What transpired in the final six minutes of BU’s shocking 52-51 loss to Albany left head coach Al Walker stunned.

“I don’t know what happened,” Walker said. “If I could figure it out we would’ve stopped it.”

Here is what happened: after obtaining a 13-point lead on the Great Danes, the Bearcats lost focus and assumed they were on their way to a seventh-straight win. Their defense, which allowed 38 points in the game’s first 37 minutes, allowed 15 points down the stretch.

After forcing guard Jamar Wilson to miss his first 10 shots, the Bearcats allowed Albany’s leading scorer to drive at will at the end of regulation. On the other end, senior forward Andre Heard missed a potential game-winning three that would’ve made the Events Center sound like Madison Square Garden.

Heard is not to blame for Binghamton’s crushing loss, though.

Missed shots and costly turnovers occur when players simply don’t execute properly. But when a team loses focus with sole possession of first place up for grabs, it means its coach lost focus as well.

Albany head coach Will Brown — one of the brightest minds in the America East — admitted to being surprised when Walker didn’t go small on his Great Danes’ final possession. The decision forced 6-foot-6, 220-pound forward, Sebastian Hermenier to defend the quicker 6-4, 190-pound, guard Jason Siggers. And we all know what happened from there.

“Coach said if I had a big man on me, I could take him to the [basket],” Siggers said. “I just saw the mismatch and took the angle.”

Coach Brown couldn’t have been any more right. Siggers drained the baseline jumper to complete Albany’s season sweep of the Bearcats.

Afterwards, Walker stood by his decision, saying he was 100 percent comfortable with depending on Hermenier’s perimeter defense. No one knows what would have happened if guard Steve Proctor or forward Duane James was defending Siggers.

What we do know is that the game shouldn’t have come down to that pivotal play. With a season-high crowd of 4,743 in attendance, Binghamton missed a great opportunity to take a 1 1/2-game lead in the wide-open America East Conference.

But six minutes signaled the start of Binghamton’s demise as the Bearcats began to get outplayed and more evidently, outcoached.