BOSTON — There were 4.6 seconds on the clock as Colgate junior guard Kyle Carlesimo inbounded the ball to sophomore guard Jalen Cox in stride. The Raiders trailed by three points with no timeouts remaining, and had to go down the length of the floor to try to force overtime in a game in which they trailed by nine just a minute prior.
Cox, being doubleteamed by Northeastern junior guards Rashad King and LA Pratt, was able to cross the timeline and find junior guard Brady Cummins on the right wing for as open of a look from deep as Colgate could have asked for.
There was one phrase that likely flashed through the minds of every Northeastern fan in Matthews Arena as Cummins — who was 3-for-5 from beyond the arc in the game up until that point — released the three-point try: “Not again!”
But the ball bounced harmlessly off the back rim and into the hands of sophomore guard JB Frankel. The Huskies were 7-3 for the first time in nearly a decade.
The team did come inches from blowing that nine-point lead and adding to a list of late-game failures in recent years, but Sunday afternoon’s 78-75 win was a comeback effort of their own for Northeastern, who trailed by ten points near the end of the first 20 minutes.
The first half was one of the sloppiest halves of basketball the Huskies have played all season. Northeastern committed six personal fouls in the first seven minutes of the game, and coughed up seven turnovers in a five-minute span towards the end of the half that allowed Colgate to open up their double-digit lead.
Two of those early fouls were picked up by junior center Collin Metcalf, who sat for most of the half and only played 13 minutes in the whole game. The Huskies as a whole were thrown off in part by Colgate switching to a zone for the middle portion of the half, and they allowed the Raiders to swipe steals and push it down the court in transition throughout the half.
“We didn’t execute against the zone as well as we should have [in the first half] and didn’t recognize it, and we had some makeable shots that didn’t go in for us,” said Northeastern head coach Bill Coen. “I thought in the first half, it was really about our turnovers. We were driving into single gaps, and they had 16 points on 11 turnovers, and that was really their offense. If we had played a little bit better on the offensive end, I think that our defense would’ve been better.”
King was the only Northeastern player to score double-digits in the first frame, netting 10 points. Junior guard Masai Troutman was the only other Husky with multiple made field goals in the half, including a big three-pointer with a minute to go as part of a four-point play that, along with a hanging jumper from freshman guard Ryan Williams, whittled the deficit to four heading into the halftime break.
The Huskies came storming out of the gate in the second, starting the frame on an 11-2 run to open up a five-point lead. The script completely flipped from the first half, as the visitors committed 10 of the first 12 fouls called, and in that span a Colgate team — whose identity has historically been strong three-point shooting — was just 1-for-3 from deep.
With six minutes to go, though, sophomore guard Parker Jones made his third three-pointer of the day, off a feed from Cox, the first of three treys he would assist on down the stretch. Cox did a good job of playmaking at the perimeter as well as driving it downhill throughout the game.
“[Cox is] probably one of the quickest guards in college basketball that nobody knows about,” Coen said. “He’s got end-to-end speed, he got into the lane. … Our penetration rotations have to get better so we can get into shot pockets and make guys miss.”
At the three-minute mark, it was junior guard Harold Woods who stepped up for Northeastern, hitting a corner three followed by a reverse layup in transition to put the Huskies up by 11. But Cummins immediately answered with a three of his own, and down nine with a minute to go, senior guard Chandler Baker hit two quick threes to make it a five-point game with 43 seconds left. After a couple of free throws from both sides, the score was 74-70 in favor of Northeastern with 30 seconds on the clock.
That was when the trouble really began for the Huskies.
Colgate, employing a full-court press, was able to trap King in the “coffin corner” on the ensuing inbounds pass, and Northeastern called one of their three remaining timeouts to reset.
The next inbounds pass: again to King on the baseline, again King trapped in the corner, again a timeout called by Northeastern.
The next inbounds pass — again to King. Again in the corner. Northeastern calls its final timeout.
At this point, almost 15 of the 30 seconds had come off the clock. The Huskies were able to use the reset of the 10-second count after a timeout to their advantage.
“We save [the timeouts] for a reason,” Coen said. “You want to be able to use them in those types of situations. Their press forced us in, we got a little too deep in the corner, we got into some bad situations there. But you get a reset with 10 seconds every time, and it allowed us to bleed the game clock a little bit.”
On the ensuing inbounds pass, Woods tried to get it to Pratt on the sideline this time, and the ball was deflected out of bounds by a Colgate player, although Pratt’s hand was dangerously close on the tip.
Finally, on the fifth inbounds pass of the possession, the Huskies were able to draw a foul, with King heading to the line for two free throws. King split the trip to put Northeastern up five, but on the following Colgate possession, Frankel fouled senior guard Nicolas Louis-Jacques in the act of shooting a three to send him to the line, where he made all three shots.
The Raiders then fouled Frankel, who like King went 1-for-2, giving the Huskies a three-point lead. With six seconds left, Coen instructed his team to quickly foul Colgate in the backcourt, although they might have done so too quickly, as only a half-second came off the clock. Cox hit both free throws to make it a one-point game, and Colgate immediately fouled Frankel again, who hit two critical free throws to atone for his foul of Louis-Jacques and put the Huskies back up three.
Colgate then had that final chance to send it to overtime, and if Cummins’ shot at the buzzer had been just a bit more to the left, this may have been a very different recap.
One of the key reasons Northeastern was able to pull it out in the second half was because of the efforts and connection between Woods and junior forward Youri Fritz, the latter of whom played at least 17 minutes for the fifth straight game Sunday.
“Great interior passing with Harold Woods. Good energy on the glass,” Coen said of Fritz, who grabbed a game-high four offensive rebounds. “He’s a little bit of a game-changer, and especially against teams like Colgate. … He moves as well as any of our frontcourt guys. It eliminates some of the things we can do, using some of our bigs, when we play a program like that, but Youri’s a great answer in those situations, offensively and defensively.”
Three Huskies finished the day in double-figures — King with 23 points, Woods with 13 (11 of those coming in the second half), and Troutman with 12.
Sunday’s win ensures that Northeastern will finish their non-conference slate with a winning record, a feat they accomplished only once in the previous six seasons. The contest was the final home game for the Huskies before CAA play starts in January. Northeastern has three more road trips this month, before conference play gets underway in the new year.
Following a break for finals week, the Huskies are back in action as they head on the road to face Old Dominion next Sunday at 1 p.m. Stay tuned to WRBB for full coverage of the 2024-25 men’s basketball season.