Boston College men’s basketball hadn’t scored more than 76 points in ACC play. The Eagles piled up 95, including a season-high 86 in regulation, Wednesday night at Notre Dame.
Brevin Galloway came into the game 3-of-41 from deep in his last seven outings. He made three 3-pointers in the second half alone.
Kanye Jones was 6-of-31 from downtown this season, but the freshman guard kept the Eagles alive in overtime with a 3-pointer.
The Langford brothers, who average a combined 24 points per game, teamed up for 40.
“All of the things we’ve been talking about for the last month kind of came together,” first-year BC head coach Earl Grant said postgame.
The Joyce Center played witness to an offensive anomaly. And it nearly resulted in another Holy War upset, despite the Eagles missing center Quinten Post (COVID-19 protocol), forward TJ Bickerstaff (calf) and, for the final 8:39 of regulation and overtime, centers James Karnik and Justin Vander Baan, who both fouled out.
A fatal inbounds turnover spelled doom for BC with 10 seconds left in the extra frame and a chance to force a second overtime, and the relentless Eagles left South Bend with a 99-95 defeat.
Grant knows his team’s limits. Most of the season, he’s talked about needing to keep games in the 60s for his Eagles (9-15, 4-10 ACC) to win. After all, track meets aren’t his thing. Similar to his teams at College of Charleston, BC—which ranks 273rd nationally in KenPom’s adjusted tempo metric—isn’t running up and down the court.
The Eagles play good defense, take care of the ball and rebound. That’s been their identity.
Wednesday, however, was different.
With a thin roster, BC had to roll out a four-guard starting lineup and, for long stretches, play five guards because of foul trouble. The thing is, it worked against a Notre Dame (19-7, 12-3) team that was routinely slow on its defensive rotations out of a matchup 2-3 zone. The Eagles’ athleticism was simply too much for the Fighting Irish to handle at times.
As was the case against Duke last Saturday, though, the smaller lineup came back to bite BC on the defensive end of the court.
The teams swapped buckets with ease all night. BC’s attack was balanced throughout, with three players reaching double figures by intermission. Notre Dame, on the other hand, was carried by Dane Goodwin in the opening frame. The junior guard stacked 10 points before the first media timeout, drilling a pair of quick 3-pointers.
Goodwin rounded out the first half with 18 points on 7-of-10 shooting. He helped the Fighting Irish maintain a lead—albeit slim—for much of the period.
BC kept pace, shooting 60.7% from the field, including 4-of-9 from 3-point land, in the first half. The problem was, Karnik picked up two early fouls. Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey responded by going big, using both Paul Atkinson Jr. (6-foot-9) and Nate Laszewski (6-foot-10).
Karnik’s replacement, Vander Baan, was foul-happy as well. The 7-foot sophomore tallied three personals in six minutes of first-half action. Still, with Vander Baan in, the Eagles not only hung around, but they took their first lead of the game. Although Notre Dame had the size advantage, BC’s athleticism gashed the Fighting Irish zone.
There was a sequence where, on back-to-back possessions, Jaeden Zackery and DeMarr Langford Jr. blew by a less-than-100% Laszewski en route to the tin.
Langford, who finished with a career-high 23 points, scored the final five points of the first half to give the Eagles a 43-39 advantage heading into the break.
Galloway, making his first start since Dec. 11, 2020, gave BC 17 points—11 of those came in the second period, in large part thanks to two early 3-pointers.
Back and forth the rivals went as field goals continued to mount, but so did Karnik’s foul count. Not too long after Karnik picked up his fourth personal, Notre Dame strung together a 9-2 run that featured back-to-back Blake Wesley makes and put the Fighting Irish up, 67-62.
Soon enough, though, Grant’s squad countered with an 8-0 spurt, courtesy of consecutive and-ones: first from Langford and then from Zackery.
The surge allowed the Eagles to reclaim their lead, which they held onto until there was under three minutes left in regulation. A Zackery 3-pointer and Langford steal-to-dunk conversion were instrumental in that span.
But Karnik fouling out at the 3:39 mark hurt BC badly. Gianni Thompson, a 6-foot-8 freshman forward came in to play the five, however, the Eagles’ lack of height inside enabled the Fighting Irish to clean up the offensive glass and swarm the paint.
The Eagles lucked out with a phantom tripping call on Wesley that gifted Zackery two free throws, which tied the game at 84-84 with 43 ticks remaining.
Wesley and Makai Ashton-Langford traded layups in the waning seconds. Wesley got a chance to win the game in regulation, but his shot was off the mark.
BC started overtime 0-of-4 from the floor. Thompson settled for a pair of 3-point attempts, neither of which fell. And Ashton-Langford had a bad throwaway turnover.
Meanwhile, Notre Dame notched its first five points of the extra frame at the line. A Langford mid-range jumper gave the Eagles life. The turning point was when his older brother picked Wesley’s pocket, setting up a clutch Kanye Jones 3-pointer that pulled BC within one point of the Fighting Irish.
Prentiss Hubb knocked down the ensuing jumper, leaving BC 10 seconds to tie the game. Galloway was the inbounder, except he couldn’t find anyone to pass to—Langford started to come back to the ball, but it was too late. Rather than using a timeout, Galloway tossed a pass to Langford that was intercepted by Hubb, who proceeded to ice the game at the line.
“They had nobody on the ball,” Grant said. “I thought Brev probably panicked a little bit. DeMarr was still coming toward the ball. We had one timeout. We talked about that.”
Grant continued: “He made the play, and they stole it. So give them credit for that.”
BC deserves a lot of credit, too. Not for the botched inbound—for the way it played on the road, down two major contributors, against a Notre Dame team tied for first in the ACC.
The test will be making Wednesday an offensive building block, not a fluke.
