New Haven’s Whyte ‘like a son’ to BU coach Jones
When Walter Whyte first played against the UConn men’s basketball team, Kevin Ollie was still patrolling the Huskies’ sidelines. Dan Hurley was just beginning his final season as head coach at Rhode Island.
Whyte was a freshman starter for Boston University in that game on Nov. 19, 2017. The New Haven product played 22 minutes, scored six points and grabbed three rebounds in an 85-66 loss to the Huskies at XL Center.
On Friday night, about a week short of exactly five years later, Whyte was battling the Huskies one more time. This time, he was far from a wide-eyed freshman but instead a grizzled veteran in his sixth year of college.
Whyte scored a team-high 19 points in BU’s 86-57 loss to UConn at Gampel Pavilion. Coming off a career-high 29 points in a win over Northeastern earlier in the week, Whyte was a major concern of Dan Hurley’s, who called the 6-foot-6 wing a “beautiful shooter of the ball.”
Hurley had Nahiem Alleyne dogging Whyte all over the floor to start the game and Whyte, like the rest of his teammates, couldn’t buy a basket until midway through the first half. Whyte wound up scoring 19 points, 12 of them in the second half, but Hurley was reasonably pleased with the job his defense did on him.
Indeed, Whyte has seen a little of everything over his six years at BU: freshman starter, sidelined by an ankle injury his entire sophomore season, robbed of an NCAA tournament trip by the pandemic as a junior, masked up during games as a senior, three-time All-Patriot League honoree.
“It’s hard to describe how I feel about him,” BU coach Joe Jones said following Friday’s game. “He’s been in the program for six years. That’s half the time I’ve been the head coach, which is crazy.”
Indeed, Jones, whose brother James is the longtime head coach at Yale, is currently in his 12th season heading the Terriers.
“He’s like a son, he really is,” Jones said of Whyte. “He’s as nice of a person you’re ever going to coach. Obviously, he’s an outstanding player. We’ve been fortunate to have him be a part of us. He’s a great teammate. I can’t say enough about him.”
Whyte is hoping to help BU reach the NCAA tournament for the first time. The Terriers won the Patriot League tournament in 2020 to receive the automatic NCAA tourney bid, but of course, that tournament was cancelled due to COVID-19.
BU certainly has a veteran
team that could make some noise in the league this season. The Terriers start three fifth-year seniors and a regular senior alongside Whyte. And Whyte isn’t the only Connecticut connection in the team’s starting lineup.
Stamford’s Jonas Harper is a two-time Patriot League All-Defensive team honoree who was also Whyte’s teammate at St. Luke’s School in New Canaan. Meanwhile, 6-9 Nevin Zink of Newtown is the Terriers’ starting center.
It wasn’t as great a night for the other two Connecticut products. Harper finished with just four points in 24 minutes while Zink struggled matching up against UConn star Adama Sanogo and went scoreless in 17 minutes of action.
FOLDING FOES
UConn’s non-conference home schedule is hardly attractive, but the Huskies were expected to get some big challenges on the road (and at least one at home) before heading into Big East play. Now, those challenges may not seem so formidable.
The Huskies face No. 21 Oregon in their opening game of the PK 85 Invitational in Portland, Oregon on Thanksgiving Day. The Ducks won’t likely be ranked this week, however, after losing at home to UC-Irvine by 13 points on Friday night.
Later in that tournament, the Huskies could play Big East foe Villanova in a game that wouldn’t count as a league game. The 16thranked Wildcats, whose Hall of Fame head coach Jay Wright retired at the end of last season, lost to a mediocre Temple squad on Friday. They won’t be ranked 16th (or, likely, at all) come Monday afternoon.
Finally, Oklahoma State, UConn’s opponent in its first-ever foray into the Big East/Big 12 Battle, lost at home to Southern Illinois on Thursday.
Heck, even Michigan State, whom the Huskies could face in their second PK85 game on Nov. 25, is 1-1 — though the Spartans’ loss came against secondranked Gonzaga on Friday night.