Men's Basketball Opens PL Tournament with 69-58 Victory over Lehigh

Wednesday, March 3

Boston, MA

7 PM

Boston University

7-10,6-10Patriot

Lehigh (PL First Round)

4-11,4-10Patriot

Lehigh

Boston U.

Photo by: Matt Woolverton

Men's Basketball Opens PL Tournament with 69-58 Victory over Lehigh

March 3, 2021 | Men's Basketball

Box Score Box Score Highlights Coach Jones and Walter Whyte Postgame Comments

BOSTON – The Boston University men's basketball team kicked off the 2021 Patriot League tournament with a 69-58 first-round home victory over Lehigh on Wednesday evening at Case Gym.

The seventh-seeded Terriers move on to the quarterfinals as they will visit second-seeded Colgate in a rematch of the 2020 PL title game.

Junior Walter Whyte (19) and senior Sukhmail Mathon (17) combined for 36 points while senior Javante McCoy and junior Jonas Harper made it four Terriers in double figures with 14 and 10 points, respectively.

The Terriers held a dominating advantage on the floor, making 55.5 percent of their shots while holding Lehigh to 36.5 percent.

After six lead changes in the first seven minutes of play, the Terriers led the rest of the way to improve to 7-10 on the year. Lehigh finishes its season with a record of 4-11.

HOW IT HAPPENED

Lehigh scored the game's first four points but neither team had a lead larger than that for the game's first 12 minutes.
A fast-break dunk by Whyte with three minutes left in the opening half gave the Terriers the biggest lead yet for either team at 25-19.
BU scored the final six points of the half as Mathon assisted on a Whyte bucket before scoring two of his own to give the home team a 31-23 advantage at the break.
A thunderous steal and dunk by Whyte with 6:19 remaining pushed BU's lead to 14 at 56-42 and ultimately kept the Mountain Hawks out of reach.
The Terriers extended the cushion to as many as 18 down the stretch before Lehigh climbed back to within nine with a 13-4 run.
BU made sure that's as close as it would get and went on to seal the victory.

GAME NOTES

The Terriers have now won four straight conference tournament games, their longest such run since winning five straight spanning the 2002 and 2003 America East tournaments.
Each team had 33 rebounds.
Whyte and Harper each had a game-high eight rebounds while Mathon tallied seven.
The Terriers stayed out of foul trouble, as they were whistled for a total of eight fouls.
Lehigh had 30 of its points come from its bench while all but six of BU's points were tallied by starters.

NEXT UP: COLGATE

The Terriers will visit second-seeded Colgate in the Patriot League quarterfinals on Saturday (March 6) with tip-off set for 1 p.m.
This will be the third straight year the teams have met in the tournament with all three contests taking place in Hamilton, New York, after Colgate won in the 2019 quarterfinals and BU won in the 2020 title game.
The Raiders won all four regular season meetings this year.