By: Patrick McHugh, News Staff
The men’s basketball team had an opportunity to catapult up the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) standings this week when it faced Georgia State on Saturday and Delaware Tuesday night.
Unfortunately, the Huskies faltered down the stretch and dropped both contests to fall to 9-18 overall and 5-11 in the CAA. Had Northeastern won both games it would have moved into seventh place in the league standings. Instead, the squad sits 10th out of 12 teams with two league games remaining on the schedule.
Saturday’s contest against the Panthers in Atlanta looked promising as the visitors jumped out to a 32-15 lead with 5:10 remaining in the first half. The NU offense hit a wall, however, as it went the final 6:23 of the half without a field goal and saw its comfortable lead trimmed to four at 33-29 entering halftime.
The second half nearly mirrored the first half with Northeastern regrouping and going back up by 13 points early in the half. GSU redshirt junior forward Brandon McGee led the second half comeback for the Panthers, scoring a career-high 31 points including four three-pointers. With the score knotted up 62-62 with under 10 seconds remaining, the Huskies had the ball and a chance to win the game. Rather than use one of his three timeouts, NU head coach Bill Coen let senior captain and guard Chaisson Allen drive to the basket. His running layup at the buzzer was off the mark; when there was no foul called the squads headed to overtime.
Coen explained his decision not to call a timeout on the final sequence of regulation.
“Six seconds or under we’re going to go,” Coen said. “You give the ball to your best player with a head of steam. He got all the way to the rim, I don’t know if I could draw us up anything better than that. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the shot to go and we didn’t get a whistle, but those are the chances you take.”
In the extra period Georgia State grabbed a quick lead and converted from the free throw line to hold on for a 74-71 victory. It was the second overtime game of the season for the Huskies, the only other being a 63-62 win at Southern Illinois in the second game of the season Nov. 16, 2010.
Northeastern was led by a career-high 24 points from sophomore guard Jon Lee, 15 from Allen and 10 apiece from sophomores Joel Smith and Dinko Marshavelski.
“I think ultimately what happened is we stopped scoring,” Coen said. “We had some wide open looks, feet set, no one around us with five to 10 feet, and we just missed shots. I think that just swung the momentum.”
The team returned to Matthews Arena Tuesday night to face the Fightin’ Blue Hens of the University of Delaware, and again was in contention late in the contest, tied 57-57 with 3:06 remaining. The visitors used a 12-3 run in the closing minutes to earn a 72-66 victory.
The NU offense was off the mark throughout, shooting 15.4 percent from three-point distance, well below the team’s season average of 37.8 percent.
Allen said he and his teammates were extra cautious around UD sophomore forward Jamelle Hagins, who recorded a season-high eight blocks when the teams met Jan. 19 in Newark, Del. Hagins’ tenacious defense helped the Fightin’ Blue Hens to a 54-52 win in that game.
“Having that big presence in there, we knew in the last game he had eight blocks, it was in the back of our minds that we couldn’t get in there,” Allen said. “We had to either shoot a floater or shoot over the top of him. You have to avoid him somehow and he disrupted us a little bit.”
Allen led the team in scoring with 20 points while sophomore forward Kauri Black had 12 points and 11 rebounds. Freshman guard Alex Harris added 10 points off the bench. Sophomore guard Joel Smith, who entered the contest having reached double-figures in his last 10 games, shot only 3-of-11 from the floor and finished with nine points.
All five Delaware starters scored at least 11 points, led by senior guard Jawan Carter’s 22. UD took the season series from Northeastern for the first time since 2001, snapping what had been an 11-game losing streak to the Huskies.
NU will look to regroup Saturday when it heads to Asheville, N.C. to face UNC-Asheville for a 2 p.m. tip-off. The game is part of ESPN Bracketbusters, which matches teams from different mid-major conferences based on similar records. The Bulldogs are members of the Big South Conference and are 13-12 on the season.
Last year Northeastern hosted Louisiana Tech in the Bracketbusters showdown and dropped a 70-67 decision Feb. 20.
“I think the Bracketbuster is great,” Coen said. “I think it gives you the opportunity to experience different programs from different parts of the country and different conferences. Sometimes it is good to get out of conference and play an opponent that maybe doesn’t know all your plays so you can get a little rhythm back.”
