Boston College men’s basketball had its best shooting game of the year on Tuesday night, making nine of its 18 threes and posting 51 percent shooting from the field.
Guard Fred Payne scored a season-high 24 points. The Eagles held NC State to three fast-break points. They shot and made 10 more free throws than the Wolfpack, too.
Still, BC (7–8, 0–2 Atlantic Coast) fell short once again, losing 79–71 at home to NC State (11–5, 2–1). If all those things went right for BC, then what went wrong? For fans that have been following the Eagles all season, the reasons to blame for this loss won’t come as much of a surprise.
BC failed to show up in key moments. The Eagles’ overall play was enough to keep them in the game, but basketball is a game of runs. BC’s losses this season have come primarily because of its inability to put together winning sequences when it matters most.
“Just got to keep working, try to figure out how to take an offensive performance like tonight, match it with the defense that we’re capable of playing, and continue to push forward,” BC head coach Earl Grant said.
Last Saturday, it was a late-game shooting drought that led to the Eagles’ loss at Georgia Tech. Similar patterns emerged on Tuesday.
Donald Hand Jr. sank a 3-pointer with 10:49 left in the game, cutting NC State’s lead to 55–51. The Eagles didn’t score another field goal until the 6:19 mark, when Jayden Hastings sank a hook shot over his defender. Those four and a half minutes were defining for the Eagles’ chances at a win—and not in a positive way.
“We just have to execute the game plan,” Hand Jr. said. “[We] go over the film and stuff, but we got to do a better job at executing. That’s all that’s really to it.”
Matt Able responded to Hastings’ make with a three on the other end, and Payne missed a stepback 3-pointer on the following possession. The closest the Eagles got after that was nine points, until the final minute when Payne finished a meaningless dunk with 13 seconds left for a final deficit of eight.
While BC was good from the 3-point line—the best it’s been all season, in fact—NC State was better. The Wolfpack went 13-of-22 from behind the arc, good for a 59-percent mark. The best 3-point shooting team in the country (Miami (OH)) is shooting nearly 43 percent.
The Wolfpack also won the turnover battle, committing four to BC’s 16. Twelve of BC’s giveaways came in the first half, and the Eagles had three in the first 2:12 of the game alone. NC State ran a 2-2-1 press, but Grant said that wasn’t the main cause of BC’s turnovers.
“We didn’t turn it over necessarily against the press—we turned it over in the paint, driving it in against their length” Grant said. “They got some deflections early, but against the press we handled it. I thought it was just in the half-court, some of our decision-making, driving the ball.”
Grant said BC’s first-half mistakes were the deciding factor in the loss.
“You got to look back at some of those mistakes that happened in the first half,” Grant said. “We just got high-character guys that want to be here, that want to win, so they keep responding.”
Payne helped negate the effect of the Eagles’ mishaps, stealing a 5–4 lead with his first three of the game. He ended the game 3-of-6 from deep.
After that make, the Eagles went 2:58 without scoring a single bucket. Chase Forte made a layup to stop the drought, but another 1:55 went by before the Eagles scored another field goal.
Hastings dunked the ball with 12:29 left in the first half to make it 12–10 NC State, but BC’s struggles really kicked in after that, especially on the defensive end. In the following three minutes, NC State put up an 11–0 run.
“They were just being super aggressive—we got sped up a couple of times, sometimes we were trying to make the right play too much, and it resulted in a turnover,” Hand Jr. said.
The Eagles began to claw back when Aidan Shaw came up with a big block with 9:21 left in the first half, and Hastings made a layup to make it 23–12. Payne stepped things up in the last eight minutes of the first half, putting up nine points by himself, and BC headed into the locker room at half down 40–32.
Payne started the second half with a three, then assisted one from Luka Toews a minute and a half later to make it a six-point game. NC State responded with a dunk, but Payne sank a floater on the other end.
Terrance Arceneaux, who finished the game with 12 points on perfect shooting from three, sank a shot from deep with 11:06 to play. Hand Jr. hit one of his own, cutting the Wolfpack’s lead to four. Boden Kapke cut BC’s deficit to three by sinking two free throws at the 9:46 mark.
Buckets from Arceneaux and Darrion Williams helped NC State on a 6–0 run during another offensive drought from BC, however, and the Eagles couldn’t muster another comeback effort. Williams finished the game with a team-high 22 points.