How Sweep It Is!

Everything about the closing seconds both slowed down and felt like a blur for senior Emma Guy. She broke from the Boston College huddle knowing an inbound pass was coming her way, that everything else was a misdirection or ploy to throw scent in another direction. She had to erase the memory of Destinee Walker's desperation put back from moments earlier, the one that gave Notre Dame a one point lead with a sliver of hope on the clock.

Guy went through the motions in her head and looked at teammate Georgia Pineau, who had the inbound pass. The Fighting Irish lined up in their defense but guarded the perimeter, exposing their alignment to the BC offense. Guy sized up the matchup inside, took a deep breath - and heard a whistle.

Head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee had used the final timeout. The last 1.2 seconds would need to wait. By the time Guy returned to the floor, the added emotion was nowhere to be found.

"At first, I thought to myself, 'oh God, this is for the game-winning shot,'" Guy said. "But once I got out on the court, I was back in the zone.

BC ran a fake screen to guard Makayla Dickens, who rotated out of the paint and pulled a defender to follow. Pineau floated a picture-perfect pass through the air, and the Eagles forward grabbed it out of the air. She floated it up off the rim, and as the ball bounced in, all of the bottled emotion exploded - from Guy, from Pineau, from the players on the floor, from the bench, from the fans in the Conte Forum stands.

Boston College 56. Notre Dame 55.

"That was crazy," Guy said. "At first, I knew Notre Dame was going to pack the paint a little bit, which is when (the coach) called the second timeout. When we were walking off, I was thinking that it was going to work, with a fake screen to (Dickens). That's how I got open in the first place, when my defender overplayed me. All I could think was that I couldn't mess it up. It was a great pass, and all I could think was that I couldn't do my teammate like that. And then it went in."

That one, single, solitary moment, which took less than two seconds, unraveled and rewrote decades of history between the two institutions. Boston College, which earlier this year defeated Notre Dame for the first time at Purcell Pavilion, swept the Fighting Irish in a two-game series for the first time in program history.

But it did so much more than that. That one shot, in that one instant, stole a spotlight to Conte Forum and redefined the perception and understanding of Boston College women's basketball. In a program-building era defined by the second-year coaching staff, the players who bought into a new beginning became the ones who challenged their sport's establishment - and won.

"We're fighters," Guy said. "We love being the underdog, and it fires us up. We love the competition."

The ending completely rewrote a game story centered around an impossible night of bad shooting. The Eagles led, 11-10, after the first quarter but only hit two of their 19 shot attempts. Their second quarter split wasn't much better, having only shot 4-of-15, and Notre Dame built a 15-point lead when Walker hit a layup with 4:21 remaining in the third quarter. BC was 0-for-17 shooting threes before Pineau handed the ball to Cameron Swartz for a fast break buzzer beater to end the third.

"That made me look smart," McNamee laughed. "I told (Pineau) to get it in to chuck it up, but we really don't work on that (play), kicking it out on the sideline. That's probably why it worked because it didn't look like anything we normally do."

Swartz's three broke an arctic streak from beyond the arc, but it also stamped an underlying moment to the game. Notre Dame hadn't hit a basket after Walker's layup. The Irish committed turnovers on three consecutive possessions before Walker forced another layup attempt short. Sam Brunelle missed a shot after a steal, and after a while, the bad possessions started piling up. BC, led by a couple of Pineau buckets, very quietly sliced into the lead, but the last-second shot carved it down to six.

"I have a lot of confidence in this team," McNamee said. "When I'm watching a game go down like (the first half), I can't believe that it continues that way. I see them execute every day and hit 90 percent of their free throws in practice. I see them work hard and do the right things, and we made a lot of shots in our shoot around. So there wasn't a time in the game where I thought we could lose."

It didn't get better for Notre Dame in the fourth quarter. The Fighting Irish didn't score until Marta Sniezek hit a jumper with five minutes remaining in a. By then, the Eagles built a six-point lead with layups and free throws.

It was a total reversal of a first half run by Notre Dame. BC struggled to hit anything in the second quarter, and a five minute scoreless span featuring seven consecutive missed shots, with seven turnovers, enabled a 13-0 run for the Irish. The Eagles attempted a couple of creative offensive plays, but it seemed like every possible outcome unraveled. Taylor Soule went 3-for-5 in the quarter, and free throws kept BC in the game when the half ended.

"Most kids would've pouted with all those missed shots and put backs," McNamee said. "It was a challenging game offensively. We weren't gelling. Shots were going in and out. But I didn't see one person not get back on defense. They were getting back defensively and getting focused (on the next possession).

For BC, rallying from that deficit was only part of the equation. The cat-and-mouse game ping-ponged the lead between the two teams in the last minute, and the heroics originally belonged to Pineau, who went 6-for-9 off the bench with her best offensive game of the season. She hit a floater from the top of the free throw line with 19 seconds, after she canned one of two free throws earlier in the final minute, to give her team a one-point lead. But Walker, who missed her first layup but earned an offensive rebound on the play, put the ball in Guy's hands with the game on the line.

That need to rally, time and again, made walking off the home court with the win ever so much more satisfying to everyone. It was a signature win for the senior class, which likely never thought possible to sweep over Notre Dame, and stamped the arrival of Boston College into the ACC's next tier.

The loss to Syracuse last week coupled with an Orange win over both Louisville and North Carolina, at the team, threatened to chase BC from the ACC's postseason chase conversation. It tilted the Eagles on their heels, especially with Notre Dame discovering an identity with three consecutive wins entering Thursday.

"This means the world to me," Guy said. "When (the senior class) is done here, it means progression. We love each other, and that makes these wins translate into something more special."

The watershed moment unearthed the legitimate nightmare of playing BC, a team with a blue-collar style formerly fostered as a hidden gem. Now the culture is laid out in the open, for all to see, for a team built more like a basketball family with a foundation of hard work and love for one another.

"This team is very together," McNamee said. "They sometimes don't have the confidence in themselves that they should, and games like this one allow them to have it. We were finally on the lucky end of things, and it was because we worked hard. With this senior class, we're building a family, and they're leaving a legacy of building blocks. We're starting it right now. These seniors bought in, and they love and support each other through the good and the bad. We want more good, and this game was good."

The Eagles, who improved to 7-6 in conference play with the win, are now tied for fifth place in the ACC with Syracuse, which beat North Carolina on Thursday as well. The Tar Heels, who fell to 7-7, now sit a game behind both squads entering the final handful of games in the regular season.

It sets up a massive regular season clash between the two teams on Sunday, when Boston College and North Carolina tip off at noon from Conte Forum. The game can be seen via the ACC Network Extra online streaming platform.

Players Mentioned

Emma Guy

Cameron Swartz

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