On Wednesday night, Boston College fell in their Conte Forum season finale 78-69 to Clemson.
Jayden Hastings had an explosive start to the game, with a great block on Schefflin on the game’s second possession and an and-1 dunk to follow. He scored the Eagles’ first 5 points, but first a couple Chase Hunter buckets and then a run from Viktor Lakhin kept Clemson in front. Both teams were on fire offensively to start, with a lot of easy looks coming at the rack. The track meet was not to last, however, as Clemson found some defensive stops and pushed their lead to 10 points by the 11:17 mark. Stop me if you’ve heard this before – BC struggled to guard ball screens. Clemson found a couple easy looks off a big man roller, or open 3s in the corner off the action. Jaeden Zackery scored 8 straight for the Tigers to push the Clemson lead to 14.
BC found a bit of momentum via a Hand transition corner 3, cutting the lead to 11. On the ensuing possession, the Eagles also forced another turnover and Dion Brown took advantage with another 3. Clemson quickly responded with a 7-point run of their own, quickly restoring a comfortable 15-point cushion. Jayden Hastings was far and away the bright spot in the first half for the Eagles – he set a career-high in points in the first half alone – but it was largely a Clemson offensive clinic in the first half. The Tigers led, 49-39.
The Eagles came out firing in the second half, closing as close as 6 through a tough Eli Strong take. But as was the case in the first half, every time BC tried to make a run Clemson had an answer. BC simply just didn’t have the personnel to match up with Clemson’s weapons on the perimeter and down low. Grant mixed and matched rotations – even spotting Kany Tchanda and Luka Toews some significant minutes – but Clemson was able to consistently maintain a multi-possession lead.
Until the 11-minute mark. Dion Brown cashed two turnovers in for buckets at the rack to cut the lead to 5, and then stepped out for a rhythm triple to slice the deficit to 2 and force a Clemson timeout. Unfortunately for BC, they would not score again for almost four minutes of game time. Clemson retook a 9-point lead and took the air out of Conte Forum again, before Hastings (who had the best performance of his young career tonight) cut it to 3. Over the next 2 minutes, the Eagles forced 3 turnovers and had multiple opportunities to tie or cut the deficit to 1 but could not find twine. Clemson got a bucket to go to restore a 5-point lead. BC then missed 10 of their next 11 shots, effectively killing their hopes of a comeback upset. Clemson went on to secure the 78-69 dub in another frustrating outing for Grant’s squad.