Three weeks later, the Retrievers are nowhere near the top of the conference, and look like a team that is going nowhere fast. Tuesday night’s 83-48 thrashing at Boston University might be as illustrative as anything of where this team is and how far they have fallen from their conference championship days of a few years earlier.

It’s one thing to lose games. It’s another to lose the way this team has. The Retrievers have lost 17 games on the season, 14 by double digits. Every America East loss has been by double digits, with the closest ones being a pair of 17-point losses. They lost by 38 at Rutgers and 40 at home against Stony Brook earlier this season. In conference play, they are being outscored by 18 points per game.

Simply put, UMBC looked out of their league on Tuesday night. You can chalk some of it up to something we see a few times every season: one team plays very well in the same game that the other team plays very poorly. If it were an isolated event, perhaps a lot of the result could be chalked up to that. But Tuesday night’s event is hardly an isolated case, and while it’s true that Boston University is the hottest team in America East, that hardly guaranteed a humbling like what the Retrievers were given at Case Gym.

It’s hard not to think the bottom isn’t falling out on the program. Lots of programs, even the powerhouses, have had down years and stretches where they weren’t very good. Brighter days are surely ahead for the Retrievers, if only because things don’t look like they can get much worse, at least as far as the bottom line goes. Certainly, the hope is that they are hitting rock bottom now, if they haven’t already.

Sure, the Retrievers are young, having become younger as a result of a defection early on from one of the two seniors they had on the team. But that alone can’t explain it, especially since it’s not like Boston University is a team of only juniors and seniors.

“I hate using the word ‘young’, but I think that’s how we play, and it shows at times,” said head coach Randy Monroe.

You have to look far to find bright spots on this team, aside possibly from Chase Plummer’s emergence this season. The Retrievers are allowing America East opponents to shoot nearly 52 percent from the field, including over 40 percent from long range. They are allowing 81 points per game in conference play. Their offensive numbers are better in conference play, but most are not up by much. On the season, they have been close to even on the glass, but on Tuesday Boston University had a 45-28 edge in that department.

Monroe is a fiery, competitive coach who demands effort from his players. He speaks of often about opportunities, including the one his team had to pull off a good win on Tuesday. He’s a caring man who wants his players to be good students and productive citizens as well when their basketball playing days are over. The unfortunate thing is that his team doesn’t always take on his passion in how they play, and the bottom line is reflecting that right now.

UMBC looked like they might have been ready to improve on their non-conference showing at first. But the games ever since then, capped by Tuesday night’s thumping in Boston, give the appearance that they still have a long way to go.

• 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.

Let’s start with Florida State, which annihilated North Carolina 90-57 in Tallahassee. The Seminoles had a so-so non-conference run, as they came into Saturday lacking a win against the top 50 in three tries. Beating the Tar Heels is a remedy for that, although they need to make it relevant come March by playing well the rest of ACC play.

Next, we go to Northwestern, a team for whom heartbreak has become a regular occurrence. The Wildcats have had chances to play their way into the NCAA Tournament for the first time in recent years, but haven’t been able to pull out the games they needed to. It looked like this year might be another case of that, too, although they did win the Charleston Classic over Seton Hall, a win that is looking better all the time. They won at mediocre Georgia Tech and lost to Baylor, which is hardly a bad loss. But then they lost at Creighton, got hammered at Ohio State and lost tough ones to Illinois and Michigan by a combined three points. And on Saturday, they knocked off Michigan State in Evanston for their best win of the season. Add that to the Seton Hall win and the Wildcats, who don’t have a bad loss and an RPI of 33 at the start of the week, are in a good place for the moment.

Then there is Oklahoma, a team thought to be rebuilding. But the Sooners knocked off Kansas State 82-73 for their second win against a top 50 team. The Sooners are now 1-3 in Big 12 play, so they have a good deal of work to do. But if they get to .500 in conference and win a game or two in the conference tournament, they may have done enough work by then to be in the discussion for an NCAA Tournament team.  It helps that they don’t have a bad loss.

Lastly, San Diego State knocked off UNLV in a thriller, 69-67. The Aztecs were actually in a reasonably good place before Saturday, but perhaps now they can be called an NCAA Tournament lock if they win the games they should the rest of the way. The Mountain West figured to be rebuilding this season, but that hasn’t been the case thus far as both of these teams look like they will be in the field of 68.

We go coast to coast with news from around the college basketball nation.

Pittsburgh lost at Marquette, 62-57, and is now 0-5 in the Big East for the second time in program history and first in 12 years. They have never started 0-6, but they play at Syracuse on Monday.

Connecticut freshman Ryan Boatright was suspended by the NCAA and did not play in the Huskies’ 67-53 win at Notre Dame. The NCAA is investigating more eligibility matters with the freshman guard.

Iowa handily took out Michigan 75-59, and continues to be something of a Jekyll and Hyde team.

Jarnell Stokes gave Tennessee a boost in his debut, but Kentucky prevailed in Knoxville 65-62. The thinking is that although it was a loss, Saturday’s game bodes well for the Volunteers.

The Ivy League has started the season a little differently this time around, and Penn has started off 2-0 with wins at Columbia and Cornell. Normally teams play their travel partners over two weeks, save for Penn and Princeton, before the Friday-Saturday weekends start.

No America East team will go undefeated in conference play this season, as Stony Brook had its six-game winning streak end at Boston University, who has won three in a row after losing six straight.

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.

Macon found one positive to take from Sunday’s loss: his team had ten assists and just eight turnovers. It’s a small start, but the Bearcats have a long way to go from that.

“I just know we’re getting better because we’re not turning the ball over,” said Macon.

While Macon said there are things the Bearcats do well, it looks as though one has to search hard to find them. Taking care of the ball is just one issue this team has, as they entered Sunday’s game giving the ball away 15.6 times per game on average. They shoot below 37 percent from the field and allow opponents to shoot nearly 50 percent. They came in getting out-rebounded by 3.5 per game, a trend which continued on Sunday as Boston University out-rebounded the Bearcats 36-28. And in light of these numbers, it’s probably not shocking to know that Binghamton hasn’t been on the verge of victory often: they have lost just three games by single digits.

So it’s fair to say that this young team has a lot of areas where they need to improve. Not getting wins to show for their efforts doesn’t help since it can mean a hit to the confidence.

“When you go through a spell like this, you kind of feel down,” said Macon. “You might be broken, but I’m not going to let that happen.”

The Bearcats aren’t lacking talent, with the backcourt looking like it has some promise. The frontcourt is okay as far as size goes, but could benefit from some depth developing. Freshman Ben Dickinson looks promising and has put up nice numbers, but also looked gassed on Sunday from the minutes he’s played. Players like Omar Richards, Alex Ogundadegebe, Taylor Johnston and Javon Ralling could stand to give this team more, as could a couple of the reserves. All four were non-factors on Sunday.

In the backcourt, the Bearcats appear to have found their point guard in junior Jimmy Gray, one of the most experienced players on the team. Gray is the only regular with more assists than turnovers and has done a decent job of running the team. Robert Mansell, who had 21 points on 7-11 shooting in the loss at Boston University, is a good shooter, which is not surprising considering his brother Harris was known for his shooting at Rider recently. Chris Longoria has settled into a starting role and shown promise through ups and downs.

It’s not a bad group, but it could get better, and that’s what Macon is stressing. He also wants to see some depth emerge there so he doesn’t have to burn those three out in order to compete in games.

“I think the other guys around them have to develop as well – not the guys that are on the floor, the guys that are on the bench, so when I have to bring these guys out, they can come in and keep the ship afloat,” said Macon.

The schedule doesn’t get any easier for Binghamton, as Sunday’s game was the beginning of a stretch where they play six of eight on the road. They next go to Vermont, then end the stretch playing at Albany, Maine and Stony Brook, all of whom entered Sunday at 2-0 in conference play and should have a shot to contend for the title.

The Bearcats now are a far cry from the team that was on the rise and went to the NCAA Tournament several years ago. The fallout from the end of the Kevin Broadus era has come and gone, although the Bearcats are in another cycle of youth at the moment. Macon is hopeful that his current group will continue to improve and start turning the effort into wins. One of the first steps is gaining experience.

“The inexperience shows at times, and that’s what we’re working on,” said Macon.

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.

The lowlight of that day was in the final 12 minutes of the first half. After the Seawolves went up 11-6, they went the final 11:50 of the half without scoring as Boston College scored 22 unanswered points. While the second half was more of a normal frame, the Seawolves dug themselves too deep a hole to get out of.

“We had no one that could make a basket for us,” said head coach Steve Pikiell. “We subbed a lot of guys in, but no one gave us a spark off the bench.”

During Pikiell’s tenure, the Seawolves have generally been very good defensively but had some offensive struggles, the kind that Sunday’s game might remind you of. This season’s team has been different early on, as they came into the Boston College game averaging 66 points a night, although they were shooting just 39 percent from the field and 30 percent from long range.

The scoring is balanced, with Bryan Dougher leading the way at 12.9 per game and four players averaging between 6.9 and 8.7 per game. But Dougher and Leonard Hayes, the latter of whom has struggled out of the gates, are the only ones who even remotely look the part of snipers from long range. Pikiell is confident that Hayes will get going before long, and they hope someone else can emerge as a reliable second scorer.

“I don’t think that’s who we are, I think we’re much better than that, and you saw in the second half we scored 40 points,” said Pikiell. “We need one of those guys – Lenny, Dougher – to produce points for us.”

Stony Brook has forward Tommy Brenton back after he missed last season due to a dislocated knee. The conference’s leading rebounder two seasons ago is still shaking off some rust, and hasn’t regained the level of athleticism he was at before the injury. With a lot of time to practice in this stretch and work on conditioning, Pikiell thinks Brenton might benefit as much as anyone and start to look more like himself. He knows his team needs Brenton, including a little more offense from him although he’s never been a big scorer.

“He’s got to be more aggressive to score,” said Pikiell. “He’s still not back, he doesn’t have that same pop that he used to have in his legs before he got injured, so he’s slowly coming back into his own. He’s not where he needs to be, no doubt about that.”

Stony Brook is now off until December 28. They finish non-conference play with home games against Cornell and Rider, then open America East play with a visit from Vermont to cap a three-game homestand. The stretch with a lot of practice, followed by three straight at home, gives this team a chance to gain some momentum. Pikiell maintains that winning a road game will be paramount, and that’s something they haven’t been able to do yet. They will have to wait until conference play for that. Soon, we’ll see if the time off did a world of good for them to lead into conference play.

“We never win games decisively like that,” said senior guard Alvin Abreu. “It feels good to get a win like that.”

In the second half, the Wildcats ran often. They ran on misses, they ran on turnovers, and then they consistently broke Marist’s press and turned it into 2-on-1 or 3-on-1 breaks for easy baskets. Before you knew it, the lead was in double digits and Marist had called two timeouts in short order.

Then it was the steady play of veterans like Chandler Rhoads and Abreu that carried the Wildcats home. Rhoads was in the middle of the action most of the game and filled the stat sheet, while Abreu had a very good game without settling for three-point shots for a lot of his offense. Abreu had a game-high 18 points with just one attempt from behind the arc. What might have epitomized the second half was a quick three-pointer off an inbounds pass by Marist’s Devin Price, which Rhoads rebounded after it was no good and quickly got ahead to Abreu for an easy layup. That put them up 66-41 at the time.

The game didn’t start out so well, as Marist went up 12-2 in the early going. The Wildcats then got a boost from the bench, as Ferg Myrick and Garrett Jones led the charge back into the game. Myrick made two plays right in a row for baskets, one of which was a hustle play, while Jones had a couple of assists and brought a lot of energy off the bench.

The Wildcats really got the job done at the defensive end, as they often have of late. They held Marist below 33 percent from the field and forced 16 turnovers. Proof of how they ran the Red Foxes off the floor was a 16-0 edge in fast break points. Offensively, they made over 46 percent of their shots, and less than a quarter of the attempts were from behind the arc, also a big plus as they have tended to settle for three-pointers instead of take such shots in flow.

One reason this year’s UNH team has the potential it does is that they have more weapons at the offensive end than they have had in Bill Herrion’s tenure as head coach. That’s also the reason why how they have run the offense has been the biggest variable with this team’s play thus far. Herrion is happy with the defense, but offensively they have had a tendency to not show much discipline and settle for jumpers. This team has enough athleticism that they shouldn’t have to do that, and the coaching staff is emphasizing getting points from the defense.

“That’s how we’ve got to play,” said Herrion. “We don’t have a legitimate five man inside that we can throw it in and score.”

The Wildcats do have Brian Benson inside, but he’s mainly a rebounder and has never been a big scoring threat inside. He had 14 rebounds on Saturday to help lead the defensive effort, and averages 10 per game on the season but less than nine points per game. Chris Matagrano isn’t a big post scoring threat, although he has improved to at least be a serviceable backup.

But on the whole, Herrion’s point is that this team is a new look in terms of what they have for offensive talent. And it’s a big reason why this team might have a chance to break through this season.

“I think the problem that we’ve had is that our offense has never been as good as our defense,” Herrion reflected.

Another bright spot on Saturday was that the good outing from Myrick. There’s no doubting the talent the junior wing has, but he has struggled for a lot of this season and his tendency to be a black hole on offense doesn’t help. But if he plays like he did on Saturday, there’s no question this is a better team and they would have one more scoring threat at the offensive end.

“He’s still not in great shape,” said Herrion, noting that Myrick hasn’t made it all the way back from the season-ending knee injury he suffered last year. “His wind and his conditioning has to get better.”

Offense will likely continue to be what will make or break this team. The Wildcats have an improved point guard in Jordon Bronner, a solid combo in Rhoads, the seasoned veteran in Alvin Abreu and a versatile forward in Patrick Konan who is shaking off the rust more all the time. Benson isn’t lacking offensive ability despite never being a big scorer, and perhaps they don’t need more than a few points a game out of him.

“I think the challenge that we’re going to have is, can we continue to score?” said Herrion. “That’s been our Achilles heel, consistent offense, putting enough points on the board. That’s why we’re really trying to emphasize getting it off of our defense.”

New Hampshire heads to Providence on Tuesday night to play a Friars team that has had a good start to the season. Given what the two teams have shown thus far, it might be quite a defensive battle. If the Wildcats can somehow pull it out, it might spring them forward in a big way not only because it’s a Big East team, but also because it would mean consecutive victories for the first time this season.

“The challenge that we’ve been handing to our guys is, can we go on the road now and win a game?” said head coach Bill Herrion.

The potential for this team isn’t hard to see. There’s talent on the perimeter with Jordon Bronner, Chandler Rhoads and Alvin Abreu, and Liberty transfer Patrick Konan has talent. Ferg Myrick has become something of a forgotten man, but he’s not lacking talent although he doesn’t have the best feel for the game. Up front, there’s steady senior Brian Benson, who led America East in rebounding last season. But they’re all flawed just like the team as a whole, and some of those flaws have been obvious thus far this season.

“I really like our team a lot,” Herrion said. “I think the ceiling for this team is really high.”

Bronner has more confidence and really competes, but also still has to learn the game and appears to have just one speed. He was one of the keys on Wednesday night, as he had six assists with no turnovers. A year ago, it was clear he has the physical gifts for the point guard spot but also had a good ways to go to be what he could. Now he’s progressed, and while there’s still a good deal of room for improvement, it’s easier to look at that as upside for him.

“He’s taken big steps,” Rhoads said of Bronner. “He really controls the game. His defense is what sets the tone for our team, pressuring the other team’s point guard and getting us into a flow. He’s playing really well, and he’s one of the keys to our team.”

Rhoads looks improved but has more turnovers than assists in the early going. Abreu too often settles for jumpers and hasn’t approached the 36 percent he shot from behind the arc as a freshman. Konan still has some rust to shake off after sitting out last year as a transfer, but gives them the option of going big with him at small forward or going small with him at power forward. And while Benson can rebound, he’s never been a big scoring threat.

Rhoads looks like one of the big keys. He’s a primary ball-handler and has improved as a shooter over time. On Wednesday, he did a lot of things to help the team, especially late as he grabbed key rebounds and got big baskets and free throws.

“I know all the time he’s going to figure out something,” Konan said of Rhoads. “He made big plays, and that’s what big players do.”

The Wildcats would like to get Benson going inside at the offensive end. He leads America East in rebounding by a wide margin and is helping them put up the second-best margin in the conference. Chris Matagrano has improved enough to be more than serviceable off the bench, so the Wildcats’ frontcourt is in reasonably good shape.

The Wildcats haven’t shown a lot of patience on a consistent basis. All too often, they would settle for jumpers after just a couple of passes and with a defender somewhere in the area. That was clear on Wednesday night, when they were aggressive in trying to go to the basket and moved the ball around at first. After that, a few jumpers went in. It was a far cry from their prior game a few nights earlier at Holy Cross, where Herrion felt they shot too many three-pointers and too often shot them early in the possession without moving the ball.

The physical effort hasn’t been in question, but the team hasn’t quite figured out the other aspects of the game. Herrion spoke of the team not playing 40 minutes, and in particular the start of the second half has been a trouble spot for them. On Wednesday night, they didn’t have a great start, but it was better than it has been and didn’t put them in a hole, so that was a step forward.

New Hampshire got the road win they were looking for on Wednesday night. Their hope is that it will boost them for more of the same later, and to keep moving toward the potential they have.

The Terriers didn’t exactly start out the weekend on a good note. They lost a heart-breaker to Cleveland State on Friday afternoon, a game that was more than just there for the taking. But they bounced back to take out the host team on Saturday and then pull out a 68-61 decision over Hofstra, and that’s the biggest thing they will take out of this weekend.

“We knew it was a heart-breaker,” said senior forward Patrick Hazel. “We didn’t want to turn one heart-breaker into more.”

The Terriers have had to battle back seemingly all season long. In the season opener against arch-rival Northeastern, they rallied from an 11-point deficit to force overtime before falling to the Huskies. They had to battle back in the next game at Cornell to make it a ballgame before losing. And they entered this weekend winless on the season, which was tough enough, but they opened with Friday’s loss that could have devastated them. Not only would that have been their first win, but it would have come against a Cleveland State team that could be in the discussion for an NCAA Tournament at-large bid down the road given their good start.

Jones knew the Terriers would get going once the team and coaching staff had established more familiarity with each other. One thing he saw from his team was that Hazel could be an inside threat offensively, something this team could use since perimeter scoring isn’t a concern thanks to Darryl Partin and D.J. Irving. Since then, there has been a real effort to establish him as an inside threat, and it’s starting to pay some dividends.

Hazel has always been a defensive specialist. He began his career at Marquette, where he was surrounded by Dominic James, Wesley Matthews and Jerel McNeal, so there wasn’t a big need for him or any other frontcourt player to be a big scorer. Last year, his first at BU after transferring, he was decidedly not much of an offensive option with players like John Holland, Jake O’Brien (until late December) and Darryl Partin among his teammates.

This season, though, the Terriers need an inside scorer to complement Partin and D.J. Irving on the perimeter. While sophomore Dom Morris has plenty of talent, he’s not a true post player. Hazel fits the bill, however, and he had a big weekend as he got the ball often. He scored a career-high 15 points on Friday, added 14 points and eight rebounds in Saturday’s win over Rhode Island, then posted his first career double-double on Sunday with 11 points and 10 rebounds. That went with his usual work defensively as he blocked 10 shots in the three games.

“We’re trying to get (Pat) and Dom going,” Jones said. “Those are two guys we’ve got to get going inside. We’d really like to have four guys in double figures.”

“His confidence is high right now, so we’ve got to keep feeding him so we can get baskets,” Irving said of Hazel.

Morris has the tools to score inside and out, in addition to being more athletic than he looks with his big body. Last year, he was often deferential to the veterans, but now he’s one of the veterans on a younger team, especially with O’Brien redshirting this season. With the scoring prowess of their perimeter players, one gets the idea that if Morris ever got the confidence to be the player he can be, they might be unstoppable.

“He establishes his presence in practice,” Hazel said of Morris. “We’re just waiting for that one big game from him, and once he gets it, he’s going to hit the ground running.”

The Terriers have started the season coming from behind, and they’re getting better at it as they have now broken through to win games. No team wants to come from behind all the time, but that’s been the fate of this team thus far. If the Terriers keep this up and then start better, the first few weeks may turn out to be a microcosm of the season.