Takeaways from BC’s Comeback Win Over Tigers
Andy Backstrom (@andybackstrom)
Publisher
Earl Grant went for a walk Saturday morning, hours before Boston College men’s basketball squared off against Clemson in Littlejohn Coliseum. The first-year Eagles head coach, a Clemson assistant from 2010-14, passed by familiar campus landmarks.
Then he sent a text to Marquette head coach Shaka Smart, who was a Tigers assistant from 2006-08 before Grant arrived on staff. Grant explained that Smart gave him recommendations for where to live upon him receiving the Clemson gig years ago. And, now, more than a decade later, Grant’s BC team was staying at a hotel across the street from Smart’s old neighborhood.
“It did come full circle,” Grant said. “It really did.”
Not only for Grant but for Brevin Galloway, too, who met Grant at a Clemson camp when he was 10 years old. The Anderson, South Carolina, native ended up playing his high school ball at Seneca, spending five years at College of Charleston and then moving to BC with Grant ahead of this season.
During Saturday’s homecoming, Galloway went off for 18 points, ignited the Eagles’ 23-point comeback and sank the game-winning 3-pointer with 26 ticks remaining. The veteran guard, who had 48 family members and friends in attendance, hugged Grant after the buzzer.
“We didn’t talk about it much, but we knew how important this game was for us,” Galloway said.
Galloway is still playing hurt: He missed most of the 2020-21 season with a torn ACL, then made it back to the court in time for BC’s season opener but tweaked that knee amid the non-conference victory. He proceeded to miss the next five games before returning to the rotation for a three-game Eagles win streak, notably scoring a critical seven points in BC’s triumphant victory over Notre Dame. Galloway missed the following two games after having midseason surgery. But, because of the Eagles’ 19-day COVID-19 pause, he was back on the floor for the North Carolina game.
Starting with that blowout defeat, Galloway has attempted exactly 10 triples in each of BC’s last four games. He’s a combined 14-of-40 from beyond the arc (35%) in those performances, the final two of which have seen him pile up 18 points off the bench. Galloway jacked up nine shots in his first 10 minutes Saturday. Part of the reason why he’s so trigger happy is because he doesn’t have as much mobility as he used to.
“I feel like my knee is still bothering me a lot, and I’m kind of just dealing with the pain,” Galloway said. “When it comes down to it, I can’t really move as well as I want to. 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. I’m confident.
“I’m really, really confident in myself and my abilities. I believe that I can make every shot that I shoot.”
It was a tale of two halves for Makai Ashton-Langford: The graduate guard admitted postgame that he played a “terrible” first half. Ashton-Langford coughed up the rock four times, not to mention that he was 1-of-4 from the field and 0-of-2 from the free throw line.
“I completely take responsibility for us being down that much in the first half with all the turnovers I had,” Ashton-Langford said. “My teammates Brevin [Galloway], Jay Z (Jaeden Zackery), my little brother (DeMarr Langford Jr.) just kept me composed. And I was able to fight through that first-half drought…”
In the second period, Ashton-Langford was a big reason why the Eagles were winning loose balls they were losing in the opening frame. He was playing fearlessly, and his hustle was rewarded with 17 points, seven rebounds, three assists and one steal. Some of his makes were unfathomable, like his erratic runner with just under 12:20 to go in the second half or his high-bouncing jumper that dropped through the net some seven minutes later.
Ashton-Langford and center James Karnik—who finished with six rebounds and 17 points on 8-of-11 shooting—were playing a lethal two-man game that produced 27 of the Eagles’ 38 points in the final period.
“It gave us a great inside, outside punch,” Grant said. “Giving us balance. Almost like in football. If you can’t throw it inside, that’s like a football team that can’t run the ball. And so you have to be able to throw it inside a little bit.”
Ashton-Langford noted how Clemson was committing to Karnik, which freed up him and other Eagles for scoring opportunities.
After a rough start, BC finally shored up its perimeter defense: Coming into Saturday, the Eagles had allowed their previous five opponents to shoot north of 40% from downtown. It looked like Clemson was on pace to make it six in a row. Thanks to a hot start from Al-Amir Dawes, the Tigers converted four of their first six 3-point attempts. But they finished the half 1-of-7 from beyond the arc and were 1-of-6 from deep in the second period.
“We took better shots on offense, and we took care of the ball better, which eliminated a lot of the run-out scramble shots, where they got thrust and they running and we trying to get under control,” Grant said. “And then we just gritted our teeth. We gritted our teeth and just really got down in a defensive stance, and we were connected.”
Now, in all but one of BC’s seven wins this season, the Eagles are holding opponents to 33.3% or worse from 3-point land (the lone exception was Nov. 14 vs. Fairfield).
Gianni Thompson and Kanye Jones got time: Prior to the season, Grant discussed the importance of his team playing its best basketball in March. And that meant the entire team, not just the starters. He’s making an effort to build depth across the roster, something that Jim Christian struggled to do during his seven-year tenure. Freshmen Gianni Thompson and Kanye Jones both saw the floor Saturday.
Thompson checked in at the 13:43 mark of the first half and then again with 2:37 left in the period. He played a total of five minutes. Jones, on the other hand, subbed in with 10:49 to go and BC trailing, 51-50. The speedy guard had a plus-minus of -4, and his only shot was a transition layup that was blocked by Clemson’s Naz Bohannon. Thompson, meanwhile, didn’t attempt a shot.
Still, their minutes in a pivotal ACC matchup will be valuable for their development, if not down the stretch, next season.
This team fights for Grant: With the exception of an embarrassing showing against UNC—after practicing just two times in the previous three weeks because of COVID-19 protocol—BC has just one double-digit loss (an 11-point defeat at Saint Louis, which KenPom ranks 71st nationally and recently gave now-No. 2 Auburn a run for its money). As offensively-challenged as the Eagles have been at times this year, they find a way to compete more times than not. Last year, BC had seven double-digit defeats, including whoopings of 38 and 35 points. Instead of experiencing that kind of humiliation Saturday at Littlejohn Coliseum, the Eagles got the monkey of their back, winning their first true road game since Feb. 8, 2020.
“I was wondering how we’d respond,” Grant said. “I didn’t know how much we were down. But I knew we were down a lot. … I told the guys, ‘We gotta keep chipping away, and we’ve gotta keep believing.’ So we kept believing, and they kept chipping away, and we found a way to win.”
