On Saturday afternoon, Boston College secured a much-needed win over Georgia Tech.
Both teams got off to decent offensive starts, with the Eagles jumping to a quick 3-point lead. Roger McFarlane started off his game with a nice triple, and of course Hand Jr. got going quickly as well, with 13 first-half points. Lance Terry and Baye Ndongo carried GT’s offense early, scoring the first ~20 for the Yellow Jackets. BC had trouble guarding GT’s ball screen actions; the Eagles would try to blitz the ball handler and force him to delay the pass. However, the BC big — both Venning and Hastings had trouble — would be a step too late, allowing for an easy entry pass to the slipping GT big and forcing an undersized help defender to sag off his man. This led to a number of high-quality looks at the rack and from 3 off the kickout pass. Thankfully for the Eagles, GT had an awful shooting night — 32.1% from the floor and 21.7% from 3, and missed a couple good looks. Towards the end of the second half, BC was able to modestly extend their lead by stringing together a couple made 3s. Eli Strong hit two in the first half, and hyped up the student section after the first one. BC went into the half with a 5-point lead.
The Eagles deserve credit for their response and adjustments in the second half. GT tried to go back to the ball screen action, and Venning in particular deserves a ton of credit for his adjustments. He was able to blitz effectively and then recover in time to contest at the rack, collecting 4 blocks in the process. BC’s guards also were great at clogging passing lanes, rotating on time, and forcing turnovers (of which the Eagles racked up 13, leading to a number of strong looks on the other end). That said, BC’s offense began to go stale with around 7 minutes left in the game. Georgia Tech was able to chip away at the 15-point lead, getting it down to 6 at one point. But the Eagles held firm. Dion Brown asserted himself, scoring two tough layups (including an and-1) and a silky pull-up midrange to restore a comfortable Eagle’s lead. Brown also skied for a nice offensive rebound and delivered an assist to Hand, who splashed the dagger 3 to secure the win.
This was without a doubt one of the Eagles’ most complete games this season. Offensively, multiple guys had an important contributions. Hand of course delivered 20 on 7-14 shooting, but he actually was silent for the first two-thirds of the second half. Payne was effective in his minutes, including a nice strip into tough fast-break layup. Venning was a huge reason why BC turned the 5-point halftime lead into a 15-point lead early in the second half; he had a couple putback layups and was a consistent outlet. Brown’s aggressiveness in hunting his shot in the middle of GT’s big push was huge. Strong had 9 points as well. Lastly — I am not Kelley’s biggest fan, but he did his job well tonight. He was solid defensively, took what the defense gave him, and led the team with 4 assists. He needs to play like this consistently. Defensively, I was really encouraged to see the adjustments in the second half against GT’s ball screen. Grant has notoriously struggled with his in-game decisions, but I thought he did an excellent job today. The Eagles lost to this team by 21(!) a couple months ago. To see them win the return matchup by 15 is improvement. This season is already lost, but today was a sign that the players are still fighting for Grant and can point to this win as tangible progress.