What stood out from Earl Grant after blowout loss to Duke
Another night, another ACC loss.
BC was hammered on the road by Duke on Tuesday night, 67-49, dropping to 9-13 overall and 2-7 in the ACC. The Eagles are at the bottom of the conference with Pitt as the only two teams below .500.
Here’s everything that stood out from Earl Grant following the loss to the Blue Devils:
Opening thoughts
“Yeah, obviously, first six minutes of the game, we let it get away from us. I think they hit us with a 12-0 run, which we had to dig ourself out of that hole. But, really proud of the guys. They kept battling, kept fighting in a tough environment. I thought at the start of the second half, there was a period of time we played basketball the way we capable of. We got to try and build on that.”
On Fred Payne’s production and what it means for the half court offense
“Yeah, I mean, obviously, guards rule college basketball. You mentioned a few guys I’ve coached that were unbelievable. I think guards are the key. So, Fred was really good. It was a low scoring game, both sides with five minutes to go, it was 50-37. So, it was kind of a grinder and we needed it to be that way so we can keep the crowd out of it. So, he was efficient. We moved him to the point guard position. I thought at that point he probably could have distributed a little bit more because so much attention was coming to him. They were bringing two guys to the ball, but I thought he was very aggressive and he obviously kept us in the game.”
On if Duke’s fast start got BC out of its game plan
“I wasn’t expecting that start. We hadn’t experienced that all year. But, they did hit us. They hit us pretty hard early, got the crowd into it and it was 12-0. If you take that out, I thought we executed the plan pretty well. We did break down a few times defensively in the first half on some of their screening actions. But, we cleaned all of that up and started getting a little more stingy on defense. There’s two things I saw we needed to be better: we had some open looks that we needed to knock down from three. You know, we executed pretty well, but we had some open looks we needed to knock down. And, we needed to make a few better decisions in the paint. They forced us into some tough shots with their ball pressure and their denial and we needed to work for a little bit better shot. But, if you take out the first four minutes of the game, I thought we played pretty good basketball.”
On importance of getting out to better starts
“Well, we’ve been up in the first half a lot in the last three or four games. But, tonight it was different. Obviously, we’ll learn from the film, we’ll watch it and again, I knew it could possibly happen. I played here plenty times, so you gotta weather the first part of that storm and we didn’t.”
Up next
BC is back at home for an early 11:00 a.m. start on Saturday morning against Miami.
