While this young BC men’s basketball team continues to grow together, there are days that are humbling reminders for the fan base of just how far off this team is from competing with some of the best in the country on a consistent basis.

Sure, BC hung with Duke a few weeks ago and there’s been some nice wins, but a 76-57 loss on the road to No. 7 Virginia was marred by turnovers (16 of them), an inability to grab defensive rebounds and poor shooting, which continues to be a problem.

BC dropped to 10-12 overall with the loss.

“They do a really good job of grinding on both ends, offensively and defensively,” said BC head coach Earl Grant. “That’s just something they do. With their maturity, the last thing you want to do is give them opportunities to get easy baskets and I thought that was the difference in the game. In the first half, we had nine turnovers and they weren’t really forced turnovers, we just weren’t as good with the ball as we needed to be.

“The way they try to grind you on both ends of the floor, the last thing you want to do is give them easy buckets. I thought that game should have been a little more even in the first half if we had played a little better."

Early on, Quinten Post (24 points, 6 rebounds) couldn’t miss. The big man racked up 13 points beyond the arc, at the free throw line and down low, giving the Eagles a brief 13-11 lead. Makai Ashton-Langford (12 points) got two quick fouls and his brother DeMarr Langford was ruled out at halftime with a knee injury, neither of which helped BC’s cause throughout the afternoon.

At the first media timeout, the Eagles held an 18-17 lead that soon moved to 21-17 on a Mason Madsen three pointer. That lack of rebounding (33-25 in favor of UVA) and turnovers, coupled with poor shot selection allowed the Cavs to make a run and go up 26-23. The Hoos pushed the lead to 35-27 at the half as BC went ice cold (41% for the game from the field, 29% from three).

“They’re old,” Grant said of UVA’s experience. “They’ve got guys who have been around for five years and know who they are, I think that’s the number one ingredient. You’ve got guys who have been together for years, it makes a big difference. There’s a lot of confidence and belief in what they’re doing. They believe in what they do.

“I’m not going to dig too deep into this. I thought we played well at times, but Virginia just played a lot better than us…as our team continues to grow, we’re trying to be a little bit more mature (with shot selections) and I thought Virginia was more mature. They should be, I thought we had too many possessions where we didn’t stay to that third layer looking for the best shot we could get.”

With 11 minutes to go, BC was still somehow in the game down nine despite continuously turning the ball over. Things spiraled from there, though, as the Eagles quickly fell behind by 14 and then by 19 with six minutes to go. UVA shot 51% from the field, but only hit 6-of-21 three pointers. Still, BC couldn’t find a way to turn stops or turnovers into buckets consistently and gave up 15 second chance points while only having four of its own, Virginia ultimately continued to pull away late and both teams emptied the benches with about three minutes to play.

“In the second half, it was a nine-point game with 12 minutes to go and it was like a slow drip,” added Grant. “They made three or four threes back-to-back-to-back and got it to 20. Give them credit for grinding us. I thought we executed the plan for about 24 minutes in that game, but that wasn’t enough to win a game in this arena.

“This is a really challenging place to play when you have young guys. I did it here now and years ago when I was at Clemson when (UVA head coach) Tony Bennett got here. So, it’s a challenging place to play, especially when you’re young.”

BC won’t have much time to dwell on this one as Clemson comes to Conte Forum for a 7 P.M. tip on Tuesday night.