The Huskies strike first with back-to-back goals, but BU scores four unanswered to take control of the game, winning 4-3.
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Monday, January 97:00 p.m. – CAA Full Court Press
6:45 p.m. – Huskies Basketbll Pre-Game
7:00 p.m. – Northeastern Basketball – Huskies at Hofstra Pride
from the Mack Sports Complex in Hempstead, N.Y.
with Patrick McHugh and Chris Tramontozzi
Thursday, January 129:00 p.m. – Hockey East This Week
3:00 p.m. – Dog Pound Sports Sound
Winter break recap; Rivalry weekend preview
7:15 p.m. – Huskies Hockey Pre-Game
7:30 p.m. – Northeastern Hockey: Huskies vs. #6 Boston University Terriers
from Matthews Arena
with Alex Faust, Ben Horner, and Jack Thaler
12:45 p.m. – Huskies Basketball Pre-Game
1:00 p.m. – Northeastern Basketball: Huskies vs. William & Mary Tribe
with Patrick McHugh and Zolan Kanno-Youngs
from Matthews Arena
New start time:
3:45 p.m. – Huskies Hockey Pre-Game
4:00 p.m. – Northeastern Hockey: Huskies vs. #4 Boston College Eagles
from Fenway Park
with Alex Faust, Ben Horner, and Craig White
Though only about a third of the games have been played, this is a good time of year to step back and look at where the Northeastern men’s basketball team is at. The majority of the non-conference schedule has been played, with the exception of a tilt at Vermont on Friday and the BracketBusters game against a still to-be-determined opponent in late February. After winning three of their first four, the Huskies have now dropped six straight and head into the weekend of the new year with a 3-7 overall record, including one conference game.
It’s a slate that features just two power conference teams, in St. John’s (Big East) and NC State (Atlantic Coast), but it has proven to be yet another challenging non-league schedule nonetheless. That is not to be unexpected, however, as Bill Coen tends to schedule strong mid-major opponents to prepare his team for the challenges of the Colonial Athletic Association. Before the season started, nearly every one of these games could have been considered winnable – some more than others, but none that Northeastern seemed to have absolutely no shot at winning. After the victory at St. John’s, it seemed like the Huskies would be on a roll and even the tougher games like NC State, which many expected to be a loss to begin with, seemed more winnable than they had.
Here’s an update on each of the ten teams Northeastern has played so far this year, plus a look at the Huskies’ next opponent, Vermont – click the team name to read our recap from each of those games (all records are through Wednesday, December 28):
Boston University: 4-8 (1-3 home, 0-0 America East) – 82-74 win (OT)
After starting the season on a 4-game losing streak, the Terriers won their next four over Rhode Island, CAA members Hofstra and Delaware, then Boston College to even their record. They have lost all four since then, with two games remaining before AE play begins at Vermont on January 5 (at La Salle, 12/29; at Quinnipiac, 12/31). Just two of the losses have come by fewer than seven points, while only one of the wins was decided by more than seven (75-61 at BC).
University of Massachusetts: 10-3 (6-0 home, 0-0 Atlantic 10) – 83-67 loss
In contrast to BU, the Minutemen started with four wins, lost three of five including a 1-2 record at the Paradise Jam in the Bahamas, and are currently riding a four-game win streak. Each of the recent wins have been close, but all of the team’s first six wins were decided by double-digits including a 36-point blowout at BC and a 30-point trouncing of Towson. They’ll have one more non-con game vs. Central Connecticut (12/30) before opening their A10 slate vs. Fordham. UMass will then finish their out-of-conference schedule at La Salle before returning to Atlantic 10 play for the rest of the regular season.
Southern Illinois: 3-8 (1-2 away, 0-0 Missouri Valley Conference) – 64-57 win
It’s been a tough season in Carbondale, where the Salukis fell to Division II Ohio Dominican to start the year before a 19-point loss at the hands of Saint Louis and a trip to Boston that resulted in yet another loss at Matthews Arena. The three wins were all decisive, but came against Chicago State (0-13), Northern Illinois (0-11) and SIU-Edwardsville (2-7). The only OOC game remaining for SIU is the BracketBusters game, as they start MVC play at Evansville on Thursday.
St. John’s: 7-5 (7-1 home, 1-0 Big East) – 78-64 win
With a similar pattern to UMass, the Red Storm opened the season with three straight wins, including their season opener against William & Mary in the 2K Sports Classic, before dropping five of six with three more wins since their last loss. They have already started Big East play with a 91-67 win over Providence on Tuesday that saw Moe Harkless post 32 points, a record for Big East freshmen in his conference debut. Their only non-conference game remaining is UCLA on February 18 – although with the Big ‘East’ expansion, the Bruins will probably be joining the conference before too long.
La Salle: 8-4 (5-0 home, 0-0 Atlantic 10) – 68-51 loss
By looking strictly at the record, an 8-4 mark might be a surprise for the team picked to finish last in the A10. However, despite a few blowouts, their 26-point win over Bucknell (8-6) is perhaps their most impressive. They also defeated CAA foe James Madison, 92-83, and smoked the still-winless Towson by 36. The losses are actually the brightest point of optimism for La Salle, after staying within seven at Villanova and four at Pittsburgh, and falling to an underrated Delaware team by just four on the road. The Explorers have two non-con games, next vs. Boston University on Thursday, then two A10 games before their final OOC game of the year at Penn.
*Old Dominion: 6-6 (1-2 away, 1-0 CAA) – 69-59 loss
The Monarchs started with a 63-46 drubbing by Northern Iowa (10-2) at home. Three straight wins, including the first win by a CAA team over a power conference team in a 68-66 victory over South Florida, and just a 10-point loss to #2 Kentucky in the Hall of Fame Tip-Off at Mohegan Sun seemed to have ODU back on track before a 10-point overtime loss at home against Vermont. After that game, they beat East Carolina and Northeastern, lost to Fairfield, Central Florida and Richmond (OT), then beat Virginia Military Institute. They’ll host #8 Missouri on Friday before returning to CAA action at James Madison on Monday.
Bradley: 5-8 (4-3 home, 0-1 Missouri Valley Conference) – 79-68 loss
Another team of streaks, the Braves started 2011-12 with three wins, then lost four in a row, won two, and have lost their last four. The latest streak started with a 73-68 loss at Drexel. That run also includes a one-point loss vs. Western Carolina, an 11-point defeat at the hands of #19 Michigan, and a 90-51 shellacking by Wichita State at home to open the MVC portion of their schedule. With the exception of BracketBusters, each of their remaining games will be against conference opponents.
Princeton: 6-7 (3-4 away, 0-0 Ivy) – 71-62 loss
The Ivy Leaguers started by winning just one of six, then won five of six. Their only game since the trip to Boston on December 18 resulted in a 4-point loss at Siena. The Tigers are in a stretch of 11 straight road games against Division 1 opponents when they won’t play any home games during the months of December and January with the exception of The College of New Jersey (Division III) on January 8, lasting from December 7 at Rutgers to February 4 at Yale. They’ll have a pair of games in Tallahassee, against Florida State on Friday and Florida A&M on Sunday, then their tune-up against TCNJ before opening the Ivy schedule at Cornell on January 13.
Louisiana Tech: 7-6 (5-0 home, 0-0 WAC) – 56-53 loss
A team that has been up and down over the past few years, a weak schedule has the Bulldogs looking like they’re back on the up – for now. They haven’t lost a home non-conference game since December of 2007, though they’ve had several close calls this season. Each of their last four wins, which were all at home, came by three points or fewer with a one point, double overtime win over Northwestern State. After Arkansas, who La Tech lost to by 14 in their last game, the only teams with much name recognition are Wyoming, McNeese State and Arkansas-Little Rock. According to RealTimeRPI.com, their strength of schedule ranks 306th in the country. They have two more non-conference games before starting WAC play, including NAIA Spring Hill on Thursday (their second non-Division 1 opponent after D-III Mississippi College to start the season) and Southern Methodist on Sunday.
North Carolina State: 8-4 (6-2 home, 0-0 ACC) – 88-59 loss
New head coach Mark Gottfried has the Wolfpack energized and in control, exciting fans and local media with a strong start to the 2011-12 season. The ‘Pack has three games left before starting their league schedule, with their next tilt coming against Campbell in their on-campus gym, the Reynolds Coliseum (instead of the RBC Center, their normal home arena). With no bad losses, a win over Texas and a couple other decent victories, NC State looks to keep rolling into conference play and hopes to make some noise in a weak ACC.
Vermont: 6-7 (1-3 home, 0-0 America East)
The Catamounts have a solid balance in the difficulty of their schedule. After beginning the year with a two-point defeat at South Florida, they bounced back with wins over Dartmouth and Marist. A loss to Long Island was followed by an overtime win at Old Dominion and a home victory over Siena. A five-game losing streak may look like a rough patch, but that included a 7-point loss to Harvard (in the week preceding the first-ever appearance in the AP and ESPN/USA Today polls in program history), a 4-point loss to Quinnipiac and a 1-point loss to Iona are nothing to be ashamed of. The contest against Northeastern will be their last before traveling to Stony Brook, last year’s AE runner-up, to open the conference slate.
For those wondering what next year’s non-conference schedule will be like, it is very similar to this one. Not all of the opponents will be the same, but BU, UMass, La Salle and Vermont are expected to make a return trip to Boston, while the Huskies will travel to Princeton. In addition, UNC Asheville owes a return to Northeastern as part of the BracketBusters contract from last year, and NU will be playing in the Great Alaska Shootout over Thanksgiving break against a field that will be announced in March or April. They will also have a road BracketBusters game, leaving room for just two more opponents to reach the total of 27 games plus the tournament allowed by the NCAA.
In the coming days, we’ll evaluate the team’s performance as they head into the meat of the conference schedule. In the meantime, be sure to tune into WRBB Sports as we bring you live action of three Huskies athletic events this weekend, including the basketball team’s game at Vermont on Friday and a pair of hockey games at the Mariucci Classic in Minnesota.
Isn’t it fun to be watching the polls again? When Monday comes around, we know you’re anxiously awaiting the final tally of votes to see where Northeastern falls. Fortunately, both hockey teams seem well-positioned to garner votes and that’s where we start this week.
Though outside the top 20, Huskies hockey is back in the thick of it, getting their sixth consecutive win with a 3-2 decision over UMass-Lowell on Saturday. And to think, this whole stretch started with a players-only meeting the Monday after their winless streak balooned to one month – Jared Shafran explains the turnaround in his piece for NESN. The challenge is to keep it going, and voters in the USCHO and USA Today polls haven’t seen enough yet: Northeastern received 37 points in the USCHO poll, good for 23rd overall but not good enough to be ranked. Where it matters is the Pairwise, and Northeastern has climbed to 18th in the latest reading. NU players also continue to rack up awards: Chris Rawlings was defensive player of the week for a second time.
But to show you how terrible polls are, check out Yale ranked 19th in the latest USCHO poll. They have a 6-5-1 record, just lost to UMass, are not even ranked in the Pairwise, have the 33rd-best RPI in the country, and have a strength of schedule ranked 41st in the nation. Yet, pollsters have voted them the 19th best team in the nation. You be the judge. That’s the besauty of college hockey, versus BCS football: it’s up to the Parwise and very little else to determine the post-season selection.
Women’s hockey rebounded from a stumble to grab some big wins last weekend, taking down Boston University and UNH. They were idle this week. The Huskies now sit in 7th in the latest USCHO poll and 9th in the latest USA Today poll. More importantly, the Huskies are 9th in the latest Pairwise, with the top 8 making the tournament at the end of the year. Speaking of Pairwise, USCHO’s Candace Horgan explains the reason why the Huskies aren’t in the top group: most of their early season opponents are not in the Pairwise at all. In accolades, Florence Schelling was named defensive player of the week and Northeastern was named Team of the Week by the league.
Turnovers continue to bite Northeastern men’s basketball, as they had 23 in their loss to Bradley last week, as Anthony Gulizia notes in the Huntington News. As a whole, the team is in the bottom 100 in turnovers per possession. It’s not just NU that has had this problem early in the year – Mike Litos wrote as early as November 21st that CAA teams were giving up the ball at an alarming rate. Despite this, Quincy Ford was named CAA Rookie of the Week as the rookie continues to impress for NU.
Finally, kudos to NU women’s basketball for breaking their long losing streak, though they lost their first conference game to VCU. The Huntington News has the recap.
By now you’ve heard of the Corey Trivino mess at BU. We have an Off The Wires special on Trivino’s arrest and dismissal from the Terriers. Coach Jack Parker added more outlets to his media roundup – he talked with Scott McLaughlin from College Hockey News (who did a great job adding historical context to the story) and Parker added some interesting quotes in the Boston Globe. The strategy with this has been clear from the outset: BU wants to be out in front of the story and make the narrative be that they were proactive in addressing this problem. The reality, though, is less clear. If, as Parker suggested, Trivino should have enrolled in alcohol counseling, why didn’t it happen? There was another minor incident in the spring (his third), but yet there seemed to have been no action taken then, despite alcohol being a lingering problem. There are still many questions that remain unanswered.
Boston University senior Corey Trivino, the team’s leading scorer and the top goal scorer this season in Hockey East, was swiftly booted from the Terriers’ No. 9-ranked squad after being arrested over the weekend on charges stemming from an altercation with a BU resident assistant in a campus dorm. Of note, though Trivino has been kicked off the hockey team, he has not been suspended from school (as of yet) and can continue to attend classes until officially being suspended or expelled.
It is not Trivino’s first discipline issue – in 2010 he and Vinny Saponari (now at Northeastern) were suspended from the team after missing a punitive bike ride following a night of drinking before the Hockey East semifinals. He and Saponari also participated in a profanity-laced rap video posted to YouTube which led to Saponari’s removal from the team.
We start from the source with Art Jahnke at BU Today:
The starting center on the BU men’s ice hockey team was arrested Sunday night and charged with three counts of indecent assault and battery after he allegedly entered the room of a female student and attempted to kiss and grope her. …
Trivino, whose family flew in for his arraignment, appeared in court in handcuffs and a powder blue hoodie. He never spoke, standing hunched forward and head down throughout the court proceeding.
Head hockey coach Jack Parker says Trivino has been permanently removed from the team. “He is no longer associated with the BU hockey team,” says Parker.
Side note: interesting how BU Today functions as a quasi-official news source for BU, and despite this obviously being a negative story, it’s prominently placed on the front page in full detail. One would imagine that if some story of this magnitude were to hit Northeastern, any official statement would be very terse.
Moving on to the Daily Free Press, which has published an extensive police account of what happened on Sunday night:
According to the BU Police Department police report, obtained from Brighton District Court, the incident began when the RA heard individuals of a room being extremely loud. The RA went to the room to tell them to quiet down, and Trivino followed her back to her room and pushed her door open, the report states. She said in the report that she told Trivino to go back to his room, but instead he allegedly started kissing and groping the victim.
Supplemental to the DFP, the Boston Hockey Blog has been on top of every development in this story, and talked with coach Jack Parker about Trivino’s apparently chronic trouble with alcohol:
“There is no question in my mind it’s an alcohol problem,” Parker said. “I did [ask him to get treatment], but he didn’t think it was for him.” …
“I could suspend him [at that time] for some games, but that didn’t work,” Parker said. “So I said this is going to be real simple. I’m going to give you a fair warning. One more incident and you’ll be gone. One more alcohol-related incident and you’re out of here. No ifs, ands or buts. That’s what he knew was going to be the outcome.
“The only thing you can do to help a kid with an alcohol problem is get him to stop drinking.”
More stories:
7:45 p.m. – Northeastern Basketball Pre-Game
8:00 p.m. – Northeastern Basketball: Huskies at Bradley Braves
from Renaissance Coliseum in Peoria, Ill.
with Patrick McHugh and Jared Shafran
Wednesday, December 7Only available on WRBB Sports Extra
7:00 p.m. – Northeastern Women’s Hockey: Huskies vs. Boston University
from Matthews Arena
with Craig White and David Kroopnick
Thursday, December 89:00 p.m. – Hockey East This Week
3:00 p.m. – Dog Pound Sports Sound
Fall season finale – Jared Shafran’s DPSS farewell
6:45 p.m. – Northeastern Hockey Pre-Game
7:00 p.m. – Northeastern Hockey: Huskies vs. UMass-Lowell Riverhawks
from Matthews Arena
with Jared Shafran, Alex Faust, and Ben Horner
First hockey winning streak all season, with the Huskies taking 3 in a row over the past two weeks. Their win on Friday at Michigan was their third win over the Wolverines in four tries, and part of now a 4-game home losing streak for the Maize & Blue. The story of the game was the line combination of Quailer-Pimm-Ferriero, which accounted for all four goals on the night. (WRBB Sports)
Mike McLaughlin has been out of the lineup and is not practicing with the team after breaking his jaw in Northeastern’s 5-2 win over Providence two weeks ago. He is expected to remain out of the lineup for a few weeks, but there is no hard timeframe for his return.
An upset win over St. John’s was certainly the story for Northeastern, after a career performance by Joel Smith but the New York tabloids focused instead on the absense of St. John’s head coach Steve Lavin (Daily News | New York Post). Tonight at La Salle in Philadelphia the Huskies will look to start a seadon at 4-1 for the first time since starting 4-0 in 2005-06 – JJ Barea’s senior year.
Bill Coen talked about the distribution of playing time and his lineup in a chat with Mike Litos. There’s been plenty of competition for spots in the lineup, and for the first time in a long while, the Huskies have noticeable and useable depth. The lack of Ryan Pierson getting significant minutes and Alex Bates getting any minutes at all during this strech is a a testament to that.
Women’s hockey hits the skids after a blazing start to the year. The Huskies have lost three straight, including a series sweep against Boston College and a tough OT loss to Dartmouth. NU still remains ranked 10th in the latest USCHO poll, but worringly they are no longer ranked in the PairWise. Part of the problem is in strength of schedule – most of NU’s early wins came against beatable teams. The Huskies have yet to claim that marquee win, something that will have to change if they want a shot at a bid to the NCAA tournament.
Women’s basketball is now on a 17-game losing streak dating back to last year. Give Northeastern credit for trying to promote the team and improve attendance early this year, but it may be all for naught.
Merrimack may be ranked #1, but as USCHO points out, they’ve yet to play more than 1 team under consideration in the Pairwise. We’ve been talking about Merrimack’s weak schedule since mid-October, but it’ll be interesting to see if that comes back to bite the Warriors later this year.
Boston University sure loves playing at MSG every other year, and that’s expected to continue, according to the Daily Free Press’ hockey blog. Saturday was the third sellout in three tries at Madison Square Garden. Of course, BU’s win wasn’t without controversy, as College Hockey News reports. Oddly enough, Northeastern was slated to play a game at the Garden last year against Niagara – the contracts were signed – but the deal collapsed and the game was moved to Matthews Arena.
There’s a new CAA Basketball Bloggers poll made by the hard-working folks at VCU RamNation (without a doubt the best fan-oriented site in the league).
(Photo: Junhee Chung/Daily Free Press)
What a weekend – four thrilling games, unfortunately followed by basketball’s letdown on Monday. But, all things being equal, the Huskies got one marquee win over the weekend, the absolutely heart-stopping overtime victory over Boston University in basketball on Friday night. If you haven’t heard the entire game broadcast, you’re in luck, because we’ve archived it (WRBB Sports), and it’s definitely worth a listen. Now comes homecoming weekend, with the last basketball home game for two weeks and the last home hockey game for three weeks.
We’ll get to the upcoming games in a moment, but first back to the week that was… Read more…
Northeastern and Boston University opened their respective basketball seasons in a contest that was tight from the opening tip to the final buzzer in overtime.
1st Half:
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2nd Half:
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Overtime:
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