Second-Half Turnovers, Poor Shot Making Cost BC at Louisville

Boston College men’s basketball coughed up the rock just three times in the first half of Wednesday night’s game at Louisville. Despite shooting a mere 30.6% from the floor in the opening frame, the Eagles found themselves down one possession at intermission because of seven offensive boards, six second-chance points and 11 forced turnovers.

Earl Grant’s team never flipped the switch offensively, though. And, eventually, the turnovers came. Louisville capitalized, turning back-to-back giveaways into consecutive and-ones. The 6-0 surge tipped the scale, transforming a game that saw five ties and six lead changes in the first half into a seven-point affair.

Louisville widened the gap before the final horn, snapping its three-game losing streak with a 67-54 victory.

BC (7-9, 2-4 ACC) still hasn’t won at the KFC Yum! Center: an arena that nearly prevented Wednesday’s game from happening. A roof leak at the north end of the stadium delayed tipoff 75 minutes.

Grant said that he hadn’t seen anything like it in his 22 years of coaching.

“It was weird,” the first-year Eagles head coach said. “I mean, it was weird. … We didn’t know what the situation was. If the game was canceled, if it was gonna be played. But we played the game. I’m glad that we did. Wish we would have played a little bit better.”

Both teams stumbled out of the gates. BC missed its first four shots, including three on its opening possession when it corralled two offensive rebounds. Louisville (11-7, 5-3), meanwhile, turned the ball over three times in the first five minutes of action.

By the second media timeout, the Eagles and Cardinals were shooting a combined 7-of-23 from the floor and 3-of-10 from the free throw line. But BC (16) had more than double the field goal attempts of Louisville (seven). As sloppy as the game was, it was tied, 9-9, with 11:56 to go in the first period.

Then the Cardinals made their first move, a 7-0 run, which was jumpstarted by a Jarrod West runner. Except BC registered three of the next four baskets. It was a stretch that showcased layups from brothers DeMarr Langford Jr. and Makai Ashton-Langford.

Louisville forward Jae’Lyn Withers piloted the Cardinals’ balanced scoring attack in the first half with eight points on 3-of-3 shooting, and the redshirt sophomore was the one to get Louisville back on track with a jumper that was converted into a 3-point play, courtesy of a TJ Bickerstaff foul.

Blows were traded the rest of the half. Following a potentially momentum-shifting Samuell Williamson dunk, Ashton-Langford strung together a self-made, 5-0 run to knot things up at 28. But Withers added a layup to give Louisville a two-point advantage before the break.

As poorly as BC was shooting the basketball, it was doing everything else Grant asks for: defending, rebounding and taking care of the rock. Because of that, the Eagles were playing their game. They were in a scrap fight on the road with a reeling Louisville team that, coming into Wednesday, ranked 30th nationally in average possession length (15.9 seconds), according to KenPom.

BC wasn’t letting Chris Mack’s team dictate the pace. That was true much of the second half, too.

But, when it mattered most, the Eagles’ defense and ball security faltered. After BC recovered from a Noah Locke-led, 8-0 Louisville run, the Cardinals created separation.

The turning point sprouted from a wild sequence. Bickerstaff, who finished with his second double-double (12 points, 15 rebounds) of the season, stole the ball from Sydney Curry. BC pushed the pace on the break, and it backfired. Ashton-Langford’s pass was stolen by Williamson, who never gave up on the play and, after picking off Ashton-Langford, flung the ball behind his back to West.

Curry redeemed himself on the other end with a layup through contact. He made the free throw, and Matt Cross—a Beverly, Massachusetts, native and former teammate of Langford Jr. at Brewster Academy—replicated the old-fashioned 3-point play following another BC turnover, putting the Cardinals up, 44-37.

“We just lost our composure a little bit,” Grant said. “Lost our composure and poise. And obviously those turnovers, they made us pay. Again, that goes back to offensive maturity. We just got to understand how to make good decisions.”

Louisville kept its distance as it heated up from deep. The Cardinals were 5-of-11 from downtown in the second half.

A Mason Faulkner 3-pointer put the game out of reach with 2:55 left, and a spinning El Ellis drilled the dagger out of an inbound pass, extending Louisville’s lead to 63-49.

The Cardinals went up by as many as 16 late in the second half of the victory.

When all was said and done, BC rounded out the night 29.2% from the floor and 12-of-22 from the charity stripe. The effort was there for the Eagles, yet it wasn’t enough on the road against one of the ACC’s better squads.

“Gotta continue to work to try to get better so that we can play a complete 40-minute game where we taking care of the ball, we executing and we getting stops,” Grant said. “We haven’t been able to do all of those things in the same game.

“I’m going to keep striving for that.”