Coming into Saturday's matchup with Amherst, the men's basketball team had an opportunity to win the regular-season title and earn home court advantage throughout the NESCAC tournament.
But the Jumbos surrendered any chance at this advantage through sloppy play, committing 21 turnovers, including 13 in the first half. The Lord Jeffs routed the Jumbos, 99-70, en route to their third-straight regular season conference championship, denying Tufts the title for the second year in a row.
Amherst pounced all over the Jumbos' mistakes, stealing the ball 13 times and scoring 32 points off turnovers.
"A couple [of the turnovers] were miscommunication, and others were when we got down and tried to do a little too much," junior tri-captain and point guard Dave Shepherd said. "Sometimes you just make bad plays."
Shepherd's three-pointer four minutes into the game put Tufts behind by just one, 5-4. But the wheels came off the Jumbos' wagon from there as turnovers led to an 11-0 run by the Lord Jeffs.
Six Tufts turnovers during the stretch, committed by four different Jumbos, led to six Amherst points, four of which came on transition lay-ups. While the team calmed down and senior tri-captain Dan Martin converted two free throws to halt the run with 13:27 left, the Jumbos' problems did not stop there.
Indeed, the Jumbos had two chances midway through the first half to cut into the Amherst lead when Amherst senior John Casnocha missed a three-pointer and junior Dan O'Shea turned the ball over, but two consecutive Shepherd turnovers led to missed opportunities.
The second of these turnovers fueled a big play for the Jeffs that helped bury the Jumbos in the first half. Casnocha stole the ball from Shepherd and zipped it up the court to senior star John Bedford, who was fouled by senior tri-captain Brian Fitzgerald.
The refs called an intentional foul on the Jumbos and when coach Bob Sheldon protested, he was nailed with a technical foul. The turn of events gave the Jeffs four free throws and the ball. Bedford converted all four shots, although the team could not complete a seven-point possession when it missed a three.
"It was a borderline intentional foul call and I think coach Sheldon wanted to give us momentum a little bit, show that he was emotionally into it a little bit and they just made all the foul shots," Shepherd said. "I think 50 percent of the time, that's called a flagrant foul, but other times it wouldn't be. I'm not sure that was the right call."
Shepherd committed four turnovers in the first half, and was joined by sophomores Jeremy Black, Ryan O'Keefe and Jake Weitzen, who turned the ball over three times apiece.
Compounding Tufts' problems was a lack of assists. Usually good at dishing the ball, the Jumbos only recorded eight for the entire game, giving them a 0.38 assist-to-turnover ratio, compared to Amherst's 1.56. Part of the credit should go to an Amherst defense that frustrated the Jumbos by switching defenders on every screen.
"They were very aggressive," Weitzen said. "They switched a lot of screens that we didn't expect them to. No other team we played this year switched every screen like that. We thought a lot of them would be open and they just weren't."
Part of the problem was the fast tempo of the game. With both teams running up-tempo offenses, the ball was quick to change hands.
"I don't know if it's because they had an easy game the first night and we had an overtime game, but they out-ran us," Weitzen said. "We tried to force the tempo, but we didn't have it."
