Despite Impressive Defense, Scoring Droughts Plague Eagles at UNC
Andy Backstrom (@andybackstrom)
Publisher
Brevin Galloway followed a pair of free throws with a layup to cut Boston College men’s basketball’s deficit to three with 7:13 left Wednesday night in Chapel Hill. The Eagles were trailing, 50-47, in the Smith Center, where North Carolina hadn’t lost all season.
BC was orchestrating a masterful defensive performance, holding the Tar Heels to a better field goal percentage from outside than inside. And, at one point, the Eagles went 17 minutes without a turnover.
“We played hard enough, and we defended well enough,” BC head coach Earl Grant said postgame.
The Eagles just couldn’t make shots, especially down the stretch. Two days removed from the program’s worst shooting performance all-time versus an ACC opponent, BC missed its final 10 shots and finished 1-of-16 from 3-point land.
UNC, which won its first-ever game shooting under 30% from the floor, took care of business from the free throw line, where they were 20-of-25 and scored the final four points, clinching a 58-47 victory.
“It was a one- or two-possession game for 37 minutes without making shots,” Grant said. “You make shots, you may have been up by 12 points. But we gave ourselves a chance without making shots.”
Grant said he thought the “biggest disparity” between the ACC foes was the free throw split: UNC (14-6, 6-3 ACC) attempted 25, whereas BC (8-11, 3-6) got just eight shots from the charity stripe.
Sometimes, it’s just the reality of playing on the road. The Dean Dome was packed with 17,237 fans, and, per usual, it was loud. The Eagles adjusted well, though.
After turning the ball over four times in the first five minutes and change, BC started to slow things down and actually made 5-of-7 field goals to begin the half.
“We didn’t really hear the crowd after the first three minutes,” Grant explained. “We didn’t hear them the rest of the half. They would throw a punch, we would throw a punch.”
Shortly after a 6-0 Eagles run, UNC countered with a 9-0 surge, capitalizing on the first BC dry spell. Kerwin Walton, who entered averaging 3.4 points, nearly doubled that with six straight points: three at the free throw line and three more from beyond the arc.
BC, however, hung around.
DeMarr Langford Jr. chipped in a soft-touch layup and then knocked down a baseline jumper. Center Quinten Post, the only Eagle to finish in double figures, was doing a nice job of neutralizing UNC forward Armando Bacot, who came into the game leading the ACC in field goal percentage. Bacot was just 1-of-7 from the field Wednesday night.
It also helped that TJ Bickerstaff stitched together his fourth 15-plus rebound game of the season. The Drexel transfer went toe-to-toe with Bacot on the glass, pulling down 17 boards, in addition to using his length on the defensive end to limit Brady Manek to just seven points.
The Eagles were down six with under four minutes to go in the first half, and they made it a 33-31 game by intermission, in large part thanks to six points from James Karnik in the final 2:28. BC ended the opening frame the same way it started it: hitting 5-of-7 shots from the field.
Except both teams struggled offensively after halftime. BC started 1-of-7, and UNC was 1-of-6. BC’s lone basket came on a pick-and-roll finish from Karnik, courtesy of a Jaeden Zackery feed.
Grant called a timeout with 12:22 left and the Tar Heels up, 46-39. UNC guard RJ Davis, who scored a team-high nine second-half points, was finding a groove. Before the stoppage, Davis got Zackery to fly by on a shot fake and then buried the 3-pointer.
A strong baseline finish from Caleb Love—the Tar Heels’ leading scorer (16 points) Wednesday night—pushed UNC’s lead to 50-43. To make matters worse for the Eagles, four players were in foul trouble: Bickerstaff, Post, Karnik and Langford.
But that’s when Galloway’s four points kicked in, and, all of a sudden, BC was back within three.
That’s as close as it would get. The basket shrunk in size for the Eagles in the final seven minutes of play. Bickerstaff was short on a second-chance opportunity, Langford missed everything on a fadeaway jumper and Galloway’s 3-point shooting woes continued.
Coming out of another Grant timeout, Makai Ashton-Langford, playing through pain after taking a hard fall Monday night at Wake Forest, missed an open triple from the left corner.
Soon after, Zackery missed a pair of free throws that would have made it a five-point game. The kill shot was Galloway missing a reverse layup with 36.2 seconds remaining.
UNC iced the game at the line, and the Eagles stomached another Tobacco Road defeat.
It was BC’s third game in five days: A stretch that started with jubilation in Conte Forum and ended with frustration in North Carolina.
“We’ve gotten better because of what we’ve been through,” Grant said. “And so we’ve got to draw from this, learn from it. And hopefully, as we continue to go through the season, we’ll find some strength from this week.”
