BOSTON — Save for a five-minute spurt to open the second half, Northeastern was dominated by William & Mary’s offense wire to wire Thursday night at the Cabot Center, falling by a score of 94-67 in the team’s biggest margin of defeat since February 2023.
The Tribe came into the contest employing the seventh-fastest tempo in the country per KenPom, running a Princeton offense that emphasizes backdoor cuts, ball movement, and perimeter shooting. For much of the night, they executed all of those aspects nearly perfectly, outscoring the Huskies 45-22 in the final 15 minutes of the game to stamp out any chance Northeastern had after cutting the deficit to as little as two.
William & Mary held what would turn out to be a modest 11-point lead at the halftime break, powered by an 8-for-15 performance from deep, with four of those three-pointers coming from graduate student forward Cade Haskins. Freshman guard Xavier Abreu kept the home side in it during the opening frame, scoring 17 of the team’s 19 points during a stretch of around seven minutes towards the middle of the half. Abreu would finish with 24 points on the night to lead all players.
With the Tribe leading 45-34 to start the second frame, the Huskies came out of the locker room with a burst of energy, neutralizing almost everything that had been working for William & Mary in the first 20 minutes. Northeastern did a great job of defending the backdoor cuts the visitors had been previously cashing in on, and making passing in general much more difficult. The Huskies forced three turnovers in the first four minutes of the half, with their opening 11-2 run cutting the deficit to 47-45.
“The way [William & Mary] play[s], they can score points in a hurry, but they’re going to give you a chance to get back in it if you can get some stops,” said Northeastern head coach Bill Coen. “And that’s what I thought happened. We got a little bit of defensive resolve in the first couple minutes and the game kind of settled down for us, and that let us get on our run.”
Northeastern would not get it any closer than that, though, as after the first media timeout of the frame, Tribe head coach Brian Earl was able to snap his squad back in order. William & Mary rattled off a trio of three-pointers in the span of three minutes to put themselves back up 12 points, and from there, they didn’t look back.
The only field goals scored by Northeastern in the next nine minutes were from sophomore guard Ryan Williams, who went 4-for-5 from the field during that stretch, including two made threes. The rest of the Huskies combined to go 0-for-8 from the floor in that span, with Abreu missing three of those shots.
“Everybody recognizes what [Abreu] can do and his ability, and he stepped up in a big way today,” Coen said. “I did think he got a little tired. He had some more makeable looks in the second half, but I thought our entire team was a little gassed in the second half, and sometimes that leads into whether you make or miss shots.”
The 27-point loss is the Huskies’ worst losing margin since an 84-52 defeat to Hofstra on Long Island three seasons ago, and the result was much different than Northeastern’s previous meeting with William & Mary. Last March, Rashad King hit a jumper with five seconds left in Williamsburg to complete an 11-point comeback for the Huskies in what would be his penultimate game with the Huskies. Coen seemed to acknowledge Thursday night that, due to injuries as well as losses to the transfer portal, he just doesn’t have the same level of talent on the floor this year.
“We tried to switch a lot, and we’ve had success in that, with some of our more experienced players,” Coen said of his team’s defense. “Last year, we went down there against the same offense, but we had experienced players. Now you’re out there with a lot of freshmen and guys who are not as experienced. And that’s a communication thing that we’ve got to get better at.”
While senior forward Youri Fritz and freshman forward Ty Francis are both back and each have a few games under their belts since returning from injuries suffered a month ago, the Huskies are now dealing with another health issue, as junior guard William Kermoury missed his second straight game with a lower-body injury. Only eight Northeastern players saw the floor Thursday, including Fritz and Francis, but Coen thinks it will still take some time for those two to get fully reacclimated.
“[Kermoury’s] doing everything he can to get back in the lineup,” Coen said. “We have some guys that are coming back, Youri Fritz and Ty Francis, and they don’t have their game rhythm back, and I thought that was obvious tonight. Both those guys weren’t playing with the level that they were before, prior to their injuries. So we’ve got to see if we can get some rhythm back with them, and hopefully we’ll get William back in not too long.”
With the loss, the Huskies drop to 2-11 in CAA play and take sole possession of last place in the conference table. With Northeastern being three games out of eleventh place in the standings with just five games to go in the regular season, it is a near lock that they will be playing in the first-round “play-in” game of the CAA tournament.
The Huskies are off this Saturday, then return to Cabot for home games against Drexel and Hofstra next weekend. Aiden Barker and Jordan Walsh will be on the call Thursday night as Northeastern hosts Drexel at 7 p.m.
Jordan Walsh is a fifth-year student at Northeastern who has been with WRBB Sports since 2021, primarily covering men’s and women’s basketball. You can read all of his articles for WRBB here and find him on Twitter/X here.