Men's Basketball | Tufts 0-4 in conference play after home weekend sweep

     Things just keep getting worse for the men's basketball team.
    A week after dropping its first two NESCAC games at Williams and Middlebury, Tufts came home to Medford to take on a pair of lesser conference foes in Colby and Bowdoin. While the scores were closer than they were a week before, the results remained the same, as the Jumbos fell to both the Mules on Friday and the Polar Bears on Saturday. The losses bring Tufts' losing streak to five games and drop its record to 7-10 overall (0-4 NESCAC). The Jumbos join Conn. College as the only two teams in the league that have yet to tally a conference
victory.
    "It's very disappointing — I would say even more disappointing than the weekend before because we were in these games," junior Dave Beyel said. "The first game, I guess we started off in a pretty deep hole, but we started playing better as a team and knew what we had to do. It was pretty rough being able to play like we know we can for a while, then having things not work out as they did."
    Tufts' better chance for a victory came in its 89-81 loss against Bowdoin. After jumping out to a 26-18 lead, the Jumbos loosened their grip on the early lead, and the teams went into halftime with the score knotted at 44. Tufts went up 54-50 with 16:07 on the clock, but three consecutive three-pointers from Bowdoin freshman Ryan O'Connell gave the Bears a lead they would not relinquish. Tufts would come as close as 82-79 with 1:48 left to play, but Bowdoin went 7-for-8 on critical free throws down the stretch to secure the win.
    Five Polar Bears scored in double digits, led by 17 from senior Kyle Jackson, while only two Jumbos broke that threshold. Junior co-captain Jon Pierce scored a game-high 36 points — his highest total since Dec. 4, when he netted 37 in a victory over Plymouth State — on 13-of-25 shooting, while classmate Dave Beyel contributed 12 of his own by making four three-pointers. Freshman Amauris Quezada also had a solid day, posting eight assists against only one turnover.
    Overall, the team numbers for Tufts and Bowdoin were very similar, as the two teams shot 46.2 and 48.1 percent from the floor while turning it over 13 and 14 times, respectively. However, the Bears' dominance on the boards provided the difference, as they out-rebounded the Jumbos 42-32, including snatching 14 on the offensive end.
    "When you get beat on the boards by 10, that's pretty significant, so that hurt us," Pierce said. "We weren't getting a lot of second shots. The defense was a problem as well. There was a stretch when they hit three straight threes with [about 13 minutes] left. That's a momentum-swinger. You're going to lose the basketball game if you can't stay focused for an entire 40 minutes. We didn't have that focus down the stretch yesterday."
    "We came out and played pretty well, but we didn't play defense like we needed to," Beyel said. "The rebounds hurt us a little bit, but we didn't communicate well on defense. We let guards beat us on the dribble; we weren't playing as smart as we should've been."
    Friday's matchup with Colby was not quite as close. Although the Jumbos only lost by a score of 85-75, the game was never in doubt, as the Mules raced out to a 23-9 lead and took a commanding 50-31 advantage at halftime. Down 67-47 with 11:03 to go, the Jumbos started to chip away at the deficit, going on a 9-3 run to bring it within 14, but that was as close as they would come until the final minute.
    Colby junior tri-captain Adam Choice topped the game with 25 points, while four Jumbos — led by Beyel with 17 — scored in double figures, with Pierce and junior Tom Selby each registering double-doubles. Again, the shooting numbers were similar — 45.3 percent for Tufts and 49.3 percent for Colby — but Tufts turned the ball over 19 times, including 11 on steals, against only 10 turnovers for the Mules.
    "We came out even for the first five minutes, and then it looked like we were lost out there," Pierce said. "They went on a big run, and just like that we're down 20 going into halftime. Any time you turn the ball over, it just compounds the issue. We feel like we have a good offensive team, but clearly, when you take the ball away from us, you create a serious problem with the way our defense has played the past couple games."
    The Jumbos will now take on 9-8 Clark University on Wednesday in non-conference action before getting a shot at redemption on the road against conference cellar-dwellers Wesleyan (1-3 NESCAC) and Conn. College this upcoming weekend.
    "We have to prove to ourselves that we're a mentally competent team, and I know for certain we haven't played like that to this point," Pierce said. "I don't want to start talking about next year, but we're going have essentially the same basketball team. The six juniors playing now, it'll be our team. We have to start building on something positive. We're fighting for a playoff spot; to miss the playoffs two years in a row would be extremely disappointing to me as a captain, a leader and a member of this team.
    "All the guys went through last year's 1-8 NESCAC year, and I don't think anyone wants to go through that again," Pierce continued. "We have to come out and make a statement that we're not going to lay down — it's really a turning point in our season."