In every game of every sport there is one defining moment when a player with something extra steps up to the proverbial plate and decides his team simply will not lose.
These moments don’t have a name, but the people who make the decision to not except failure do. They are called winners.
Northeastern junior point guard Jose Juan Barea has been a star at NU since his first year on Huntington Avenue, but last weekend at the Choice Hotel America East Championship tournament in Binghamton, N.Y., his already incredible career took a giant step towards legendary status.
Barea led the Huskies to a 90-79 semifinal win over Stony Brook University by dropping 41 points on 17-for-32 shooting.
By no means is scoring 41 points in any game anything less than superb, but when you do it in one of the most important games of your collegiate career it’s even more special. For his efforts he has been named The Northeastern News Player of the Week.
But Barea’s accomplishment has even more meaning. The only other player in Northeastern history to score 41 points was the late, Reggie Lewis, whose No. 35 jersey hangs alone in the rafters of Solomon Court. The University of Vermont’s Taylor Coppenrath’s 43 point performance in last year’s championship game is the only time a player scored more points than Barea in an AE tournament game.
“They were playing us in a zone and coach was telling me just keep attacking, keep attacking,” Barea said. “It’s fun to be scoring all those points and helping my teammates out.”
Northeastern’s win was only the first step for Barea and the Dogs, as they had to get past the University of Maine. But how do you follow up the second best performance in AE tourney history?
If your initials happen to be J.J.B. and you’re a 6-foot point guard from Puerto Rico, you score a meager 20 points, dish out 11 assists and fall just two boards short of the third triple-double in school history.
“When you have a guy like Jose Juan you’re gonna have an offensive team cause he’s gonna make things happen,” said NU coach Ron Everhart. But it wasn’t just Barea’s offense that Everhart was raving about. “His on-the-ball defense is just tremendously better this year and he’s forcing other teams to be uncomfortable to extend their offenses and that’s where everything starts for us.”
Barea looks to continue his stellar play Saturday in Burlington, Vt. when the Huskies play the Vermont Catamounts in the AE championship game.
