Men's basketball continues downward spiral with 8th straight loss
Everyone makes the ACC tournament…basically.
It’s a reward for 15 of the 18 teams and for some programs, a way to earn yourself a spot in the NCAA Tournament. For lack of a better term, it’s a participation trophy for a good regular season for the majority of teams.
BC is now dangerously close to missing the tournament that just about everyone in the ACC makes for the second straight year.
The Eagles got blown out by 24 against SMU, 90-74 on the road. In what now seems to be a defiant stand despite a poor shooting season – albeit a good first half performance against FSU – the Eagles jacked up 35 three pointers and hit 11 of them (31%).
As a team, BC shot 33% (23-69) and turned it over nine times. BC was also out-rebounded again, 40-38. The Eagles trailed 40-36 at the half after giving up an 8-0 run in the closing moments of the opening 20.
Fred Payne had 20 points. Chase Forte had just six, but he added seven assists. Boden Kapke had 10 points. Jayden Hastings had seven points and five rebounds, all offensive. Jason Asemota had eight boards.
Now sitting at 9-18 and 2-12 in the ACC, the Eagles are in the bottom three with Pitt (10-17, 3-11) and Georgia Tech (11-17, 2013), while Notre Dame is currently clinging to that 15th spot at 12-15 (3-11).
BC has four games remaining starting with Wake Forest (14-13, 5-9) at home on Tuesday night. Miami (21-6, 10-4), Virginia Tech (18-10, 7-8) and the Fighting Irish close things out at home in the season finale March 7.
Here’s what Grant had to say postgame:
Opening thoughts
“Yeah, I mean, SMU was good. A lot of firepower, played with good pace. You know, I thought we controlled the game to start the game. We kept the crowd out of it. And with 2:30 left in the first half, they made a big three, kind of got them on a run and it kind of carried over to the second half where those seven minutes starting with that three and then the first four minutes of the second half, I thought they made a big run, you know? And we let the crowd get really excited, really get going and the game got away from us.”
On the message at halftime
“Yeah, just how important control of the tempo was. You know, just controlling the tempo. Obviously, you want to be aggressive and attack if you’ve got layups or wide open rhythm threes, but forcing them to defend us, keeping the crowd quiet and not, you know, not letting them get into it. I thought their zone st the start of the second half stymied us. You know, we usually get excited when we see a zone, but we didn’t get excited today. It stymied us. We missed some stuff at the rim. We missed a couple threes. We didn’t probe it good enough and I thought that affected us and then once we figured it out, we started to really attack it…the game was out of hand. I think they were already up 18 or 20 points.”
On starting off strong and not finishing
“Well, I think some of it is sustaining, some of it may be depth. You know, we got to use the bench more, like tonight. Fred Payne didn’t come out in the second half, he’s one of our main guys. But, I gotta continue to trust the bench. That’s why tempo for our particular team is important, because we do play guys heavy minutes. We got some of the most-used guys in college basketball in terms of time on the floor. So, it’s a 40-minute game and we play great basketball for patches of a game, but we haven’t been able to sustain. So, that’s the only answer I have for that. We’ve got to sustain it for 40 minutes.”
On if he expects to be back at BC next season
“You know, I mean I haven’t even thought about that. What I’m thinking about is trying to get this team better. Continue to work with our players, we’ve got great guys in the locker room, and so that’s my focus. You know, just to kind of continue to try and control what I can. I feel great about what we’ve done at BC and I feel really good about what we going to continue to do. So, yeah, that’s it. Just stay focused on what you can control and try to get these guys better every day.”
On how the team can have better offense inside the three point line
“I think it depends on, you know, how you look at it. I think we made 11 threes, that’s 33 points on 35 possessions is almost right at the national average for points per possession. I thought that Fred settled for maybe a few too many, you know. And I thought actually we had a few looks we could have made from other guys. So, I think the three point shot is a weapon. It’s something that we can utilize. It’s something that…my team’s always been able to do it at a high level. But yeah, you maybe talking about three shots less we could have took from three, but that’s about it.”
