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First place men’s basketball Terriers not taking anything for granted

By Brian Fitzgerald

Nobody’s perfect. And with two recent league losses, that includes the men’s basketball Terriers. Nonetheless, a couple of disappointments this year may actually have made them stronger.

Rashad Bell (CGS’03) poured in 15 points in BU’s 65-54 victory over Maine on February 19. Photo by John Quackenbos

After roaring to a 6-0 start in America East, BU had high hopes of going undefeated in conference play. With a 16-point lead against Northeastern on January 25, it looked like the Terriers would make it seven in a row.

But Huskies guard Juan Barea had other ideas when he hit a 24-foot three-pointer with 35 seconds to play, breaking a 65-all tie and giving Northeastern the lead for good. It was a tough home loss for BU tricaptain Billy Collins (MET’03). “We just didn’t close out the game,” he says. “We have to play for a full 40 minutes to win, and we didn’t do it.” He says that coach Dennis Wolff made his disappointment clear to his players. “He felt we allowed Northeastern to push us around a little bit.”

Then again, it’s tough to win ’em all in any league, unless you’re the Harlem Globetrotters. BU, the America East defending regular-season cochampion and 2002 conference tournament winner, was predicted to capture this year’s title in a preseason coaches poll. Aided by eight top scorers from last year’s team, the Terriers rebounded from the Northeastern loss with three straight victories, to make their conference record 9-1.

The second half of a two-game New York state road trip, however, made the euphoria of the 85-83 victory over Binghamton on February 9 short-lived. Two days later, the Terriers lost to Stony Brook, 73-67, in a poor defensive effort against a team they had pounded by 15 points early in the season. Reminding his players that defense was the key to a second-straight trip to the NCAA tournament, Wolff saw them respond with toughness right away, in a 65-59 overtime win over Hartford on February 15.

“We had a bit of a letdown at Stony Brook,” says Collins. “We might have been looking past them, and maybe we were anxious to get the trip over with and go home. We probably thought that we could just show up and win, but that’s not the case in this league this year. Any team can win on any given night.”

The loss didn’t sit well with Collins, a self-professed gym rat who was so eager to prepare for this season that he started practicing -- broken right wrist and all -- just a week after BU’s 90-52 loss to Cincinnati in last year’s NCAA tournament. Collins, who was the 1997-98 New Hampshire High School Player of the Year as a senior at Bishop Brady, played his freshman year at Rutgers, but averaged just 6.3 minutes a game in 24 contests. He wanted to play ball, and he got his chance after he transferred to BU and sat out a year -- a requirement when moving to another Division 1 school. He couldn’t play a game in his transfer season, but he practiced with the Terriers. It soon became apparent to his coach and his teammates that this kid was hungry.

	Billy Collins (MET’03): another banner year for the versatile six-foot-seven forward. Photo by John Quackenbos

And in the wake of the Stony Brook debacle, Collins was starving for a chance to get the Terriers back on the winning track. He says that Wolff saw the game as a wake-up call. “He was a little upset with us after the way we played at Stony Brook,” says Collins, “and he wanted to make sure that, win or lose, we were going to play tough against Hartford -- play some good defense. And we did, throughout the game.”

BU, with a 11-2 record in America East, has two games in hand over second-place Vermont (9-4), with three left to play. But the Terriers will walk right into the Catamounts’ lair in Burlington on February 22 for a game that will loom large at the top of the standings. Vermont’s biggest threat is sophomore Taylor Coppenrath, a three-time conference Player of the Week. “Coppenrath is a great player,” says Collins. “He is a physical player, and he’s got great post moves. He’s hard for a player to guard, because he can also step outside. Vermont always plays hard defensively.”

Against Hartford, however -- and in BU’s 65-54 victory over Maine February 19 -- BU proved it’s also a scrappy team. Sometimes a team draws strength from adversity, and the Terriers may have learned a thing or two after blowing leads to Northeastern and Stony Brook.

“It’s very hard to go undefeated in any conference,” says Collins. “But I think right now we’re where we expected to be, even with a couple of letdowns, and we’ll be all right going into the conference tournament.”

21 February 2003
Boston University
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