Clemson Homecoming for Grant, Galloway Ends in Celebration
Andy Backstrom (@andybackstrom)
Publisher
Brevin Galloway grew up a five to 10-minute drive away from Clemson’s campus. He met Earl Grant, then a Tigers men’s basketball assistant, at a program camp when he was 10 years old.
That was the start of a relationship that came full circle Saturday night in Littlejohn Coliseum.
Galloway—an Anderson, South Carolina, native who played four years under Grant at College of Charleston and followed his head coach to Boston College—starred against Clemson in front of a hometown crowd of 7,443, including 48 family members and friends.
He ignited a 23-point comeback with back-to-back 3-pointers in the first half, then hit a trey from The Esso Club to pull the Eagles within two late in the second before knocking down the game-winning triple with 26 seconds remaining.
The 70-68 comeback win snapped BC’s five-game skid and ended the program’s 707-day drought without a true road victory, a streak that dated back to Feb. 8, 2020.
“Me being able to hit that shot and win a game in Littlejohn after the losing streak we’ve been on,” Galloway said. “It feels wild.”
BC (7-8, 2-3 ACC) couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start. The Eagles had four turnovers before they attempted their second field goal of the game. Clemson (10-7, 2-4) capitalized.
Brad Brownell’s team jumped out to a 9-0 lead, thanks to Al-Amir Dawes, a junior guard who piled up 17 first-half points. Dawes set a career high with 22 at BC two years ago and looked like he was on his way to shattering that mark.
Galloway and Quinten Post, the bench duo which teamed up for 42 points in Wednesday’s loss to Georgia Tech, checked in, and the Eagles got on the board. Galloway chipped in a quick five points, and Jaeden Zackery turned a steal into a transition layup to make it 13-7.
That’s when Clemson put together a 21-4 run. The Tigers appeared to be winning every loose ball, and BC was struggling to defend the 3-point line.
Grant’s squad, which had allowed its last five opponents to shoot north of 40% from downtown, watched Clemson make four of its first six attempts from beyond the arc. The Eagles were getting stuck underneath screens and leaving the perimeter to help inside.
BC could have rolled over. But not on Grant’s watch.
“I didn’t know how much we were down,” the first-year Eagles coach said. "But I knew we were down a lot. … I just told the guys, ‘We gotta keep chipping away, and we’ve gotta keep believing.’ So we kept believing, and they kept chipping away.”
For the second game in a row, Galloway was the Energizer Bunny. He had the greenest of lights Saturday night as he attempted nine shots in his first 10 minutes of action. It was a jaw-dropping performance from Galloway, who’s still recovering from midseason knee surgery, didn’t even practice the previous day and was a game day decision.
Galloway admitted postgame that his knee, the same one in which he tore his ACL last year, is still bothering him “a lot.”
“When it comes down to it, I can’t really move as well as I want to,” Galloway said. “So I mean, as soon as I get the ball, it’s going up. I feel like I don’t need a lot of space.”
That was certainly the case Saturday. Off balance, tight quarters: It didn’t matter. The veteran guard was firing. And, most of the time, hitting.
James Karnik added a 3-pointer from the top of the arc to cut the Eagles’ deficit to 37-22. It was the beginning of a 13-2 BC run to close the half. It ended with a pair of layups. The first was a fastbreak Euro step bucket from DeMarr Langford Jr. The second was a last-second scoop by Jaeden Zackery off a Karnik screen.
The Eagles entered intermission down, 39-32. Makai Ashton-Langford blamed himself for why BC was in such a big hole to begin with. He called his first half “terrible” postgame.
He redeemed himself in the second period. Ashton-Langford scored 17 of BC’s 38 second-half points, including their first seven of the final frame. The athletic, 6-foot-3 guard was playing with bull horns, attacking the paint relentlessly. Even though it wasn’t always pretty—at times, he was moving too fast for his own good—Ashton-Langford put the ball in the basket.
Much of BC’s second half was a two-man game between Ashton-Langford and Karnik. They combined for 27 points in the period.
“They were all committing to James because he was doing a great job being physical down low,” Ashton-Langford explained. “So he opened up the floor for a lot of us to make plays for ourselves and for each other.”
The game was deadlocked at 49-46 for close to three minutes, however, the Eagles got within one prior to the midway point of the second half, courtesy of an improbable Ashton-Langford runner.
Then BC and Clemson traded buckets inside. Dawes was scoreless in the back half of play. Instead, the Tigers were fueled by graduate guard David Collins, who registered 12 points in the period yet, notably, went 0-of-5 from the charity stripe.
After going down, 62-54, BC flipped to a 2-3 zone on defense and orchestrated a 6-0 run to get back within two points of Clemson with five minutes to go. The Tigers stretched their lead to six, but a free throw and, soon after, a Galloway 3-pointer from the paw print logo as well as a TJ Bickerstaff layup tied things up at 66.
Collins drilled the go-ahead jumper with 35 ticks remaining. Except Galloway did him one better.
He launched his fifth and final 3-pointer in front of the BC bench. It swished, and his teammates erupted in jubilation.
Collins’ woes at the free throw line and a Clemson procedural violation spelled doom for the Tigers. The horn sounded, and the Eagles rejoiced.
Especially Grant and Galloway who met in that very arena more than a decade ago.
“It was amazing being able to hug him after the game,” Grant said of Galloway.
