Eagles Drop Road Game At Miami
It’s rare that you play the No. 16 ranked team in the country in back-to-back games, but that’s exactly what the BC men’s basketball team did on Saturday and then again on Wednesday night.
After losing a tough one-point game at home to Duke, the Eagles had to go on the road and face Miami after the Hurricanes dropped from 13 to 16 in the national rankings. Still, it was a daunting task facing a perennial NCAA tournament threat and a team that entered 13-2 overall, second in the conference and 9-0 at home.
The end result, a lopsided 88-72 loss, doesn’t really reflect the effort from the Eagles. Ultimately, it was Miami’s shot making (60% from the field and 66% from beyond the air) and athleticism that allowed the Hurricanes to pull away in the second half. The Eagles drop to 8-9 overall and 2-4 in the ACC with another tough, nationally televised game at Conte Forum on Saturday against Wake Forest (8 P.M.) coming up.
“We’re getting there, I know we’re making progress,” said head coach Earl Grant. “We’ve got to stay the course, it’s a long season. We lost to a good team. They got some good players, they’ve got a really good coach, had a good crowd today and they made a lot of shots. We lost to a really good team.
“We’ll go back and figure out how we can continue to improve.”
After falling behind 8-2, two Quinten Post free throws gave BC an early 9-8 lead just after the game’s first media timeout, continuing a 7-0 run for the Eagles. The run grew to 9-0 on a short runner from Makai Ashton-Langford (19 points) but Miami soon tied things up at 13-13. The Hurricanes began taking advantage of mistakes and quickly took a 25-13 lead with a 15-0 run as BC started turning the ball over with some rough possessions on the offensive end.
CJ Penha Jr. finally put an end to the run after a timeout with seven minutes left in the half, hitting a jumper for the first bucket in almost six minutes. DeMarr Langford Jr. (20 points, 6 assists) followed up with back-to-back buckets after stops, and BC was suddenly right back in it at 25-20. The teams traded baskets back and forth for the next few minutes. A pretty floater in the lane from Ashton-Langford with under three minutes left was BC’s sixth made shot in a row and cut it to 32-26.Another lightning quick 11-0 run from Miami pushed it to 43-26 before a Penha Jr. layup and missed free throw for an and-one opportunity made it 43-28 in the final 30 seconds. BC came up with a steal on the final possession to keep the halftime deficit at 15, but those rapid runs ultimately killed the Eagles in this one.
“They really did a good job of getting into the tempo they wanted,” said Grant. “They’ve got spurt-ability. That’s one thing you notice about them, they can roll off 10 points quick.”
BC cut it to nine in the first minute of the second half. The Canes’ quickly pushed it back to double digits, but the Eagles continued to hang around, making it a 50-40 game on a tough Ashton-Langford layup in the lane at the first media timeout. A driving Langford Jr. two-handed dunk off a great pass from Devin McGlockton following a few good defensive trips down the floor suddenly made it a 52-46 game with 14 minutes to go.
Down 57-50, BC watched as Isaiah Wong (22 points) continued shooting the lights out with a couple of three pointers. Still, Langford Jr. had a thunderous drunk and then an impressive runner in the lane made it 65-56 with a little over eight minutes left. At the 6:11 mark, Langford and McGlockton battled for a rebound until getting it and kicking out to Mason Madsen who buried a corner three pointer to make it 68-61, but the Canes immediately answered with a three of their own. From there, the better team simply flexed its muscles as the result was never really in doubt. The Hurricanes closed things out with relative ease, wrapping this one up in under two hours.
Now, BC must rest, regroup, and get ready to continue trying to make Conte a tough place to play on Saturday night.
“The biggest thing for me is getting back, watch the film on the plane, get in there tomorrow, figure out how we can watch the film as a team and see the mistakes we made and the good things we did, we did a lot of good things too,” Grant added.
“Learn from both and come up with a game plan and be ready to go on Saturday. These games come quick and you’ve got to have a great bounce-back mentality. It’s hard to win on the road and we lost to a good team who really shot the ball well today, so we’ll get ready for the next one.”