of an up-tempo offense in the 2009-10 season was enough to excite any Terrier basketball fan.

Still, it is customary for a new head coach to be given some slack in his first season. The players on his team are not his recruits, he is relatively unfamiliar with many of the opponents on the schedule and he is operating in an environment quite unlike his previous domain. An adjustment period is to be expected, and the initial return on investment may not resemble what follows.

But what happens when one of the two likely title contenders implodes in dramatic fashion and the other contender is your team? Where do tempered expectations begin to aim too low?

Rewind a few weeks, and there was a recognizable gap between the upcoming season’s goal and the minimum expectations for this year’s team. There’s no denying the talent of Corey Lowe, John Holland, Jake O’Brien and the rest of the Terrier roster; that being said, a defending conference champion Bearcat squad returning all but one of its key contributors gives reason for pause.

Were a fully loaded Binghamton team able to repeat next March, there would be no shame in a second-place finish for BU, provided the team could play to its seed in the postseason and avoid the early upset that cut last year’s campaign short.

But look at the Bearcats now. D.J. Rivera? Gone. Malik Alvin? Gone. Tiki Mayben? Gone, and possibly awaiting a lengthy sentence should he be convicted on drug charges. Forget a repeat performance. Chretien Lukusa is the only remaining scholarship player standing under 6-foot-5, and Lukusa’s ball-handling skills are not on the level of most Division-I point guards. Good luck beating the full court press.

With Binghamton effectively out of the way, who is left to halt the Terriers run to the NCAA Tournament? Vermont still has the two-time defending America East Player of the Year in Marqus Blakely, but a tandem of Nick Vier and Joey Accaoui at point guard fails to inspire confidence, and there isn’t much quality depth once you get past the starting five. Albany needs to find perimeter shooting in order to be a credible threat. New Hampshire has depth and balance but its volume scorers are highly inefficient. Stony Brook is probably still a year away. The remaining teams have too many issues to document in a single column.

Vermont, Albany, New Hampshire and Stony Brook are all capable of winning a game against BU on a good day, or if the Terriers are depleted by injuries or otherwise off their game. Still, all things being equal, the Terriers are no longer expected to play second fiddle to another team, or even considered co-favorites. A healthy, hungry BU squad can and should win the title. Anything less will be a disappointment.

Is that level of expectation fair for Pat Chambers’ first season as a Division-I head coach? In a vacuum, the answer would be no. Chambers would get time to install his offensive and defensive principles, bring some of his own guys in, and reevaluation could occur in a few years. But this is not a vacuum, and this is not an ordinary basketball team. Lowe, Tyler Morris, Carlos Strong, and Scott Brittain aren’t just important contributors, they’re seniors. It’s quite possible ‘-‘- probable, even ‘-‘- that this is the best chance BU basketball will have to win a title for quite some time.

More important, perhaps, is why Chambers was brought to BU. There’s been talk of the athletic department’s desire to build a basketball culture at this school and add some excitement to the program. That’s all well, good and believable, but the primary reason for Dennis Wolff’s departure was not his teams’ supposedly boring style of play.

No, Wolff had to leave because the Terriers repeatedly fell short in the postseason. This is the problem Chambers was hired to fix ‘-‘- get the Terriers to win the big one. With a golden opportunity before him, Chambers and his team need to capitalize.

This is not meant to suggest that Chambers’ tenure at BU suddenly rests on the outcome of his very first season. Such a pronouncement would be a gross exaggeration, not to mention premature. But the stakes have undoubtedly been raised. It will be much harder to brush aside yet another season where the Terriers are stuck watching the NCAA Tournament on TV.

The remainder of the preseason should play out as it usually does, particularly the coaches’ preseason poll. Finding the Terriers atop the coaches’ poll has become an annual event. In years where other teams appear more talented to the naked eye, a predicted Terrier first-place finish borders on ridiculous; the target on the team’s back is almost tongue-in-cheek.

But this year the target is real. Chambers has an embarrassment of riches in the backcourt and a frontcourt that is more than capable. As a result, his job description for this season boils down to one remarkably simple phrase:

Don’t screw it up.