WORCESTER, Mass. – There’s no way to put a pretty face on it, no positive way to spin it. Holy Cross is in a bad state at the moment, with their 0-8 mark the worst start in program history. It was one thing to lose the first game or two, and perhaps even another couple of games, but things are at a different point now.
“It is frustrating. You can’t ignore zero wins,” senior point guard Andrew Beinert said. “We want to win, and that’s what our goal is.”
Holy Cross hasn’t been out-classed all season. The Crusaders have been in position to win games, although only a couple of them might qualify as heart-breaking losses. While last season’s team struggled to stop opposing teams, they were able to score. This season’s team has struggled offensively while also struggling on the defensive end often, although if there is a silver lining it appears that they are making strides there of late. Most of all, they have been their own worst enemy.
This has all happened against a difficult schedule. It has included several teams projected to contend for their conference title, and only three have been played at home. They have played by far the toughest schedule of anyone in the Patriot League, so they aren’t exactly playing a bunch of high school teams, and that isn’t lost on first-year coach Milan Brown’s opposite number in their most recent game.
“That’s not an 0-8 team. That schedule they’ve played is brutal, brutal, brutal,” said Fairfield head coach Ed Cooley. “I don’t think it’s fair to a young team. That’s not who they are right now with their program. To put Milan in that situation, I just think it’s very, very tough to ask a first-year coach to play that level of schedule, most of which has been on the road, then come to play a seasoned team at home. It’s just very, very difficult.”
Coaches are never ones to speak of moral victories of any sort, so as one might imagine the tough schedule is little consolation for Brown.
“I don’t want to use that as an excuse,” Brown said. “It just means that the mistakes that we’re making, we really can’t afford to make them because the teams that we’re playing are too good and will capitalize on them.”
That message has been heard by his players, as Beinert added: “You can’t ignore that we are playing a good schedule, but it’s really about us. We have to put together 40 minutes”
Effort hasn’t been an issue, and of late it’s been noticeable. On Sunday, the Crusaders were very active at the defensive end and let Fairfield get nothing easy in the first half. They held the Stags below 38 percent shooting and went into the locker room tied at 29. It was similar to Tuesday night’s tough loss to Stony Brook, when they were clearly better in the first half and led at the break.
But Holy Cross averages more than 16 turnovers a game, and in the second half the Crusaders committed 10 of them. Worse, most of them were of the costly variety, ones Fairfield took to the other end for easy baskets, and a couple of times they did that off a missed shot. Take away those baskets, and Fairfield’s nearly 54 percent shooting in the second half probably drops a good amount.
“Because of their speed and athleticism, they turned turnovers and missed open looks from us into layups on the other end,” said Brown. “We couldn’t make them take the ball out of the basket so we could set up our defense. We were always in transition defense, it seemed, for the first 12 minutes of the second half. We were always in transition defense because the ball didn’t fall in the basket for us. Nobody’s transition defense is good enough to hold up for 12 minutes.”
Brown changed the starting lineup against Fairfield, and the results were a mixed bag. He started Devin Brown, the team’s top scorer and a player who has thrived coming off the bench in his career. Instead of providing scorer from the outset, the junior guard struggled, scoring a season-low eight points on 2-10 shooting. Even before this game, his numbers were deceiving; while he has scored in double figures in all but two games, in many of those games you could hardly notice him out there. He was consistently scoring a “quiet” double-digit total.
Part of why Brown changed the lineup and may do so again is that no area of the team has been without its issues, and all players have had a hand. The end result is what was seen on Sunday as well as other games, where they pressed at times on defense.
“We have to find guys that are going to be consistent in making the plays, so we know who we can almost pencil in for what we’re going to get,” Brown said. “I think that’s the tough part right now, we don’t know who we can pencil in and what we’re going to get from them.”
Both coach and players agree that all they can do is go back to work. They do that again on Sunday at Marist and three days later at Hofstra before Christmas. The losses have been difficult, but as one might expect, they haven’t shaken the coach’s faith in the team.
“We have to make some more plays in order for us to get what we ultimately are competing for, which is wins,” Brown said. “Do I believe that it will happen? Yes, absolutely. I don’t know when it’s going to happen.”
