The coronation was expected to last all through Spring Break. The consensus opinion was that the Boston University men’s basketball team would sweep through its three home games in the America East Tournament. The jubilation would then carry the team all the way to the NCAA tournament as a 13 or a 14 seed.
All those dreams came crashing down nine days ago in the unlikeliest of fashions, a 62-58 loss to eighth-seeded Stony Brook University, a school that has only had a Division I basketball program for five years. A National Invitational Tournament game against the University of Rhode Island on Wednesday in Kingston, R.I. is all the Terriers can now look forward to.
The cruel fate for the top-seeded Terriers was summed up by one look at the court as the game ended. Sophomore guard Shaun Wynn knelt down at the top of the three-point line, covered his face with his jersey and cried.
The other side was filled with celebration as the Seawolves rejoiced in the unthinkable. No team had ever won a quarterfinal game after playing in the first round, as Stony Brook did the night before, beating a head coach-less University of Maryland, Baltimore County team.
“To win this game … it’s unbelievable. I’m shocked,” said Stony Brook guard D.J Munir. “This is the best team that we’ve played all season.”
Stony Brook didn’t play the easiest of schedules, either, facing three NCAA Tournament teams (the University of Utah, Lehigh University and Boston College) in non-conference play. All three games were losses, but their experience of playing against top-flight opponents helped in their performance against BU.
The Cinderella slipper was soon shattered for Stony Brook the next day in a semifinal loss to the University of Maine. The Black Bears then proceeded to lose to defending champion University of Vermont Saturday in the title game. It marked the third straight year that the second-seeded team won the conference tournament.
Upsets have become common for the America East Tournament, which has lately been bad news for the Terriers and coach Dennis Wolff. While BU has had at least a share of the conference regular season title for three seasons in a row, it has only one tournament championship, in 2002, to show for it.
Last season, BU lost in the championship game to the University of Vermont and was invited to the NIT, where it lost 62-57 at St. John’s University, the eventual champions, in the opening round.
“Our mindset is it’s the way the tournament is structured, so there is really no sense in complaining about it,” Wolff said on Friday. “You know it can happen. You hope to take the steps to avoid having it happen. The way it ended up we obviously didn’t take the right steps.
“It is a game and you always run the risk of anything can happen on one particular game, which is what happened,” he added.
The Seawolves shot at a 54 percent clip in their upset over BU, one of the nation’s top defensive teams. All the energy that the Terriers seemed to create all season off their defense was missing. They had just nine points off turnovers. The result was the Terriers have had more than a week to ponder the loss and prepare for the NIT.
“These kids had a terrific season. They picked a bad day to have a bad game,” Wolff said. “I think we’re gradually getting over it.”
The loss put a damper on what should still be considered one of the most successful seasons of basketball ever put together by the Terriers. They went on separate 11- and 12-game winning streaks and won 23 of their last 25 games. They also earned one of the toughest wins in BU history by defeating the University of Michigan, 61-60 in Ann Arbor, Mich. on Dec. 30.
“We’d like to be able to end this on a better note based upon the body of work that the guys put together for the last four months,” Wolff said.