Sometimes The Better Team Doesn't Always Win

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- The game was over.

Blake Wesley had given Notre Dame a two-point lead. Thirteen seconds remained in the second half. The Purcell Pavilion crowd was rabid, and the first place Fighting Irish anticipated a raucous celebration. Boston College had been plucky and feisty, but the upstart Eagles were about to befall their fate.

It bore repeating in the moment: the game was over.

Until it wasn't.

Makai Ashton-Langford's coast-to-coast, fastbreak drive off the inbounding pass was as true as any of the Eagles' previous 32 made field goals, and that Joyce Center crowd went curiously quiet as the BC bench replaced its cheers with its own shouts. A tie score was snatched from the jaws of defeat, and eight seconds later, a missed jumper by Wesley sent the game into overtime. And though Notre Dame eventually won in overtime, the basket remained the most indelible image of Boston College's effort to adapt and persevere through a game's changing circumstances.

"He had been in that situation a couple of times already this year," BC head coach Earl Grant said after the game of Ashton-Langford. "I thought about calling a timeout, but he was an older guy and somebody we trust. He had momentum going down the court, so we let him go and he made that basket. You have to give him credit. That was a tough, kind of contortionist finish, but it found a way to go in."

How BC wound up in that moment was nearly the game story by itself after the Eagles entered the game without the services of both Quinten Post and T.J. Bickerstaff. Both sat out with injuries - Post for the second straight game and Bickerstaff for the first time since suffering a lower leg injury against Duke - which in turn forced Justin Vander Baan into a featured role alongside starting center James Karnik.

But both Karnik and Vander Baan ran into early foul trouble, a common thread in a game where Notre Dame shot 39 free throws. They found themselves handcuffed, and after they both fouled out in the second half, Gianni Thompson likewise was sent to the bench after registering five fouls in 12 minutes on the floor.

It forced BC into a five-guard set, a rarity in college basketball and especially at the Division I level. Both DeMarr Langford and Kanye Jones rotated into the center spot defensively, but the offense anchored an old-school motion built off of slashes and high ball screens to create high percentage shots.

"You still can get the ball into the paint without big men," Grant said. "You can throw it into the post, or you can spread them out and move the ball by being patient to get a movement from side-to-side in order to get a reverse, and then you look to drive the ball when the lanes open up. I thought we did a good job of that, but for Gianni, that was the first time he was able to play that many minutes. So we were settling for a couple of shots when we had more time on the shot clock instead of grinding it a little bit more to get back into the paint."

The adaptation resulted in BC shooting significantly better than Notre Dame in every facet. Spreading the Fighting Irish out defensively enabled the Eagles to shoot 61 percent in the first half and 55 percent in the second half compared to 52 percent and 48 percent for Notre Dame, and premium shot selection put the three-point shooting at a distinct advantage.

The only difference came at the charity stripe, where the foul trouble on BC allowed Notre Dame to shoot 12 and 17 free throws in the first and second half, respectively. Paul Atkinson, Jr. went 9-for-11 on the game while both Cormac Ryan and Nate Laszewski went a perfect 5-for-5. Prentiss Hubb likewise was perfect on all four of his shots as every Fighting Irish player that registered game time got to the line at least twice.

"We really wanted to dominate inside," Grant said, "but our bigs got into foul trouble. That element of the game, we couldn't really do much with that. The guys played hard and executed the game plan, but we needed to slow them down a bit."

Having Notre Dame shoot over 84 percent from the line when it shot just under 40 attempts was the difference in a four-point, overtime game, and nobody could watch that game and definitively analyze how the first place team in the league was significantly better than the rebuilding Eagles. One game after BC struggled to contain Duke's inside presence, it adapted and executed on the fly to the other first place team, a fact that wasn't lost on Grant in the aftermath of the loss.

"It was a good effort," Grant said. "We'll watch the film and figure out where we can make improvements, but there's no need to harp on too much right now. There has to be a little more discipline to guard without fouls, so we could keep big bodies on the floor, and we have to be a little bit more disciplined defensively and in rebounding the ball, which we do every night. But that was one very long, quick, short message, and I know we'll have a chance to watch them."

It was on that note that a proud Boston College team left South Bend with its head held as high as it's been all season. It now heads to Syracuse as a dangerous ACC team capable of hanging and beating anyone, where it will face a team that it just battled less than two weeks ago. If Wednesday is any indication, the race for those final bye spots to the quarterfinal are still wide open, and BC is very much a team to watch in the mix.

"We did a lot of good things against Syracuse," Grant said, "but we have to do it and try to do it again, then continue to be sharp offensively. We took a step in the right direction, so hopefully we can bottle it up and keep momentum going."

BC and Syracuse will tip-off on Saturday at 12 p.m. from the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, N.Y. The game can be seen on national television via ESPNU with radio broadcast available via the Boston College Sports Network from Learfield, locally in Boston on WEEI 850 AM.

Sometimes The Better Team Doesn't Always Win

Players Mentioned

Makai Ashton-Langford

T.J. Bickerstaff

Kanye Jones

James Karnik

Quinten Post

Gianni Thompson

Justin Vander Baan

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