This one should be easy, as easy as they come.
The Boston University men’s basketball team takes on the America East cellar-dwellers when it travels to the Empire State to take on State University of New York at Albany tonight. The Terriers currently stand at second place in the conference at 5-1 (11-7 overall), while the Great Danes 0-5 America East record (3-13 overall) leaves them two back in the win column to fellow SUNY school Stony Brook.
The Terriers are coming off of a win that showcased their rising star, freshman guard Chaz Carr. Carr scored 36 points to lead BU past crosstown rival Northeastern University, 95-88, on Sunday. America East rewarded Carr for his superlative effort, naming him Player of the Week — only the second time in the conference’s history a freshman has earned that honor. Carr is averaging 13.7 points to lead the team.
While the Great Danes should not provide much opposition for a Terriers team that has won four straight games — its longest such streak since 1997-98 — BU will have to be wary of a team looking for its first ever America East win.
Albany has suffered from multiple departures during the season, including the reassigning of head coach Scott Brand and the loss of leading scorer E.J. Gallup, who plans to transfer, along with three other players, leaving the Great Danes with a shrunken squad of 11.
Meanwhile, BU has been driven by much more than a single Carr during the recent streak. Since guard Matt Turner’s season-ending injury, junior forward Billy Collins has done a little bit of
everything for the Terriers, including leading the NCAA in three-point field goal percentage, hitting 36-of-66 this year, 54.5-percent of his long range shots. Collins is second on the team in scoring, and the team leader in rebounding and a host of other statistics.
Another freshman who has emerged of late is forward Rashad Bell. After gathering a lot of pine-time early in the season, the spindly rookie has had games of 21 and 14 points, as well as grabbed seven rebounds in a contests, giving the Terriers the depth at forward that appeared to be lost after senior Jerome Graham went down earlier in the season with a back injury that required surgery.
The Terriers will use a strong defense — they are holding opponents to a league-low 38.5 percent field goal shooting — to try and shut down the Great Danes and forward Will Brand, who is averaging 10.7 points per game, but is capable of 20-point efforts. If the Terriers are able to put Brand under wraps, the rest should come down to hitting shots and playing solid defense against an undermanned, underwhelming team.
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