CHESTNUT HILL - With another Top 20 team in town on Tuesday night, BC once again had a chance to build some momentum heading into the final month of the regular season.

No. 20 Clemson visited Conte Forum atop the ACC standings with just one conference loss and winners of three straight overall.

In typical BC fashion this year nothing came easy, but in the end the Eagles found a way to stifle the Tigers offensively in the second half and do just enough themselves, pulling off the 62-54 upset.

BC improved to 11-12 overall on the year (5-7 ACC) while handing Clemson just its fifth loss overall (18-5) and its second loss in the conference (10-2).

“I just tell the guys, hey we’re just trying to build something and you are what you repeatedly do,” said head coach Earl Grant after BC earned its second win over a Top 20 team, the most in a season since 2018.

“You are what you repeatedly do, what you do every day. You build habits and it comes out in moments like tonight.“

Give the credit to the players for showing up every day, working hard and giving good effort and embracing the suck. It’s just finding a way to find an edge every day, give credit to the players.”

The Eagles led for less than three minutes in the first half and needed some help from an ice-cold shooting Tigers team to pull this one out, but it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.

Three minutes in, Prince Aligbe (10 points, 7 rebounds) hit two free throws to get BC on the board after Clemson jumped out to a 5-0 lead. An 0-5 start from the field for BC didn’t help matters and Clemson led 8-2 on Hunter Tyson’s second three pointer in the first five minutes.

After a Clemson bucket made it 10-2 Makai Ashton-Langford (15 points) finally broke through with a jumper. Jaeden Zackery and Quinten Post both scored moments later, but Clemson’s offense stayed relatively hot too and pushed its lead to 15-8. With under 10 to play and the Tigers up 19-8, Mason Madsen drilled a corner three to keep it somewhat close. A couple of minutes later, Zackery followed his own miss on a runner to cut the deficit to six.

The Eagles defense cranked it up a notch and a Zackery three made it 19-16. Clemson scored to halt the run, but still found itself in a 1-for-8 rut over several minutes when Aligbe found Post with a pretty pass down low for a layup to make it 21-18 with 5:55 on the clock. Post’s creativity was on display with a pretty pass to a cutting Zackery layup to cut it to one. Ashton-Langford followed with a block that led to a jumper and the Eagles’ 1st lead at 22-21 with just under four to play.

A Post put-back rebound amongst the trees down low made it 24-23 BC, forcing a Clemson timeout. A fast break layup for Zackery off a Madsen steal made it three-point game and an Ashton-Langford steal seconds later turned into an easy layup for Madsen and a 28-23 lead in the final 35 seconds. Following another Tigers’ turnover and a timeout, Zackery hit a turnaround to close out a 22-4 run over the final 9:47, giving BC a 30-23 lead at the half. Zackery finished the first 20 minutes with 13 points, his total for the game.

“I feel like honestly, it’s just about us having trust in each other,” Zackery said of the ball movement throughout the game. “We don’t care who is shooting or who has the ball. Having (Langford Jr.) out, he was our main ball handler most of the time, being able to come out, having trust in Mason, QP, Devin, TJ, it didn’t matter who was in the game. That trust aspect just kind of helps us come out here and play our game today.”

“We practice that stuff all the time, sometimes you don’t see it in games, but we talk about the ball needing to have energy, we’ve got to cut harder and have better ball movement,” added Grant. “As you continue to practice and you move into February and March, what you want to see is your team get better. You want to see improvement and growth and just from practicing and working on different things, they’re improving. I thought the ball movement was good. We knew we had to move it because Clemson packs it in…you’ve got to be able to move it in order to get to the paint.”

The Eagles opened it up to a 35-26 lead in the first two minutes of the second half and an Ashton-Langford corner three in front of a jubilant BC bench soon made it 39-27. After a few Clemson buckets, Post had to sit because of foul trouble with a little over 15 minutes remaining and the teams quickly traded offensive blows. An Aligbe jumper from the free throw line put the Eagles up 45-35, but the Tigers did a good job of taking advantage of Post not being on the floor, cutting it to 45-41 on two free throws.

Post came back in with three fouls with 11:26 left after the Tigers had outscored BC 11-4 with him on the bench. Just a couple minutes later, Post was backing down a defender and was called for a very questionable offensive foul, giving him his fourth and forcing Grant to pull him again. The Eagles offense continued to be ice cold, going scoreless for almost seven minutes while Clemson eventually tied things up at 45-45. A Chas Kelley layup in traffic finally broke the scoring brought and put BC back up by two. Clemson had a lid on the basket on its end too as the tides quickly turned and the Eagles were able to take advantage, pushing it to 50-45 with 5:13 left on a pretty up-and-under off a great bounce pass from Ashton-Langford.

Clemson went 0-15 over a nearly six minute span and Post returned with just under three minutes remaining. With 2:08 left, Tyson hit two free throws to keep the Tigers within three, but almost immediately Ashton-Langford hit a layup on a beautiful backdoor cut to push it to 52-47. PJ Hall hit two more free throws for Clemson, but Ashton-Langford answered again with a strong drive and finish.

Two Ashton-Langford free throws with 32 seconds left and two more from Madsen with 27.6 seconds left made it 58-49. A Tyson three with 17 seconds left broke an 0-for-17 span for the Tigers that lasted over 13 minutes and kept Clemson within six. Post added two more from the charity stripe, but Tyson hit another jumper and quickly fouled Aligbe to prolong things. Finally, after Aligbe hit both and the Tigers dribbled out the clock. In the end, the Tigers shot just 31% while BC shot 40%.

“I thought our house got divided a little bit early,” Grant said. “We were so concerned with the officiating, maybe a few bumps and calls we thought we should have gotten. It’s a physical game and I think Clemson does a good job of bumping you, walling up and being physical, so I thought it shocked our system. We had too much energy focused on the referees and then we shifted our energy.

“We shifted our energy to ‘hey let’s get a stop.’ We shifted our energy to ‘hey, let’s get the best shot we can get.’ Set good legal screens, cut hard, we just shifted our focus and our energy.”

Now, BC must quickly turn the page and get ready for a rivalry game at home on Saturday night against Syracuse, a game that should have Conte rocking with a sold out crowd.

“It was a long time ago,” Grant said of the first meeting against Syracuse on New Years Eve, a loss in The Dome. “I’ll start watching them again (Wednesday), really start to come up with a game plan. Obviously, they’re very long, very talented, they’ve got a good coach. I’ll make sure (Wednesday) we start game planning. It’s the first time we’ve had three days to get ready so that’ll be very refreshing…saw a little bit against Virginia and I look forward to diving into that video and coming up with a plan.”