On Monday night, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish traveled to Chestnut Hill to face off against the Boston College Eagles in Conte Forum. BC got down early, but built their way to a second half comeback and topped it off with some heroics from Quinten Post that led the Eagles to win a close one, 63-59.
The game started out with some back-and-forth strikes on offense, with the scoring being spread out well across the Eagles roster. The players looked a lot better than how they did on their road trip to Syracuse and Clemson, during which they were fighting the flu. Jaeden Zackery led the way as the ball movement looked great and they were finding players with open looks, even if the shots didn’t always go down. Notre Dame, though, ran a lot of their offense through freshman Markus Burton and he made a lot of play happen for them. With 13 first half points and 2 assists, Burton found open looks and helped facilitate open threes that BC struggled to defend. With a slew of made baskets in a row, and a bunch of misses by BC, the Irish jumped out to a 12-point lead that eventually reduced to a 36-29 lead to close the first half.
Boston College continued to narrow that lead as the second half commenced, eventually retaking it less than five minutes into the half. They started defending Burton very well, not even allowing him a decent look and preventing his impact on all parts of the offense. So with some additional made BC baskets, and continued leadership by Jaeden Zackery who quickly reached 20 points, the game went back-and-forth once again. Braeden Shrewsberry found his footing from the three-point line and Burton started to find a few more looks as Notre Dame took a small lead, but Quinten Post hit three clutch shots in a row to bring the lead right back to BC with about 3 minutes remaining. Post looked well-recovered from the stomach bug that had plagued his recent road trip and came up huge for the Eagles down the stretch.
Then, with the game tied and 44 seconds remaining on the clock, Quinten Post stepped up once again to the three-point line and hit a huge shot, giving the Eagles a three-point lead. Notre Dame put together a couple of possessions at the end to get a chance to win, but their game-tying shot rimmed out and Chas Kelley’s free throws closed out the 63-59 BC win.
With 15 points in just the second half, Quinten Post was the catalyst for the BC comeback and clearly showed his value to the team once again tonight, as his missing production over the last two games really hurt the team. Jaeden Zackery also really showed out, scoring 20 points and competing on the defensive end of the floor, too. The Eagles were able to take care of business against a weaker ACC opponent and improve to a 2-3 conference record, a promising (if lackluster) start.