No Underdog Crusade As Eagles Dominate Holy Cross

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- The gymnasium on St. James Street drew a buzz to the neighborhood in Roxbury on January 9, 1906. The College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit institution in Central Massachusetts, had traveled into Boston to play its academic and athletic rivals from Boston College. A strong contingent came in from Worcester with the road boys, and the hundreds in attendance were feverish in their support of their schools.

It was the 30th game of organized "basket-ball" for BC, but Holy Cross didn't have any trouble doubling up the hometown team. It was their first official meeting on record, but losing the matchup didn't sit well with the locals. They wanted to win, but after they lost again one month later, they'd have to wait 20 years for another shot at their rivals to the west.

Over 115 years later, the rivalry that started in the small gymnasium in Roxbury renewed itself after a decade-long hiatus. The dynamics might have been different, but the passion of watching Holy Cross and Boston College lace up their high tops for another round brought dramatic air to Conte Forum. Unfortunately for the Crusaders, it didn't last much longer beyond that after the Eagles opened the game on a 13-2 run.

BC was dominant, and after outscoring Holy Cross by nearly 20 points in the first half, the Eagles stamped a complete game with an 85-55 final that drove their record to 2-0 in the Earl Grant era.

"We try every day in practice to become somebody," Grant said. "We want to become a good program and a good team, so the [defensive pressure] is an everyday thing. We just try to do it every day and let it become part of our habits [because] they say you are what you repeatedly do. So if we practice every day and take pride in our defensive rebounding, we can continue to build [our reputation]."

An ACC team beating a Patriot League program doesn't seem like much in the grand scheme of the college basketball season, but the context surrounding Friday night emphasizes its local importance. The Crusaders are the only team from Massachusetts to ever win a national championship, though they did it in the halcyon days following the end of World War II. They were, for decades, the team that always won annual matchups essentially through the Eisenhower administration until BC started evening the score during the 1960s.

The rivalry tilted for good once BC formed the Big East, but Holy Cross, which refused an option to join the conference before ultimately settling into the Patriot League in 1991, still picked off three consecutive victories at the end of the 1980s and won individual matchups in 2002 and 2011. BC won the other games, but there were plenty of tight meetings through the years, including a three-point, overtime game in the last year before the Eagles realigned into the ACC.

The series went on hiatus after BC won at home in 2012, but it revived itself when Holy Cross returned to Conte Forum on Friday night. The Eagles just prevented its old stroke by shooting over 70 percent for long chunks of both the first and second halves. They rained eight of their first 10 shots to start the second half as they built a 35-point lead and bookended a 12-4 run over the last five minutes of the first with a 14-5 run in the first five minutes of the second.

"[Holy Cross] is from my hometown," DeMarr Langford said, "and that means a lot because if we lost, they would all be talking to me about it. So winning does feel good, but it's more that we got the win for the team and for our coach. We just want to keep this momentum going."

Playing against his hometown didn't necessarily register for Langford or his brother Makai Ashton-Langford, but both were particularly effective against the Crusaders. They scored a combined 32 points by shooting 11-of-18 from the field with DeMarr playing particularly lethal off the jump by scoring 16 in the first half, and Makai finished on both ends of the floor with four rebounds, four assists and two steals. He only needed to score six points in either half, but he posted his numbers in the second by playing only nine minutes before yielding time to the team's bench players.

"Makai has been a steady everyday guy for the past six and a half months," Grant said. "He's been an everyday guy in the gym working at his game, and he's shown a care level essentially since we met each other. He was given the fruit of his labor [on Friday] because he's been working really hard to try to develop his game. You can see some of that stuff happening in games [since] he has good speed, good athleticism, and he's shooting the ball with more confidence."

"He can do a lot," Langford said. "He's a really special dude. He's a fifth-year senior, he's a veteran, and he has experience and time. One thing that impresses me the most is that whether it's a close game or a blowout, he's one dude that I know I can count on to have poise and hold us together to hold us down. That's one of those things that impresses me the most about him."

Five players scored in double figures for BC and TJ Bickerstaff shot 7-for-10 from the floor. He hit one of the Eagles' 3-pointers on the night and grabbed an seven rebounds, three of which were on the offensive end, while avoiding foul trouble. He spent most of the game running the floor, fed with fast break passes from fellow newcomer Jaeden Zackery, who led the team with six assists while scoring 13 points, including eight in the second half.

Holy Cross, meanwhile, couldn't find a second gear. It received 33 points from guards Kyrell Luc and Malcolm Townsell and an additional 11 points from Michael Rabinovich, but the Crusaders battled through stifling pressure from the BC back line.

"It's hard to be a 40-minute team at this time of the year," Grant said. "We're still making some miscues and turnovers and had a couple of defensive breakdowns from time to time. Some of it is that we were subbing a lot because when we got up 35, we weren't going to leave four starters in the game with another game on Sunday at 4 p.m. But we had 30-plus good minutes and as the season grows, you get closer to 40."

BC now heads into its third game in less than a week when it hosts Fairfield on Sunday afternoon. The Stags were a pleasant surprise last year in the MAAC after finishing in a four-way tie for fifth place with seven league wins after the conference switched to a wins-based format. After slow starts and losing streaks conspired to drop them to 0-5, 1-9 and 2-12 at various points during the season, they rallied to win three out of four games at one stretch and finish the year with a 7-4 run into the MAAC Tournament.

Once there, they beat Manhattan in overtime before defeating both second-seeded Monmouth and third-seeded Saint Peter's to advance to the MAAC Championship. They ultimately lost to Rick Pitino's Iona club by nine in the conference title game, but it was hardly a failure for first year head coach Jay Young. They opened the 2021-22 campaign with a seven-point loss to Providence as part of Tuesday's opening night across college basketball, but the score remained close until the Friars closed out the Stags in the late minutes.

Sunday's game will tip off at 4 p.m. from Conte Forum and will be broadcast on the ACC Network Extra available through the ESPN online streaming platform with radio broadcast on WEEI 850 AM.

No Underdog Crusade As Eagles Dominate Holy Cross

Players Mentioned

Makai Ashton-Langford

Jaeden Zackery

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