Eagles Show Toughness, Togetherness in Rout of Seminoles

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- A general fatigue exists in college basketball by the end of February. Tournament teams are establishing their positioning against one another either inside or on the bubble, and the best of the best are trying to gain top seeds for their potential pathway to the Final Four. Teams without postseason contention attempt to push forward for the NIT or other brackets, while others still are more likely to play the role of spoiler for those still harboring championship contention.

BC head coach Earl Grant was never under a false pretense about the challenges his team faced this season, and he never sought to engineer a single-season turnaround from any previous struggles the Eagles faced within the ACC. He instead intended to bring in the right players in order to lay a foundation while harboring a hope that, as he put it at the top of the season, BC would shock a few teams along the way.

On Monday night, Florida State entered Conte Forum clinging to postseason hopes with a 14-12 overall record, but after the first three minutes, those hopes were crumbling - maybe for good - as the Eagles jumped out to an 11-0 lead en route to a swamping of the Seminoles en route to a 71-55 victory.

"This team is very capable," Grant said of his squad. "We knew we were going to be down a couple of men, just like FSU, and it was going to come down to who had the most energy and most willpower. Our guys just had a lot of effort. They had a lot of deflections and steals, and they made the right plays finding each other for shots. I have to give the guys credit because we made the shots."

The early 11-0 run by the Eagles initially shell-shocked Florida State, but the Seminoles never truly recovered and couldn't get out of first gear. BC's defense kept the opposing offense completely out of sync, and while FSU's Matthew Cleveland did everything possible to keep his team in the game by scoring 10 points and grabbing seven rebounds, his team struggled to maintain any momentum. Jalen Warley went 1-for-4 from the field, and as time wore down in the half, an altercation between him and BC's Quinten Post resulted in double technical fouls.

BC, meanwhile, gelled and launched into the opening run while missing a pair of starters in T.J. Bickerstaff and DeMarr Langford Jr. In their absence, Jaeden Zackery continued his outstanding freshmen campaign breakout by knocking down all four of his 3-point attempts. Anchored around Zackery's ability to both distribute and facilitate at both ends of the floor, Brevin Galloway added 14 points thanks to four 3-pointers, while frontcourt mates Post (10 points/5 rebounds) and James Karnik (16 points/11 rebounds) also showed out. The two-headed monster in the middle made it easier to control the painted area.

"Defensively, I guard the bigger guy," Karnik said. "But there are tons of times where we talk and constantly communicate. We're constantly switching our man, and if I'm on the floor, I'll switch onto the ball and onto guards and stuff like that. It definitely brings more energy because I have to be more away, and if QP has my man in the post, I'm not taking three guys. He'll sometimes take the rim, and I can take the wing. It keeps me more alert."

The second half featured a lead that was as high as 13, before an FSU run cut it to single digits. But the game took on one of those storylines where a team would pull within a certain number before the leading team would extend its lead back to another number. It never got too low, but it was also never actually a blowout, not even when BC's lead extended to 21 with under eight minutes remaining.

It was, a complete, 40-minute game and contributions came from every corner of the roster. Zackery finished with 18 points, eight rebounds, six assists and five steals and formed a lethal backcourt combination with Makai Ashton-Langford after the latter added career-highs with nine assists and four steals. Karnik went for 16 points and 11 assists and introduced a new, different facet to his game when he paired off with Post, who had 10 points and five rebounds with a block while switching between power forward and center.

"I personally love playing with Post," Karnik said. "As a big guy, there's usually a lot of attention on you, and there are times when I go up for a rebound with three bodies on me beating me up. Well now with another big guy there, I swear it was my first basket where the ball just dropped to me. It was easy because I usually don't get those. I usually have dudes hitting me, but with another dude on the floor that brings that attention and energy, it gave me some key, easy opportunities."

Zackery also expressed his joy in playing with his backcourt mate Ashton-Langford. "Playing together allows us to handle the pressure and take pressure off each other," Zackery said. "I know that if I'm at the point throughout the game, they'll start pressing me, and I'll get tired. But I can look at Makai and have him come up. I can trust him, and he can take care of the ball because we know the offense from both the one and the two. Being able to do that allows us to add to our depth."

It's hard to question the mounting adversity facing FSU this season. Evans and Caleb Mills missed the Duke game last weekend and the Seminoles entered that game without a full complement of players. Warley and Cleveland played well, but the lack of flow and continuity on a roster ravaged by injuries clearly had a lasting impact on a team that's now lost eight of its last nine games.

But beating Florida State, even as the Seminoles are fading into the ACC's opening round, still resonates because of future Hall of Famer Leonard Hamilton's reputation for coaching championship teams. That's still the program that finished in second place last season during the regular season before advancing to the conference tournament championship game, and it's still the same program that advanced to the Sweet Sixteen for the third consecutive bracket. There's no question it would have been four straight tournaments if FSU's championship season in 2020 wasn't ended prematurely due to COVID-19, and, in all likelihood, Hamilton would have had the team inside the top four seeds of a regional if the pandemic hadn't canceled the postseason.

That level of excellence requires talent to turnover and continuously develop, but that's a staple in Tallahassee, even as BC enjoyed some levels of success against the Seminoles over the years. Monday's win snapped a five-game overall losing streak on this season and broke a two-game losing streak against FSU in particular, but it was the third straight win over the 'Noles on the Conte Forum hardwood and clinched BC's second winning record overall at home in the last four seasons.

Through all of that, the messaging has always remained consistent. Talking about an ACC championship would have been disrespectful to the teams who won enough to hoist the trophy, and Grant knew it. He wanted to ensure his program crawled before it walked and walked before it ran. He needed to install a grittiness in Boston College, and that required the right players capable of laying a foundation.

They didn't expect it to happen this year, but knowing it will eventually happen carried the team through this year's ups and downs. Even as the season draws nearer to an end, there is knowledge that when it does happen, it will be because of these players who sacrificed their own individualism in order to lay the first bricks of BC's return to glory.

"There is such a thin line between winning and losing," Grant said. "We may have lost two or three games that were one possession games, so I think not growing weary means you're not too far away from success. If you keep swinging and chopping and staying the course, something good is coming. It's been one heck of a week from last Saturday, starting with Duke, and the guys had good energy [on Monday]. I thought it would give us a boost to come out of the gate with a lot of intensity, and they found a way to win."

Eagles Show Toughness, Togetherness in Rout of Seminoles

Players Mentioned

Makai Ashton-Langford

T.J. Bickerstaff

Brevin Galloway

James Karnik

DeMarr Langford Jr.

Quinten Post

Jaeden Zackery

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