Northeastern is now 7-5 in CAA play, which is a respectable mark. But take a closer look, and one notices problems. One is that they are now three games out of fourth place, which means they need some help if they are to ultimately get a bye in the conference tournament next month. That has meant everything over the years, and it’s very difficult to win four games in four days. Perhaps more importantly, the Huskies have put that record together only against the teams they “should” beat. The Huskies are 0-4 against the teams that are ahead of them in the standings.

This is about what was expected of the Huskies. They have just one senior on the roster, Niagara transfer Kashief Edwards, so this team looked to be about a year away from contending. They were one of several teams that one could put in a hat and pull them out when trying to project the middle of the pack before the season. There is some experience in the backcourt, but youth up front, and depth was an unknown. The youth up front has shown plenty of promise, adding to the idea that this team could contend next year.

In fact, that the Huskies are even in the first division of the CAA might seem like a case of over-achieving when looking at their non-conference record. A six-game losing streak in December doesn’t usually foreshadow being 7-5 at this point in conference play. The issues the Huskies showed in December – turnovers and a lack of backcourt depth – are still around, although the former has been lessened. But the lack of backcourt means starting guards Jonathan Lee and Joel Smith are playing without much rest, and will be more likely to wear down later in the season.

If the Huskies don’t at least continue to knock off the teams they should beat, they could slip back in the standings quite easily. They are now tied for fifth with Georgia State, and Delaware is breathing down their neck one game back. Both teams have proven themselves against the conference’s best teams. The Panthers handed Drexel their only loss in the last 17 games and have won at VCU, the latter marking the only time the Rams have lost at home all season. The Blue Hens almost beat the Huskies at Matthews Arena just a week earlier, beat Drexel in December and knocked off George Mason on Wednesday night.

There is still time for Northeastern to change where they stand. The Huskies are at VCU on Saturday and get George Mason at home on February 22. Last season, the Huskies had their struggles but managed to knock off VCU along the way. That game was in Boston, but it’s proof that a team like this is capable of beating one of the contenders. A month left in the regular season is a good amount of time for improvement to happen, especially in the crucial backcourt area off the bench since the two reserves there are freshmen.

But right now, where Northeastern stands is clear in the CAA. They are not contenders yet, and until they knock off a team ahead of them in the standings, that’s where they will be. They will continue to be a year away.

“I think it’s a team on a mission this year,” said junior Kyle Casey, who led Harvard with 20 points and eight rebounds in Saturday’s 68-59 win at Brown. “Last year, we got down early, and being a veteran team, we learned from those experiences and tried to nip them in the bud.”

Last year’s trip to Providence and New Haven wasn’t so good for the Crimson. First, they didn’t play well but pulled out a win at Brown after being down by 11 at halftime. A night later, they went to New Haven and lost to Yale in overtime. Had they won that game and every other one turned out the same, the Crimson would have been dancing with an outright Ivy League title. (Interestingly, Brown’s gym was home to the other loss by the team that tied the Crimson, as the Bears knocked off Princeton at home.)

This time around, it was different. A more mature and battle-tested Crimson team won these two games convincingly. It’s undoubtedly a sign of maturity for what is a veteran team, but head coach Tommy Amaker also noted that it comes at a different point in the season, and this time it might have been advantageous.

“This is the beginning of our conference race, so there’s a lot of excitement and energy with everyone right now,” said Amaker.

On Friday night, the Crimson simply shut down Yale in their biggest win ever against the Bulldogs. They held Yale below 32 percent from the field and forced 22 turnovers, which they turned into 26 points. They kept it up the entire game, turning an 11-point halftime lead into the final 30-point victory margin with a strong second half where they outscored the Bulldogs 35-16.

Saturday night’s win over Brown will go into the book as a nine-point win. Don’t let that fool you; Harvard was in control throughout the second half after scoring the first 11 points to turn a 31-27 halftime lead into a 42-27 advantage. While Brown had some good spurts, you never had the feeling they were truly within striking distance, perhaps one play away from going on a run to make it a close game. Harvard never relaxed, aided by some good bench play (freshman Steve Moundou-Missi, in particular, had a solid weekend), and kept Brown at arm’s length as a result. They held the Bears to 37 percent shooting on the night.

Harvard’s 4-0 start in league play includes a 3-0 mark on the road. They will be playing from being ahead, which can never be underestimated in this league, and they now get to go home for a weekend. The Crimson have been excellent at protecting their home floor, so it would not be a surprise if they are 6-0 a week from now. They look like a team on a mission, and one part of that has been fulfilled.

• Boston University was not rebounding well in the early portion of their seven-game winning streak. But in the last two games, the Terriers have dominated the glass, and keeping that up will only help. Granted, it came against two of the worst teams in the conference, but one of them (UMBC) is normally a decent team on the glass. Part of that has come from an emphasis on rebounding of late, but not just at the defensive end.“The last two games, we’ve done a much better job on the glass,” said head coach Joe Jones. “We’re just trying to make a concerted effort to be a better offensive rebounding team as well.”
• One of the keys to Marquette‘s play has been the play of transfer Jamil Wilson. The Oregon transfer isn’t putting up big numbers, but he had 16 points on Saturday night at Providence to go with three blocked shots. Three nights later, he blocked three more shots to help the Golden Eagles shut down USF, and he is filling the stat sheet more and more.”I think he’s become incredibly, incredibly important to what we’re doing,” said head coach Buzz Williams. “I think with each passing day, regardless of game day or practice day, I think his confidence continues to grow. I think he helps us hide some of our deficiencies because of his intelligence, particularly on the defensive end.”
• Northeastern somehow pulled out a win on Wednesday night over Delaware that may make a difference for them. The Huskies had lost two straight after a good start, but came home for a win that may get them going again. Joel Smith hit his second game-winning basket in less than a month, having made a buzzer-beater at Vermont on December 30, and looks to be playing much better although he struggled in the two recent road losses. The big key, he said, is being engaged at both ends of the floor, and head coach Bill Coen noted that they have only lost once when Smith has six or more rebounds.”I’m trying to be more involved, especially rebounding and defense,” said Smith. “Once you do the little things, the game just flows and it comes to you.”
• St. John’s showed on Wednesday night that although they are young, they will be able to beat a top team or two before the season is out. They beat West Virginia convincingly, and all along they have looked like a scrappy team that will not go down easily.
• Staying in the Big East, Notre Dame‘s win at Seton Hall is another solid win for the Fighting Irish. If they keep this up, Mike Brey should be in the mix for Big East Coach of the Year. Meanwhile, Seton Hall has come back to earth a bit of late as they are now 4-4 in Big East play.
• St. Mary’s picked up a big road win on Thursday night as they went to Los Angeles and came away with a 71-64 win over Loyola Marymount. There are more road tests ahead for this team, but getting a win in LA is a good way to keep up the winning.
• Five teams are tied atop the Atlantic 10 with 4-2 records, but Xavier and Temple are not among them. Instead, it’s Dayton, La Salle, UMass, Saint Louis and St. Bonaventure. Temple and Xavier are right behind them, but chances are few figured a five-way tie would not include those two.
• Iona heads to Fairfield on Friday night in a game that may have lost a bit of luster from before MAAC play began in earnest. The Stags are 5-3, and they could make things a little more interesting with a win as Iona is 7-2 and being talked about as a team that should be in one of the better BracketBusters matchups.

“I can’t stress enough how much we needed it, because this team is young,” head coach Tom Moore said.

Both teams needed this game, albeit for different reasons. While wins have been hard to come by for Bryant this season, including at home, they needed it to gain some confidence in what has been a difficult season. Quinnipiac entered the game having lost four of five since the calendar turned over to 2012, with several games being tough losses. The four losses came by one, four, three and three points.

The Bobcats look like a team that’s a year away from being a contender. They’re a young team in a Northeast Conference that looks to be up from last year, especially with the contending teams as LIU, Wagner, Central Connecticut and Robert Morris all look quite strong, and Sacred Heart just beat Central Connecticut on Saturday. St. Francis (NY) is also in the mix at 6-2, which not many expected.

Moore noted that this year’s team doesn’t score as easily as the last couple of teams he’s had there, both of which were veteran teams. While they still score almost 72 points per game, they aren’t shooting as well as those two teams and are turning the ball over more than they did last year. In particular, they aren’t good from long range as they make less than 32 percent of their shots from behind the arc. Only senior James Johnson, their leading scorer, is a threat from long range that opposing defenses really have to respect.

“This team has to understand that we have to be almost maniacal defensively to carry us through parts of the game where we don’t score,” said Moore.

In particular, Moore noted that the Bobcats had not played well defensively in the second half of recent games. The statistic he was happiest about on Saturday was what they held Bryant to in the second half and overtime – just over 35 percent from the field and 22 percent from long range. While Bryant’s offensive numbers this season are not good, Moore knows the Bulldogs are capable of being much better than the numbers suggest on any given day.

For all the defensive issues, the Bobcats have been adept at finishing defensive possessions with rebounds. Quinnipiac is out-rebounding teams by more than ten per game and averages about 15 second-chance points per outing. On Saturday, they continued that, out-rebounding Bryant 51-34 with 18 offensive rebounds that turned into 21 second-chance points. (Bryant had just five second-chance points on the afternoon.)

“That’s one thing we’ve done at a high level all year,” said Moore. “I’m disappointed that our offense and defense has ebbed and flowed throughout the year, but our defensive rebounding, our box-outs and ability to swarm the offensive glass consistently has been amazing.”

Leading the way in that category is much-improved sophomore Ike Azotam, who is averaging close to a double-double on the season after averaging 5.1 points and 5.4 rebounds per game last season. Azotam was at times the best player on the floor in the first half of Saturday’s game, but wasn’t much of a factor in the second half and overtime. He’s had good help from freshman Ousmane Drame, who moved into the starting lineup after final exams last month and had 13 rebounds on Saturday.

Quinnipiac starts three guards that can all handle the ball some and give them a few options offensively. Sophomore Dave Johnson has been the primary point guard, although he’s been quite the scorer of late. Complementing James Johnson (no relation), who led the Bobcats with 23 points on Saturday, Dave Johnson had his fourth straight game with at least 15 points on Saturday as he scored 12 of his 18 points after halftime.

“Dave’s been terrific,” said Moore. “He’s got four straight games where he’s played at a really high level both offensively and defensively. He’s been flying around and not getting tired.”

Quinnipiac is now home for the next two games, before heading out on the road to begin February. They then play four of six at home to close the regular season, and there are still land mines left on the road as they still have to go to Central Connecticut and LIU. Moore said he didn’t sense the team’s confidence was flagging during the tough stretch, noting that even recently they bounced back from the losses and responded to the coaching staff really getting after them in recent practices.

The Bobcats finished a tough road swing with a much-needed win. Their hope now is that it can spur them on to more wins later after finally getting something to show for their effort on the bottom line.

• If there was any doubt as to the value of a point guard, look no further than Boston University and floor leader D.J. Irving. There are a few reasons the Terriers have now won five games in a row and is tied with Stony Brook (who they beat last Saturday) atop the America East Conference, but Irving’s return to health following a concussion last month is chief among them. That was readily apparent to one opposing coach, who thinks he’s the Terriers’ best player.

  “I think they’re at their best when the ball is in his hands and getting guys shots,” said Albany head coach Will Brown.

• Speaking of the Terriers, if they are to continue this run, they will need to improve on the glass. Albany beat them badly on the backboards Monday night, and that wasn’t an isolated event. It was so bad Monday that if there was a time of possession stat like in football games, the Great Danes would have had a big advantage. It made the Terriers’ defense in the first half that much more impressive.

  “It’s an area of major concern for me,” said head coach Joe Jones, “because I think if we’re going to continue to have success in this league, we’re going to need to defend and rebound at a high rate, much better than we did tonight in terms of the glass, especially when we go on the road.”

• Brown said that the big reason he sat Gerardo Suero, America East’s top scorer, for a lot of the second half against the Terriers was simple. He found that the group he put in was playing well, but also wanted his star to gain something else from it. Suero was just 1-10 from the field on the night for six points, and had eight turnovers.

  “He got frustrated,” said Brown. “With the combination of BU doing a really good job on him and him getting frustrated, it got to a point where he just wasn’t there today.”

• On Thursday, Lafayette used a big second half to overcome a terrible shooting first half to beat Holy Cross in a matchup of two teams that can probably be best characterized as consistently inconsistent this season. The Leopards, who shot 19.4 percent from the field in the first half before shooting 52 percent in the second, haven’t been able to put together a streak of more than two wins together. But they are 2-0 on the road in early Patriot League play and their only loss came against league favorite Bucknell. With co-captain Tony Johnson back and being in better game shape now that he has a few games under his belt, they may be ready to turn a corner.

  “I feel really good about it,” said freshman Dan Trist, one of three Leopards who scored 11 points on the night. “The seniors were telling me how hard it is to win on the road in the Patriot League. Every gym is like a fortress, pretty much.”

• On the other side, Holy Cross head coach Milan Brown was at a loss for words to describe his team’s effort. The real oddity is that the Crusaders got next to nothing from the first unit in the second half, while a new group from a wholesale substitution early on led a rally to regain the lead. Holy Cross has had times where they have played very well, but Thursday’s second half hasn’t been an isolated case although it was probably their worst half of the season.

• It hasn’t been the best stretch for North Carolina. First, they got blown out by 33 at Florida State on Saturday, then Dexter Strickland tore his ACL and is done for the season. It’s not a small loss for this team, as he’s the closest thing they have to a backup point guard.

• Every year, there is at least one key player who is academically ineligible for the second semester. The first one to make news this time around is California sophomore forward Richard Solomon, who started eight of the Golden Bears’ 13 games and led the team in rebounding. That’s a big blow to a team that figures to contend for the Pac-12 title, something which just got more difficult.

Hunter, who loved that he was able to walk to Fenway Park during the team’s trip to Boston, is full of energy and positive vibes. He’s pleasant to talk to and all along has felt good about this team, as well as the job itself. It would be easy to dismiss it as coach-speak, but he felt like a few players were ready to be better and liked the experience on the team, although it wasn’t winning experience. You can tell his confidence in the team is not misplaced by a long shot.

The Panthers didn’t start out the season the right way, as they lost three straight in the World Vision Classic in Washington. But they came back home from it and played better, and before you know it they rattled off nine straight wins to enter CAA play on a good note, and they won two more before George Mason ended the streak at 11. Now, as the Panthers are near the top of the standings even after the loss on Wednesday, Hunter sees something else to deal with.

“I took over a program that doesn’t know how to win,” said Hunter. “We’re winning right now, and we don’t know how to handle success a little. I think the easier part for me was teaching them how to win; teaching them how to maintain that is a whole other deal.”

The Panthers haven’t been able to top 12 wins in a season since joining the CAA back in 2005-06. That came after they had a good run of success in the Atlantic Sun, dating back to when it was still the Trans-America Athletic Conference. In their last eight seasons there, they had 10 or more conference wins in all but one season. It’s been different in the CAA thus far, and it doesn’t help that the Panthers joined during a stretch where the conference has had some of its best years ever.

Hunter knows he hasn’t turned this team into a perennial contender by a long shot, but this is certainly a better start than many figured. He said his players were disappointed they didn’t pull out Wednesday’s game, and more importantly, they’re all on the same page with the game plan. That’s the big reason he feels the team has become a factor right away in the conference, which is something they wanted to do. Because of both, this team should stay right in the mix. Being 5-2 instead of 2-5 makes a big difference since they won’t be playing from behind in the standings.

“I have one kid I recruited on this team, and they’ve all bought in,” Hunter said, adding that he’s been pleasantly surprised by that development. “We’re going to be a factor. Everybody’s waiting for the bottom to fall out at Georgia State. The bottom isn’t going to fall out for us. I’ll make sure that won’t happen.”

Georgia State has gotten this far in large part because of good defense. The Panthers hold opponents to just over 37 percent shooting, including less than 32 percent from long range, and force over 16 turnovers per game. They also out-rebound opponents by more than two per game, including Wednesday’s 33-24 edge over a Northeastern team that is rebounding much better than they did a year ago.

If the Panthers are to keep up their success, they will need to improve offensively to go along with keeping up the defense. While they shot over 45 percent on Wednesday night, they have struggled at that end of the floor in CAA play as most of the key offensive numbers are down since conference play began. In CAA games, they are shooting 41.5 percent from the field and less than 25 percent from long range, and they turn the ball over just under 14 times per game.

Even in looking at this aspect, Hunter’s positive feeling about this team comes through, and again you can’t help but sense that it’s not simply a coach being a coach.

“We are who we are,” Hunter said with a smile. “We’re not a great offensive team, and we’re not going to become a great offensive team by the end of the year, but that doesn’t mean we can’t win.”

So far, the Panthers have won in conference play without being a great offensive team. Being a good defensive team has shown that a team can win on nights when they don’t play well offensively. With a continuation of that and some offensive improvement, the Panthers might be better at handling success before long. That will only make Hunter an even happier person than he naturally seems to be.

Before the season, and even recently before conference play started, the question was being asked: will BC win an ACC game this year? The easy answer was “yes”, especially since the ACC is not a great conference this year. After Duke, North Carolina and Virginia, there’s a noticeable drop-off. And as the Eagles progress over the course of the season, chances are they might knock someone off at home. It’s already happened, and with two straight wins they have likely surprised just about everyone except for the people in their locker room.

There’s only so much on can take from this start. After all, the Eagles did get blown out by North Carolina in the conference opener before rattling off the next two. They won at home and against two teams ripe to be knocked off in up-and-down Clemson and a Virginia Tech team that was a bit offensively challenged even with Erick Green (who missed the game with a sprained LCL in his left knee) healthy. But the wins, following the loss at North Carolina, also show that, as head coach Steve Donahue noted, that they are getting better at responding to adversity. That’s going to be a big plus for this team.

The young Eagles have bought into the offensive system Donahue wants them to play. They are generally moving the ball well offensively, although they have been turnover-prone. But when they’ve run the offense right, it has worked well and at times they have executed it wonderfully. More importantly, they have defended better than last season’s team, with the defense carrying the team at times. That was unthinkable last season.

“It’s been a fun group to coach,” said Donahue. “Everyone comes ready to play, and they do things consistently.”

You can see the development all across the team. Dennis Clifford is getting more consistent and is proving more and more to be a nice player to run the offense through. Lonnie Jackson is clearly a better player than he was in the first few weeks and is a legitimate shooting threat. Jordan Daniels continues to get better at the point, and Gabe Moton continues to fit the reserve role there. All of the freshmen still have plenty of room to improve, but seeing improvement now gives reason to believe more is to come.

There’s no question the Eagles haven’t suddenly become a team that looks like they’ll finish in the top four and wait until Friday to play in the ACC Tournament. A lot of basketball remains to be played and this team is still very inexperienced. They still turn the ball over more than 15 times per game (they had 19 on Saturday) and are getting out-rebounded by nearly six per game (they were out-rebounded 30-28 on Saturday). Their leading scorer, Matt Humphrey, is shooting below 33 percent from the field on the year and below 30 percent from long range.

Still, this 2-1 start can only help, and with it the team may be on their way to some over-achieving. A confident team is more dangerous than one lacking confidence, especially a young team that will basically be playing with house money all season long. Come February, when BC could be in a position to play spoiler against a contending team, they could develop into a team no one wants to play.

Not only did the Terriers start winning games over a month ago, but they looked ready to win more. They seemed to have adjusted to new head coach Joe Jones more by that time, for starters. It also looked like they had found a post scorer to complement the perimeter duo of D.J. Irving and Darryl Partin, something they desperately needed.

In the three games in Rhode Island, senior Patrick Hazel came alive and looked to be as confident as ever. Long a defensive specialist, he had two near double-doubles, missing by two rebounds each time, and then closed out the weekend with one as the Terriers made a concerted effort to get the ball to him. Hazel made that move pay off that weekend, but he never built on it after that. Since that weekend, he has scored in double figures just once and has yet to reach double figures in rebounding.

On Sunday, Hazel was better and at times Dom Morris played assertively. The latter is something that hasn’t happened enough, and as talented as Morris is he is on his way to being an under-acheiver if he continues to not play aggressively to meet his potential.

“We need those guys every game, and in the six-game losing streak we had, they haven’t been there,” Irving said of the frontcourt players. “We’re trying to really get it in their heads that we need them to crash the glass and be aggressive on offense.”

It’s not as though the Terriers simply played poorly for six games. They played some tough teams in that stretch, with Quinnpiac being the one game that might stand out as a game they should win. Four of the six came on the road (Saint Joseph’s, Villanova, La Salle and Quinnipiac) and they had to play Harvard and Bucknell, both favorites in their respective leagues, at home. That stretch is unique in America East this season, as their non-conference strength of schedule is in the top 100, while every other team played a non-conference slate whose strength of schedule was north of 200.

That stretch is also likely a part of why Jones doesn’t seem overly worried about the mental state of his team.

“I think you’ve just got to try to keep things at bay in terms of not being too down, because we played some really tough teams,” said Jones. “I think we let the losses affect us, which any team would, once they started mounting up. Hopefully this gives us a little more confidence going forward.”

Not helping during the losing streak is that D.J. Irving missed three games due to a concussion he suffered against Villanova. While he was out, Partin wasn’t any better, as defenses focused in on him more. In his first game back a few days earlier, Irving wasn’t himself. But he looked much better on Sunday as he had eight assists with no turnovers an ran the offense like he hadn’t missed a minute of play. He combined with Matt Griffin for 13 assists without a turnover, and if there’s any question of his importance to the team, it comes in the form of being second on the team in scoring to go along with a 2.17 assist-to-turnover ratio.

Besides having Irving back to normal, the Terriers got a big lift off the bench from Malik Thomas. Thomas missed the first seven games of the season due to an injury suffered in preseason practice, so he was slow to get going at first because of that in addition to being a freshman. Thomas had 14 points and five rebounds in 16 minutes, but mainly he was in the game and made plays. He said he feels like he’s all the way back from the injury, and in time should help this team significantly.

“That was an unfortunate injury for him, because I thought he was playing well before he got injured,” said Jones. “He’s one of the more talented guys that we have.”

Boston University is hopeful that Sunday’s win gets them back on track. It would come at a good time since they head to Maine on Wednesday before hosting Stony Brook and Albany, all of whom came into Sunday at 2-0 in early conference games. Now would be a good time to be back where they were after the win at Boston College.

The Crimson didn’t start slowly, but Dartmouth was able to hang around and then took a seven-point lead early in the second half as they won the first four minutes coming out of the locker room. With the Big Green still up by six, Harvard went on a 16-2 run to take over the game, and offensively-challenged Dartmouth never seriously challenged them the rest of the game.

While head coach Tommy Amaker chalks some of it up to league play, where teams know each other better, one has to wonder if there is something different going on.

“Whatever league you’re in, it’s going to feel a little different,” said Amaker. “Conference play is always a bear, and our league is no different.”

It does say something about the Crimson that even while not playing well, they not only have won four of five but they have done that by comfortable margins in all but one. Only last Saturday’s win over Saint Joseph’s came by single digits (74-69). But the margins are deceptive, and say as much about the opponents as they do about Harvard. Those last five games have come against a Florida Atlantic team that isn’t what they were a year ago, a very young Boston College team, a good Saint Joseph’s team, a mediocre Fordham team and a Dartmouth team whose most talented players are freshmen.

This caught up to them against Fordham earlier in the week, a game that was on the road. The Crimson’s leader, Oliver McNally, minced no words about it at halftime of Saturday’s game and in talking after the game.

“He was being very adamant about what we needed to do and how we were going to do it, who needed to step forward,” Amaker said of McNally, who led the Crimson with 17 points and four assists, with no turnovers.

McNally understood that what was dogging the team wasn’t a talent or effort issue. It was all about the intangibles, as he sensed his teammates putting too much pressure on themselves and the play reflecting it. The Crimson had good practices leading up to Saturday’s game, but couldn’t put a complete game together although what they did was enough to win the game.

“We’re a real veteran team,” said the senior guard. “All the juniors have played a lot of minutes, the seniors have played a lot of minutes, and it’s about getting through all the dumb stuff. We were turning the ball over, giving up offensive rebounds, and really not focusing in.

“If we take care of rebounding the basketball, take care of the ball, we’re going to win a lot of games.”

Against Florida Atlantic, the Crimson had problems with turnovers at the beginning of each half. Then they cut down on turnovers in the latter part of each half, and when they did that they gained the advantage. Against Boston College, they ran into an upstart that defended them well and executed well on offense early on, before they clamped down with their trademark defense. In the Saint Joseph’s game, the offense kept them in it until they wore down the Hawks. And against Dartmouth, offensive rebounds were the issue, as the Big Green had eight in the first half (the Crimson had nine defensive boards) but none in the second half.

It’s a good sign that the Crimson have been able to fix problems within a game. But this team now has a target on their back, especially as Ivy League play will soon begin in earnest. (The Crimson have two more non-league games, at Monmouth and home against George Washington, before playing only league games.) Every team wants to beat them, and that’s not to be underestimated.

“We talk about it a lot, and it’s something that you can’t talk about enough,” said McNally. “It’s something that you can forget about. If you don’t keep that in the front of your mind, you can sleep on somebody and not give a great effort and get your butt beat, like we did at Fordham.”

One thing that is clear is that while this Harvard team is good, they aren’t perfect. They have continued to win, even when they haven’t played well, and that’s a sign of a team that can go far. But they have been living dangerously of late, and faced a bottom-line consequence once. In league play, they won’t be able to afford that very often.

The young Retrievers haven’t exactly had a memorable season thus far. They entered Monday night’s game with just one win on the season, back in December against winless Towson. Only three of their 11 losses had come by single digits. Their best holdover, Chris De La Rosa, left the team in late November. They came in surrendering almost 77 points per game and turning the ball over nearly 17 times per game. And the shooting numbers on offense were nothing to brag about, either.

But now UMBC is 1-0 in America East play and has a new lease on life for the moment. They’re tied atop the standings with the part of the season that matters, because America East will not place a team in the NCAA Tournament as an at-large this season. And if they were going to get their second win at some point this season, Monday night wasn’t the worst time in the world for that to happen.

Monday night’s game looked like it might be more of the same, as New Hampshire led almost the entire first half. The Wildcats even had a ten-point lead in the final seconds, but a late three-pointer by Chase Plummer made it a seven-point game at the half. The second half was where everything changed, and it was symbolic of what the team has done through all the adversity they’ve faced.

“I think our guys really stayed together,” head coach Randy Monroe said.

After UNH went up 43-38, UMBC took over the game with a 15-2 run. They led for much of the remainder of the game, although the Wildcats briefly regained the lead in the final minute before a big three-pointer by Brian Neller (17 points) put them ahead for good. They overcame one more in-game obstacle, as it would have been easy for this team to mentally fold after losing the lead late the way the did.

With that, the Retrievers finally had something on the bottom line to show for their efforts. Monroe said effort hasn’t been a problem, so having a game go in the left-hand column for a change can certainly help this team.

“The things we keep talking about are resolve, resilience, and every day coming in,” said the UMBC mentor. “It hasn’t been easy for our guys, but one of the things I notice and really appreciate about them is the fact that they don’t quit, they come in every day at practice. They do the things they need to do to make themselves better, to make our team better.”

Plummer has broken out this season as America East’s second-best rebounder thus far and the team’s leading scorer, continuing that on Monday with a game-high 23 points and seven rebounds. He’s a big part of the team out-rebounding opponents, which is perhaps the one statistical area in which the team has done well, with help from the wings and Jake Wasco, who had a double-double on Monday with 10 points and 10 rebounds. Wasco is the team’s only senior, so this team surely has more growing pains ahead.

Certainly, Plummer’s development comes from more minutes and having a year under his belt, but he comes from a winning program as he played at powerhouse St. Patrick’s in New Jersey. While foul trouble has at times dogged him this season, the development has been there and should continue given who is around him.

“Every day in practice, I feel like guys are getting after it,” said the sophomore forward. “They’re helping me see my flaws, and helping me get better with the things I’m good at. It’s easy when guys have confidence in you, and I believe the confidence they’ve put in me has helped me show that to the rest of the conference.”

Neller has emerged as one of the best shooters in the conference, while Ryan Cook is right there with Plummer and Neller in scoring. They were three of the five Retrievers who scored in double digits on Monday, the first time all season that has happened. Depth is not a strength of this team right now, so the Retrievers need to get a lot out of their top seven and some balance in the scoring column won’t hurt.

The Retrievers have fought through a lot of adversity thus far. The feeling on the team is that the chemistry hasn’t suffered and they have weathered a storm. Now, they’re 1-0 in conference play and tied for the lead, and all the non-conference losses don’t matter.