While most students were recovering from New Year's Eve festivities, the men's basketball team was busy winning the title at Roanoke College's Morris Cregger Classic in Virginia, matching last season's win total and earning junior guard Amauris Quezada a share of the NESCAC Player of the Week honors for his tournament-MVP performance.
The team's success unfortunately did not continue for the remainder of winter break. Back in Massachusetts, the Jumbos dropped a pair of games to local rivals MIT and Clark, 71-69 and 64-51, respectively, and then lost to Middlebury and Williams for a record of 6-8.
"In Virginia, we played some teams who aren't too familiar with us, so we ran a lot of our offense pretty effectively," Quezada said. "Throughout the past four games, we've played teams who have scouted us well and taken away some of our go-to options on offense."
The Jumbos needed to find a way to be successful quickly, as their NESCAC schedule began on Jan. 14 with back-to-back home games against last year's top two division finishers: national No. 6 Williams and No. 5 Middlebury. Hoping to erase the memories of the double-digit losses that both teams handed them last year, the Jumbos put their newfound rhythm to the test. While they didn't upset the conference frontrunners, they certainly displayed improvements that could move them out of the NESCAC basement for the first time since 2007.
Tufts hosted defending conference champion Williams (15-1) on Saturday and, despite competing with the Ephs in rebounding, steals and turnovers, lost 71-52 in their second NESCAC game of the season.
Williams led by only nine points at the half and Tufts stayed within single digits for most of the period due to an 11-4 run — with seven points from junior Alex Orchowski — to tie it at 16 with 9:23 to go.
The Jumbos eventually cut the lead to 34-29, but continued strong offense from the Ephs helped them pull away to 45-33 later in the half. Tufts reached within 10 points once more on a 3-pointer from freshman guard Kwame Firempong with 12 minutes remaining, but the Ephs quickly answered with a 3-pointer of their own and never looked back.
On Friday, undefeated Middlebury came back from a second-half deficit to walk away with a 79-63 victory in Cousens Gym. The Panthers shot a stellar 64.3 percent in the second period, while the Jumbos' 48.6 percent first-half shooting deteriorated to 28.6 percent after the intermission.
The Jumbos were up 13 at the half and led by 15 midway through the second half, but by the time the final buzzer sounded, found themselves on the losing end of a 31-point turnaround, 79-63.
"We let up," Quezada said. "I think we were too satisfied with our first-half performance. We are talented enough to compete with any team, but we still have some maturing to do. We don't always play for 40 minutes and when you do that, you'll lose those big leads."
Sophomore forward Scott Anderson, while upset at the two losses, remains confident in his team's NESCAC chances.
"I think it's nice to know we can play with both those teams," sophomore forward Scott Anderson said. "We definitely have come a long way since last year ... and now those games are out of the way and [the competition] is all downhill from here. There's no team left on our schedule that we don't know we can beat."
The team will travel to Bowdoin tomorrow and Colby on Saturday, still looking for its first conference win. Two victories would bring the team's record to 8-8 for the season — a fact that the coaches have been stressing all week.
"They're both middle-of-the-pack NESCAC teams, but we know that they are must wins for us" Anderson said. "The mentality this whole week has been ‘eight and eight' — if we win these two games we'll be 8-8 — and the coaches have been really pushing it. For example, if we have practice at one we'll start at 1:08. It's corny stuff … but we're just really focused on coming away with two wins this weekend."
