Some background information: The Binghamton men’s basketball team was picked to finish fifth in the America East preseason poll. Junior guard Jordan Reed — the team’s star — was named to the All-Conference team the past two seasons. Freshman forward Willie Rodriguez was tabbed as the top recruit in the conference by a few publications.
So you’d expect BU to rout Division-II and Division-III opponents, wouldn’t you?
You’d be wrong. Binghamton barely scraped ahead of D-III Oswego State, 75-74, on Friday night. The teams swapped leads 11 times. Oswego State spent most of the minutes ahead, commanding as large as a seven-point advantage.
In part, that has to do with the way the Lakers played — they buried 57.7 percent of their shots from beyond the arc. But it also concerns the new style head coach Tommy Dempsey is fully implementing this season. Against lower caliber teams in games that don’t actually matter, Dempsey can run his full-court press, stress his up-tempo game and pressure Reed to pass rather than score because now is the time for development.
But that development is not without its growing pains.
“We’re still trying to find ourselves,” Dempsey said. “We’re trying to find combinations. We’re still struggling with the new style. But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to be a great pressing team. That just means that we need time to become a good pressing team. And in the meantime, there’s going to be some learning curve.”
Oswego State didn’t make that learning curve any easier. The Lakers nailed 15 of 26 from beyond the arc. While Binghamton was working on keeping them from shooting in the paint, they would kick out and watch their shots sink. And Binghamton took a while to adapt.
“We’re so focused on our help defense,” Dempsey said. “That’s been the way we focused every practice — in protecting the paint. But then as the game is going on and the team’s making that many threes, now you have to adjust.”
Part of the adjustment came in subbing out their big men, sophomore Nick Madray and freshman Dusan Perovic. The two 6-foot-9 forwards struggled to match up with the smaller guards Oswego State fielded, and that opened up room for threes.
Another change was in giving the ball to Reed, who had been looking to contribute in other ways than scoring in the first thirty minutes. Though he shot well — ending the match with 13 points on 6-of-8 shooting from the field — he initially took a background role to teammates like Rodriguez, sophomore guard Yosef Yacob, sophomore forward Magnus Richards and freshman guard Romello Walker.
Rodriguez led the team in scoring with 14 points, but made his largest impact in clutch moments like he did against Mansfield last week. With three minutes to go, he added five points to pull away from Oswego State, 73-71.
For his part, Walker led the team with 10 rebounds and added seven points. Yacob shot 3 for 6 from the field to produce eight points. Richards converted all of his shots for eight points while also dishing out two assists and recording a block.
While the narrow victory may seem disappointing, Binghamton is laying its groundwork for when it’s needed in January and February. And with the Hall of Fame Tipoff coming up next weekend, with Binghamton set to take on Notre Dame on Nov. 17, the Bearcats can really test their progress.
“We’re going to go and we’re going to press,” Dempsey said. “And we’re only going to get better at it by doing it. Are we ready to go and press right now for forty minutes? No, but we’re going to try until we get better at it.”
“I feel like we have enough talent,” Reed said. “We have what it takes. We just have to practice a little bit harder and I feel like things are going to fall into place. We still have a good chance to be a good team.”