A cut above

Sitting in an empty Case Gymnasium after an offseason practice earlier this week, Boston University men’s basketball coach Patrick Chambers was asked about his famous phrase, one he voiced in many a postgame press conference during his first season as coach of the Terriers.

So what exactly did Chambers mean when he said his team was going to keep “tapping at the stone?”

“The analogy goes,” Chambers said, “that everyday in practice, you want to create good habits. Everyday you come in the gym, you want to have the mindset “I want to get better. I want to work harder. I want to be positive.’ But if you only have five or six guys tapping at that stone and the other six aren’t, that stone is never going to break.

“You need everybody in unison working together &- the staff, the managers, the players. You have to give everything 100 percent.”

In essence, the story of the 2009-10 Terriers is one about a group of stonecutters, 15 players who didn’t tap on that rock all at once until the semifinals of the America East Tournament. But when it all came together on that early March afternoon with a victory over AE regular-season champion Stony Brook University, Chambers finally saw that stone crumble to pieces.

Entering his inaugural season at BU after five years as an understudy at Villanova University, Chambers found himself in a rather unique situation. The Terriers returned nine seniors and four starters, including two 2008-09 All-AE First Team honorees in junior forward John Holland and senior guard Corey Lowe, the reigning AE Rookie of the Year in sophomore forward Jake O’Brien, the 2006-07 Rookie of the Year in senior guard Tyler Morris and a co-captain in senior guard Carlos Strong.

Confident in his veteran-laden squad, Chambers scheduled a challenging non-conference slate in which BU matched up against the likes of George Washington University, Kansas State University, Indiana University, Georgia Tech, the University of Connecticut and the University of Dayton.

The Terriers fell victim to their difficult schedule, posting a 5-7 record before the dawn of conference play.

“I thought we were going to be that good, and I thought I could get them there a little bit quicker,” Chambers said. “That shows my inexperience. It takes a little bit longer for everybody to get on the same page, especially with the effort and intensity I expected on a daily basis. It was a little bit different for them.”

For a third straight year, BU was tabbed as the preseason favorite to win the conference, receiving all eight first-place votes in the coaches’ poll. But the Terriers failed to live up to those high expectations in their conference opener, dropping an 84-75 decision to the Seawolves on Jan. 2 at The Roof.

“We just weren’t there yet,” Chambers said. “We just weren’t cohesive. We were finding our way.”

Three days later, Morris injured his shooting hand diving for a loose ball in practice. The Terriers featured a curtailed rotation in the following eight games without their vocal co-captain, but the adversity brought them together as a team.

“It was a defining moment,” Chambers said. “We go 6-2 in that stretch, which was great.”

Still, the setbacks kept coming.

An October concussion &- the sixth of his career &- forced senior forward and co-captain Scott Brittain to miss the entire season. Touted freshman guard B.J. Bailey left the program in mid-December because of homesickness and later transferred to Lehigh University. Lowe (right foot) and senior forward Valdas Sirutis (left ankle) missed games because of nagging injuries. Senior forward Brendan Sullivan did not join the Terriers until early December after spending most of the fall semester focusing primarily on academics.

One of BU’s biggest weaknesses was its inability to notch wins against Stony Brook, the University of Vermont and the University of Maine &- the three other top-tier teams in AE. The Terriers did not earn that first signature victory until Feb. 27 &-a 76-56 demolition of the Black Bears on Senior Day.

“We just weren’t there yet,” Chambers said of his team’s struggles against the league’s elite. “We didn’t know what it took to play as hard as them and compete on that level. We did pretty good with the middle-of-the-road [teams] and down. But when it came to Stony Brook, Vermont and Maine, we weren’t ready to play in those environments. We weren’t ready to compete on their levels.”

BU caught fire after a heartbreaking 76-75 loss to Vermont on Feb. 9 at Agganis Arena, closing the regular season with a four-game winning streak. The Terriers were playing their best basketball of the year and positioned themselves to make a run in the AE Tournament.

“[That Vermont game] taught me that we still needed to learn how to finish games,” Chambers said. “We made some minor mistakes down the stretch defensively, which told me we weren’t there yet. But it taught us how to win.”

After dismantling the fifth-seeded University of Hartford, 87-46, in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament, fourth-seeded BU orchestrated an inspiring upset in the semifinal round, knocking off top-seeded Stony Brook, 70-63, to secure the program’s first AE title game appearance since 2003.

“The Stony Brook game is when that stone broke,” Chambers said. “I get a technical, we’re down five and you think it’s over. No. These guys go on a run. We played some of our best basketball, got stops, turned them over, crashed the boards, got layups, made our free throws and executed out of timeouts beautifully.

“I cried after the game because that’s what I envisioned all year.”

But in the conference championship game six days later, Vermont, led by senior forward Marqus Blakely’s 24 points and 18 rebounds, punched its ticket to the Big Dance, ending BU’s pursuit of its first NCAA Tournament bid since 2002 with an 83-70 victory at a raucous Patrick Gymnasium.

“[Leading up to the Vermont game,] there were a lot of things going on, distractions and a lot of outside stuff that this group hasn’t been through before, and Vermont had been through,” Chambers said. “If we played them on a neutral site, we probably get them. But going up there and waiting a week, I think that affected us.”

It wasn’t the NCAAs or the National Invitation Tournament, but instead, it was the College Basketball Invitational that came calling. And BU was all ears.

“We took great pride in getting invited,” Chambers said. “There were a lot of teams that wanted to get into the CBI. I had a team meeting and I said, “Look, we’re invited. What do you guys want to do?’ And they wanted to play. They wanted to play for [senior guard] Sherrod [Smith], for Valdas, for [senior guard] Tunde [Agboola], for [senior guard Mike] Schulze and for each other. That’s the love that was in that locker room.”

Before its season-ending loss to Virginia Commonwealth University in the CBI semifinals, BU recorded its 20th win of the 2009-10 campaign and first postseason victory in 51 years at Oregon State University on March 17.

Five days later, hours before BU’s CBI quarterfinal matchup against Morehead State University, Lowe, one of the most accomplished players ever to don the scarlet and white, was released from the team after meeting with an agent two days prior.

Chambers said he views the situation as a “learning experience” for both himself and Lowe.

“I have to protect him, and I have to protect the program,” Chambers said. “I have to do what I think is right. I just met with him the other day. We had a great talk, and I’ve been helping him with his career. He’s coming to the banquet. It’s life.

“Corey’s an incredible kid, and he’s going to have a great future because he’s been working hard. We both agree to disagree in this situation, but it’s OK. We put our egos aside because we know how much we care about each other, how much we love each other.”

In the program’s first-ever postseason home game, BU came out on top in thrilling fashion, besting Morehead State, 91-89, in overtime.

“I think we got the most out of this team, especially with all the injuries, all the adversity and all the setbacks that we went through,” Chambers said. “I believe that these guys gave everything that they had to one another and this program. I had a great time coaching this group. I really enjoyed it, even with all the minor things that went on.

“They should be very proud of what they did for the school and the program. I think that’s what we restored. There’s pride back at BU.”