Eagles Keep Grinding In Win Over Rhode Island

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- Last week's Thanksgiving celebrations came at the perfect time for Earl Grant's Eagles. The previous week's trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands resulted in a 2-1 record in the Paradise Jam and returning home meant a few days of rest and relaxation prior to Sunday's matinee matchup with Rhode Island.

Workouts and film sessions loomed, but having the time to stretch legs and unwind was a welcome change after the grueling weekend in the tropics. BC was ready for a break, and after taking a few days off to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday, the Eagles returned to the court by staying committed to their defensive culture in a 53-49 win over the Rams. "It kind of felt like the team that got to 55 would win," Grant said following BC's third win in its last four games.

The trip to the Virgin Islands offered a risky paradox for a team deeply impacted by depth and injury issues, but the Eagles effectively exited the tournament exactly where they started despite enjoying herky-jerky, up-and-down results. A dominant wire-to-wire win over George Mason was followed by a loss to new Division I program Tarleton State. The tournament closed with a back-and-forth battle with Wyoming - a team that should contend for the Mountain West crown this coming March.

Prior to the tournament, Grant was concerned with the toll that three games in four days would put on his injury-riddled roster. At times throughout the tournament, he turned to walk-ons Quinn Pemberton and Andrew Kenny in key first half spots to provide the needed depth that BC simply doesn't have right now.

"Other guys have really stepped up, and you don't really ever want that, but if you are in basketball long enough, what you realize is that there are seasons like this," Grant explained. "Over the last 22 years, maybe there have been people that count you out, which not to say we've arrived, but maybe people count you out. I think that with our team, what's happened is that a lot of players, and the growth of the players because of what we've had to deal with, is going to help us in January, February, March, and even December because our freshmen aren't freshmen anymore."

The 2-1 mark had BC's early season power rankings ebb and flow. Entering the Rhode Island game, the Eagles sat at 124. The numbers set a tone for the game against the Rams that the analytics folks would have adored and loved. URI was technically seeded worse, but the matchup offered a cross-section between teams that were the overall product of their environments. The Rams were 2-4 compared to BC's 4-2, but the 70-slot difference between the two was easily definable by what happened at both clubs' respective MTE. The Eagles' wins over George Mason and Wyoming kept them steady, while URI didn't have a backstop win after losing to two top-100 teams Kansas State and Tulane in the Cayman Islands Classic.

As the Eagles continued to battle their depth issues, and Rhode Island continued to find an identity under first-year head coach Archie Miller, both teams struggled to find rhythm throughout the game. BC centered its focus on shutting down the Rams' top scorer Ishmael Leggett. He had scored 30-plus points against Tulane in the Cayman Islands, but he missed all eight field goal attempts in the second half as the BC defense built a wall, stop after stop and brick by brick against a URI team that failed to reach 30 percent shooting from the field.

Mason Madsen individually contributed seven stops to the BC effort, second only to T.J. Bickerstaff, and earned one of the team's better defensive ratings - which measures the number of points allowed per 100 possessions. His defensive rebound rate, which measures the number of times BC grabbed a board off a missed field goal while he was on the floor, skyrocketed to 30 percent, which meant he was either boxing out, crashing or drawing enough attention to allow teammates to do the same. He was a player who finished with one point and missed all six of his field goal attempts, but those analytics measured just how important his play was down the stretch. Each of his eight rebounds counted in the BC lineup that saw seven players play at least 20 minutes on the floor.

"We don't mind playing a game like that," Grant said. "Certainly we would like to score more points, but if you hold a team under 50, it's going to be hard for them to beat you. I knew they wanted to defend and rebound, so we actually pulled each other into the mud. It was like a mud wrestling match that was real gritty and nasty. You had to embrace long possessions and rebound, and you had to work for good shots. I'm excited that we were able to win."

"We both worked really hard," Grant added, "and that's the way the game turned out. Hopefully we can continue to hold our opponents down like that. I'm just happy, again, that all of the players did the effort, and everybody had a hand in it. Everybody was involved in that game."

BC returns to the court on Wednesday when it plays at Nebraska in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. Tip-off is scheduled for 9:15 p.m. with television coverage available on ESPNU.

Eagles Keep Grinding In Win Over Rhode Island

Players Mentioned

T.J. Bickerstaff

Andrew Kenny

Mason Madsen

Quinn Pemberton

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