BOSTON – An important item on the agenda every game for Northeastern is to get Jordan Roland going. While it’s arguably more important to get others going so as to support the senior guard and make his life easier, before Thursday night the star who carried the Huskies early on was having a tough go of it. Perhaps his big second half, though it came in what was ultimately a tough loss, is just what he needs to get going again.
Roland scored 28 points on 9-17 shooting, including 8-11 from deep, but the Huskies dropped a second straight game right before the buzzer as Hofstra left town with a 74-72 win. He scored 25 of those points on 8-12 shooting after intermission, when the Huskies were much better at both ends of the floor. It all started with a personal 8-0 run that cut the deficit in half within the first three minutes of the second half.
“I think in the second half, I got some open ones early and got to see the ball go in,” said the senior guard.
Roland started the season like a house on fire, and at times early on was the nation’s leading scorer. He scored 39 points in the opener at Boston University, then 42 against Harvard, a program record for a single game, and in those two games he shot nearly 60 percent from the field and 50 percent from deep. He scored at least 25 points on three other occasions in non-conference, but other than a 33-point night against James Madison in the second CAA game, he had not topped 20 points in the past month until Thursday night.
The struggles look even more acute when you look at non-conference vs. conference, which also highlights how conference play is always different. Roland’s numbers are down significantly in CAA play to the point where Tyson Walker was actually their leading scorer in those games before Thursday, and Roland entered the night shooting just 7-23 from long range in CAA play and 41.5 percent overall.
Only six Huskies scored on Thursday night, and if that continues to happen, the Huskies will probably be overly reliant on Roland. But this team has enough capable scorers – Walker has quickly become one, while Bolden Brace, Shaquille Walters and Maxime Boursiquot are among those capable of doing that as well. Tomas Murphy has only played in four games due to injury, and normally he would be one more offensive threat, especially inside, but it’s not like the Huskies don’t have options. Nine different Huskies have scored in double figures at least once this season.
“There are other guys that can contribute,” said head coach Bill Coen. “I think the first couple of games, we had a freshman point guard who hadn’t been out there, we had other guys who had sat out a year and had to get back into the groove of things, and we needed 40-point games from Jordan to win those games. That’s not the case right now.”
The Huskies don’t have a lot of margin, so turnovers can hurt – and they did on Thursday night. In the first half, Northeastern gave the ball away 11 times, and Hofstra turned that into 12 points. The bigger hit was the loss of possessions, as Hofstra built a 40-24 lead.
One other danger for the Huskies if they ever get too reliant on Roland is that he’s such a competitor, you worry that he could put too much pressure on himself. Perhaps he pressed a bit during the past month, although more likely there were growing pains for him and the team adjusting to how teams were defending him.
“You have to be able to play through that mentally, where you might not get a free look,” said Coen. “You might have to generate some offense by getting yourself to the foul line, you might have to drive the ball and get contact, you might have to give yourself up and let the ball come back to you. It’s a feeling-out process for Jordan. He wasn’t in that role last year, he wasn’t in that role in the first couple of games of the season, now he’s in that role where defenses and scouting reports are going to be geared towards him. I think he’s doing a much better job of that, he’s just got to figure out his sweet spot. We don’t need him to go out and get 40, but he can’t come out and play a whole game and get seven and for us to expect to win.”
The Huskies are at first glance in a tough spot in the CAA with two early home losses, but this team can grow to be better and win on the road. In both losses, they didn’t start well and fell behind, but seemed to adjust to the opponent a little late – too late, really. They seemed to finally catch on to what William & Mary was doing later in the second half, which helped them rally before losing in the final seconds. They didn’t compete much in the first half against Hofstra, but they started doing so in the second half and rallied to eventually take the lead.
The next game is an important road game, so it will be a good test of how this team can rebound and then win a game or two on the road. They know more about what they have to do to win games like the last two, and now they have their big scorer going again. They know they have other options so they don’t have to rely on him to have a big night. They will bring that knowledge south to College of Charleston and UNCW to start on the journey to rallying in the standings.
