BU v. Vermont - The 2010 America East Championship Game

I am really excited for this game, It's the first time the Terriers have been to the championship since 2003 and they are playing for their first NCAA tournament appearance since 2002. How big is this game to me?  Bigger than the Super Bowl. Actually, since Burlington is about six hours from Boston, I am going to have a "Super Bowl" like party, complete with red and white balloons, champagne on ice, and a victory cigar (note to self: download a copy of the BU fight song). I've asked a couple people if they are interested, so far I have not had a favorable response. I sent out an email yesterday pitching the idea to some BU alums and no one has responded so far. Am I the only one who cares? 

So to the 10 people who read my blog in the Boston area, I am inviting you to my apartment on Saturday to watch the game.  We'll probably do some tailgating a couple hours before the game. Email me (jim@terriersbasketball.com) for more details.

On a side note, I also pitched this to a coworker who is a Vermont alum, the conversation went down like this (I will protect her name, so we'll refer to her as "T"):

Me: I'm having a party for the BU v. Vermont game on Saturday are you interested?
T: I would but I have yoga at 1:30 pm.
Me: That's lame, I had yoga at 1 but canceled this week because of the game
T: hahahaha
Me: I don't really have yoga, I am just trying to make a point
T: I know, thanks for making me feel like an idiot.
Me: Sure, no problem. BU fans, such as myself, like to point out their intellectual superiority whenever possible
T: die.

Later in the day her Facebook status had something to do with Vermont:

T's Facebook Status: "How long do I have to live here before I'm no longer a Vermonter?"
Me: Vermont sucks, GO BU!
T: Wow Castignoli. Now I really hope UVM beats your foo foo dogs on Saturday.

Some might look at this as harassment, but in sports fandom almost anything goes (violence isn't cool).

3/13 - BU v UVM - Patrick Gym - Noon ESPN2 or espn360.com

The Facts:

• The Terriers last reached the title game in 2003 and last won the title game in 2002.
• Vermont has been the team to beat in the America East ever since, They beat BU in the title game 2003 and also won in 2004 and 2005.
• Rookie head coach Pat Chambers makes his first appearance in a conference championship game.
• By beating Stony Brook on Sunday the Terriers have beaten every team in the America East this season except UVM.
• Vermont blew out the Terriers at Patrick Gym in the first meeting and narrowly edged the Terriers at Agganis in the second.
• Year after year these two teams are close to the top of the America East and since the beginning of the '00s have become big rivals.

What Vermont needs to do to win: Dominate the paint on both sides of the court and limit BU to three points.  With a strong forward like Marqus Blakely, reigning America East defensive player of the year, Vermont will look to get the ball to him to dominate the paint, get easy twos, lots of rebounds, and a few blocked shots.  In any Vermont win over BU, I definitely see Blakely being the player of the game.  They also have to pray that the Terriers have a bad game from beyond the arc.
Vermont's X-factor: Marqus Blakely, the most dominant player on their team needs to have a dominant game.

What BU needs to do to win: Find a way to neutralize Blakely.  It won't be easy because his presence can easily go unmatched at times, but a combination of Jake O'Brien, John Holland and Jeff Pelage will hopefully be able to get it done.  BU's defense has been outstanding lately, if they can continue to play great defense and get most of their three-pointers to fall (Corey Lowe that especially means you), BU should have a great shot to win this game
BU's X-factor: John Holland, so far he has not had John Holland-life performances in the tournament.  He was first team all-conference and the conference's leading scorer, if he performs like he did in the regular season the Terriers are going to be hard to stop on offense.

Other exciting thing to watch: Corey Lowe is having a dominant tournament performance.  In the Hartford and SBU games he was making almost everything from three-point range.  In the Hartford game he scored 28 and versus SBU he scored 26.  If the senior puts up a similar performance in the championship, he will win player of the Tournament regardless what the outcome is.

If this game was a 90's action movie: Die Hard, Exciting from beginning to end, a physical battle between good (John McClain - BU) and evil (Hans Guber - Vermont) the hero comes off the court exhausted from a vicious dogfight.

Prediction: Stay tuned, I'm going to keep you waiting until Friday (this is a BU blog you can probably guess).

Random Note

• I don't want this season to ever end, I have had a lot of fun writing in this blog.  But all good things must come to an end, and after it does end I'll have very little to write about.  When I started writing this post I was watching the celebrity gossip show Extra;  maybe in the offseason, I can write about celebrity gossip.  Does anyone have other ideas, what do you want to see me write about?

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Video: BU Terriers Basketball celebrates win over Stony Brook

YouTube Video I just uploaded of the celebration on the court after BU beat Stony Brook, we didn't have a lot of students at the game so the BU Dance Team decided to storm the court.

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AE Tournament 2010: BU stuns SBU, advance to Final at UVM

3/7 - BU v. Stony Brook - America East Semifinal #1 - BU wins 70 - 63

BU Recap
Boston Globe Recap

I have not been more excited for a game all season than this one, and I was never disappointed (except for maybe the first five minutes of the second half, but I will get into that later). BU is in the final two, they went into Hartford and did what they needed to do - win two games.

The Atmosphere

Let me describe the atmosphere to give you the full flavor of the game.  I went into this game, like I had the day before with my father Vito and in the same BU Basketball shirt I wear to almost every game.  This time instead of sitting behind the basket, we sat at half court about four rows up, surrounded on three sides by UVM fans.  Before the game we went to this tent in the southwest corner of the Gym for a coupe of beers.  (This actually surprised me that there was a beer tent on a college campus connected to the game.  They roped off an area and you could not bring a beer outside of that area, they had TV's set up, some pretty fancy food and a place where you could make your own signs, with very limited profanity retrictions).

Once the game started I started rooting and shouting for the BU Terriers like any BU fan would. But I noticed something else; the Vermont fans were also rooting for BU (not quietly rooting, they were pretty loud for most of the game, they were doing cheers, clapping, standing up and screaming at the ref).  I was shocked.  I immeidiately resented all of the Vermont fans surrounding me, they're BU's biggest rival and they are rooting for us? Then I realized why, because of the format of the America East conference tournament, if BU beat Stony Brook and UVM beat UNH, UVM would host the championship in Burlington, VT, because they would be the higher seed.  Even after realizing this, I still resented UVM fans, I wanted UNH to win in the next game but I wasn't rooting for them.  It's like being a Yankees fan and for some reason, some odd situation happens, where Red Sox fans start rooting for the Yankees because it somehow benefits the Sox if the Yankees beat another team (there has to be some made up word or term for this situation, if not I am fielding suggestions).  This is completely unaccepteable.  They are rooting for something that their team cannot control, it's idiotic and I hate it.  Hopefully, come Saturday at noon on ESPN2, every one of the UVM fans who was rooting for BU will come to regret it.

Another person rooting fervently for BU was my father. As per usual when he came to one of these events he bought a hat of the team he was rooting for. I appreciated the support, it felt like I was watching the game with another BU alumni or BU fan.  He was actually getting more heated than the BU alumni occupying the one side of us that was not UVM fans.  He even got more heated than myself on occaision.  A couple of times when the ref called a bad foul that went against BU, he stood up and started screaming at the top of his lungs at the ref.  And we were four rows from the scoreres table, the ref definitely heard him, a couple of times I had to tell him to calm down.  When Coach Chambers got his technical foul, I was convinced that the ref was T-ing up my dad for something he said not the coach of BU.  This I had nothing against, I loved this, I was so glad he came with me.

Then there were the people that were rooting for SBU.  They came in force.  At one point during the game I tweeted a twitpic (see below) of the SBU student section, the word "Seawolves" all nine people who spelled out the plural form of their teams mascot outnumbered the total BU student section, if you read my blog post on Terriers Basketball attendance and why it was so poor, especially among students, this seemed to be on par.  It was more of a home game for Stony Brook and an away game for the Terriers.  The easiest way to recognize who has more fans at the arena when a game is played at a neutral site, listen to the noise during foul shots.  When BU was taking their shots from the charity stripe the arena was significantly louder than when SBU took their shots (surprisingly though, BU held the advantage in foul shots made, SBU missed more than half of their chances, maybe this was the difference in the game).

Stony Brook Student Section

BU Student Section (to be fair there might be a few more this was taken during the horn malfunction in the first half)

 

The Game

The most exciting game I have seen all season.  The atmosphere was electric and I found myself actually being nervous for all of the players and coached involved.  This was the biggest game Coach Chambers has ever coached and the biggest game BU's seniors have ever played.  Keep in mind, BU has not been to the conference championship since 2003 and has not won the conference tournament since 2002.  A win in this game would bring BU to a game they haven't been to in over half a decade.

I'm dividing this game into five parts.  I'll write a paragraph on each:

• The first 3 minutes of the game
• The rest of the first half
• The first 5 minutes of the second half
• The middle of the second half
• The last 4 minutes of the game

In the first 3 minutes of the game I was discouraged. Right away I was thinking "oh no."   It's going to be one of those games.  I am coming into the game all excited and pumped up and right way the team is deflated, Muhammad El-Amin, this year's America East player of the year hit three straight from the beyond the arc.  He needed to be stopped.  It was evident in order for BU to stay in this game El-Amin needed to be nuetralized for the rest of the game and to a certain degree he was.  in the remaining 37 minutes he only added 11 and finished the game with 20.

The rest of the first half was the Core Lowe Show.  He was making deep deep three-pointers.  All around me I was listening to UVM fans just saying "WOW, how did he make that shot?"  Coach Chambers knew what Lowe was doing, the fans knew what he was doing.  I just smiled and knew, like I mentioned in my preview, if Lowe and others could stay hot from three the Terriers will win this game.  But that was not the only story of this portion of the game, BU's defense did a fantastic job, limiting SBU to only 15 points in the last 17 minutes. I was hoping they would carryover both their defensive and offensive performances over into the second half.

At halftime BU led 37 - 24.

The first five minutes of the second half punched me in the gut.  I was twice as deflated when BU allowed SBU to go on a 16 - 0 run to start the second half and give up the lead that they spent so much time building in the first half.  I and every fan in the Arena was in panic mode, completely in shock that they allowed this to happen and so were Terriers. 

At the start the middle of the second half Coach Chambers decided that he had enough. He called time out and got pissed.  For about a minute, between when the time out was called and the band started playing, one entire half of the arena could hear Coach Chambers yelling at his players, he needed to start a fire or BU was going to see this one slip away.  Whatever he did worked, BU didn't take the lead but they kept it within at least 5 points the entire time.  Still they were getting frustrated, and so was I that we were not able to pull closer. 

In the last five minutes of the game, all of that frustration culminated with a stupid foul called against BU.  Coach Chambers got emotional and got a technical foul right away.  He was saying to his team" "I'm doing everything I can to win this game, I want it bad, how much do you guys want it?"  The players responded, they went back to finishing the easy baskets and playing great defense.  To end the game they went on a 9-0 run to lock up the win, and advance to the final Saturday noon ESPN2 at Burlington against the only America East team they have not beaten so far this season: The Vermont Catamounts.

Random notes and thank yous

• Thank you to the Albany fan who sold us his $300 worth of tickets for $20 because Albany made an early exit, the seats were awesome, I even ended up selling one for $10. 
• During the Stony Brook game, Tina Charles of the UConn Huskies women team, came in halfway through the first half, just after her Huskies beat Syracuse for their 70th straight win an NCAA women's record.  Thanks for your interest in America East basketball Tina!
• Thank you to my father Vito, for providing me with transportation to and from all of the games this weekend.

That about wraps up this post.  I'm going to add some pictures to this post later tonight.  Also, stay tuned later this week for mor posts leading up to the much anticipated BU v. UVM face-off on Saturday.

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AE Tournament 2010 - BU beats Hartford to play SBU in the Semis

3/6 - BU v. Hartford - Terriers win 87 - 46.
In the program people will forever wonder why BU played Hartford in the quarterfinal instead of Binghamton.  On Monday night, apparently after all of the AE 2010 Tournament programs were printed out, Binghamton withdrew from the tournament because of their off the court issues.  So instead of playing Binghamton like initially planned BU played Hartford.  This seemingly odd but very understandble event sparked a couple of thoughts in my mind:

1. What happened to all of the Binghamton fans who bought tickets to the men's tournament?  Did they get a full refund? Did any of them already have the hotel booked so they decided to go anyway?
2. BU will now have to play the University of Hartford in the quarterfinals, seemingly a worse matchup than Binghamton, who just a week and a half earlier we beat by 43 points.  The last time we played Hartford we won by only 3 points on the back of a Jake O'Brien three pointer.

My concerns about the matchup were unfounded.  The Terriers were led by not just one three pointer, but a very strong performance from Jake O'Brien who scored a career high 28 points.  The Terriers continued to hit threes galore, setting yet another three point related record in Reich Family Arena, most threes in one half of an America East Tourament game (the other was the BU program record for most threes, which they broke again later in the season when they played Albany at Agganis).  The Terriers dominated Hartford from beginning to finish and won by an astronomical differential of 41 points.

This win seems to continue the trend of how BU has performed thus far all year.  Versus the lowly teams in the conference they will dominate play from almost beginning to finish. Very rarely have they been in a close game and they always win versus the inferior opponent.  As a fan tracking BU all season, I noted many times that they are undefeated versus teams below them in the standings and 1 - 5 versus opponents above them in the standings (the only win coming against Maine on senior day).

3/7 - 5:00 PM EST - BU v. Stony Brook - Reich Family Arena 
Today they can completely negate that 1 - 5 record versus superior opponents by knocking off the best team in the conference: The Stony Brook Seawolves (which is not an actual animal).  The Terriers have been mandhandled by the Seawolves both times they have played.  The Terriers were never able to find a rhythym in both games and would go prolonged periods of the game without scoring a field goal.

The big stat in both of the previous BU v. SBU contests and what I expect to be the huge difference in this contest is how hot the Terriers can get from 3 point range.  In the first game they shot about 35%, shooting 12 of 37 from beyond the arc.  In the second game they made a paltry 4 of 22 from beyond the arc about 18%.  Both of these percentages are unusually low for the Terriers.  If they can shoot like they did yesterday in the Hartford quarterfinal, the Terriers will win this game and upset Stony Brook to advance to the AE Final for the first time since they won the tournament and advanced to the NCAA tournament in 2002.

Random Notes:

• If BU wins hope for a New Hampshire upset of UVM, that will put the AE Title game either in Agganis Arena or Case Gym, which is guaranteed to be a huge event for the BU Basketball program.

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The 2010 America East Tournament

Right now I am on a Peter Pan bus writing this post on my phone, please pardon the brevity. I could write a couple housand words about all of the storylines but here are the mains ones to look out for.

• An 8 team tournament? Binghamton withdraws decides to stay home because of all of their off the court problems.
• Who is the best player in the America East, Marqus Blakely of UVM or John Holland of the Terriers?
• Will Stony Brook continue it's regular season dominance in the postseason?
• Will BU continue to stay hot and finally live up to it's lofty preseason expectations?

Like the last season of Lost, all questions will be answered.

 

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Last 2 weeks in BU hoops - part 3 of 3 - Maine

BU v. Maine

Ah senior day. I was excited to go to this game, but got too lazy and didn't end up going. I regret not going. When I watched this game on NESN it looked like this was the highest attended home game of the season. It was my chance to go to a REAL college basketball game atmosphere at Case Gym and I missed it. That sucks.

I did, however, get to watch this game on TV and like the 2 games prior this game was a blowout the Terrriers dominated the current America East 3 seed from start to finish. BU is on a roll right now hopefully they can bring this momentum into their game today 3/6 versus the tournament hosts Hartford, who they have beaten twice this year in two very different games.

Win today and they most likely play Stony Brook the tournament favorites...

Last 2 weeks in BU Hoops - part 2 of 3 - Delaware

BU vs. Delaware

Who knew people live in Delaware?

Weeks before this game I was asking around if anyone knew someone who lived in Delaware. I couldn't find anyone. Delaware as a state intrigues me, what is in Delaware? Say what you want about Iowa at least they have corn and caucusing. To be honest I've never been in the state for more than one hour, and there is no reason to, if I -95 didn't go through Delaware I likely would've spent 25 years of my life without ever stepping a foot in the state. Right away I wanted to go to this game and do something in Delaware, maybe even spend the night.

It wasn't until after the game that I met someone who lives in Delaware; Julia's sister Emily currently attends the U of D. Damn, why didn't I know this earlier? It wouldn't have mattered, Emily was in Boston that weekend anyway. At least now I will have one reader of this blog from Delaware.

The game itself can be summarized in one sentence: John Holland scored 42 points as BU trounced Delaware. I think It would've been an awesome performance to see live. I can't wait to see Holland next year. Does he become one of the rare America East talents that attracts NBA scouts to gyms that hold less than 2000 people?