
Photo by: Eddie Shabomardenly
BC Shakes One Off With Pitt On The Horizon
February 14, 2023 | Men's Basketball, #ForBoston Files
The buzzword was buzzsaw but BC can bounce back against the Panthers
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- In construction, a buzzsaw is a power tool capable of slicing even the toughest material. Its violent implementation of destruction attacks and chews through any object and is a device that commands respect from its user due to its danger. If used improperly, it carries the potential for a catastrophic injury, but it doesn't stop annihilating whatever is thrown into its high-powered teeth.
It's unknown when that noun turned into the perfect adjective for a sports metaphor, but calling a person or team a buzzsaw is one of the highest compliments. It means nothing would have stopped them, not even executing the perfect game plan, and it carries some of the utmost respect from a losing opponent.Â
On Monday morning, Earl Grant had to smile when he recalled Boston College's blowout loss to No. 22 NC State from Saturday afternoon because that term - buzzsaw - perfectly encapsulated how the Wolfpack built a 30-point, 92-62 victory over his Eagles in a game that once felt much closer than a final score blasting would have indicated.
"I'm not 100 percent sure how a buzzsaw looks," Grant said with a chuckle, "but I think we ran into one on Saturday. I was scratching my head a lot because we really made some strides and played some good basketball, but we didn't have a whole lot of answers. To be honest, we played really well, and we played with confidence. It was a six-point game with 1:30 to get into the locker room for halftime, but those guys played great."
That six-point deficit was the byproduct of BC's ability to play NC State's fast-paced, lightning bolt style in the game's early minutes, but not even Quinten Post's 16 points in the first half stopped the Wolfpack from opening the proverbial gates behind Jarkel Joiner's consecutive three-pointers. Those trifectas extended the lead to 12, and BC never fully recovered.
"They had a good inside-outside punch," Grant said. "We did a good job of attacking the big guy to get him out of the game, but their perimeter players made shots and carried them. You can do different things and go zone, and we did some of that. But if you double a big guy, then you have to play the pass, and you have to pick your poison because if you play him one-on-one, he's going to pass it outside to shooters. They had both things going for them."
NC State's shootability produced a 15-for-30 night from outside after Casey Morsell provided a fourth option to the starting five, and in the second half, an 8-0 run opened the escape hatch from any BC comeback attempt before another 8-0 run in the waning minutes pushed the game closer to 30 before the mop-up minutes topped the scoring in a stinging loss. The Wolfpack were virtually unstoppable in that regard and finished the night by shooting 55 percent from the floor.
BC couldn't match that output, and even though Post went 9-for-11 from the floor with five rebounds, the only other Eagle in double figures was Zackery, who played 22 minutes off the bench after battling through a shin injury that was sustained against Virginia Tech. The overall team shot 42 percent from the floor, but going 4-for-14 from outside created a chasm against the sharpshooting Wolfpack that wasn't easily overcome.
"There are one or two games every year that you have to take the box score and just tear it up and throw it away," Grant said, "and then there are one or two games every year where you play out of your mind and really just play an unbelievable game where you hope you can bottle that up. I thought we really defended, but they made a lot of contested threes. Then they got off to that good start in the first four minutes of the second half that got us down to 16 or 18, and it stayed that way until about five minutes to go. So again, every year, there are going to be those one or two games where you just want to throw them out."
The loss itself didn't significantly alter the ACC postseason picture, so putting the 30-point loss in the past shouldn't be terribly difficult for the Eagles, who remained tied for 10th place with Florida State after the Seminoles lost to Pittsburgh. Both teams are two games behind Syracuse and North Carolina for the final first round bye spot, and if the postseason started today, the Eagles would find themselves playing Louisville in the first round as part of a bracket path that includes seventh place Duke and Virginia, which is a top-10 team currently tied with Pitt for the league lead.
Pitt defeated Virginia by three in the immediate aftermath of the New Year's holiday, and the surprising upset blew the lid off the Panthers' emergence as an ACC contender. Selected as a bottom-tier team in the preseason polls after losing 20 games last year, they instead have won their most games since Jamie Dixon led the program into the ACC in the mid-2010s.Â
"We'll watch different games," said Grant, "but I'm studying us more because we still have to try to be consistent. We started playing freshmen a lot of minutes, so that's a little bit different from what most of the models of people in the league are doing, but we can build them for the future. We're hoping we can continue to develop those guys that buy into what we're doing defensive and offensively. So it's a lot less about the opponent, to be honest, and it's been more about us...it's more about just making sure that we show up and play BC basketball at the highest level."
Boston College and league-leading Pittsburgh tip off tonight at 9 p.m. from the Petersen Events Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The game can be seen on national television via the ACC Network with audio streaming via the Boston College Sports Network from Learfield, which can be heard locally on WEEI 850 AM and on satellite via Sirius/XM channel 392 and App channel 982 with streaming audio on the Varsity Network. Streaming video is also available through the ESPN platform of web-based and mobile devices.
It's unknown when that noun turned into the perfect adjective for a sports metaphor, but calling a person or team a buzzsaw is one of the highest compliments. It means nothing would have stopped them, not even executing the perfect game plan, and it carries some of the utmost respect from a losing opponent.Â
On Monday morning, Earl Grant had to smile when he recalled Boston College's blowout loss to No. 22 NC State from Saturday afternoon because that term - buzzsaw - perfectly encapsulated how the Wolfpack built a 30-point, 92-62 victory over his Eagles in a game that once felt much closer than a final score blasting would have indicated.
"I'm not 100 percent sure how a buzzsaw looks," Grant said with a chuckle, "but I think we ran into one on Saturday. I was scratching my head a lot because we really made some strides and played some good basketball, but we didn't have a whole lot of answers. To be honest, we played really well, and we played with confidence. It was a six-point game with 1:30 to get into the locker room for halftime, but those guys played great."
That six-point deficit was the byproduct of BC's ability to play NC State's fast-paced, lightning bolt style in the game's early minutes, but not even Quinten Post's 16 points in the first half stopped the Wolfpack from opening the proverbial gates behind Jarkel Joiner's consecutive three-pointers. Those trifectas extended the lead to 12, and BC never fully recovered.
"They had a good inside-outside punch," Grant said. "We did a good job of attacking the big guy to get him out of the game, but their perimeter players made shots and carried them. You can do different things and go zone, and we did some of that. But if you double a big guy, then you have to play the pass, and you have to pick your poison because if you play him one-on-one, he's going to pass it outside to shooters. They had both things going for them."
NC State's shootability produced a 15-for-30 night from outside after Casey Morsell provided a fourth option to the starting five, and in the second half, an 8-0 run opened the escape hatch from any BC comeback attempt before another 8-0 run in the waning minutes pushed the game closer to 30 before the mop-up minutes topped the scoring in a stinging loss. The Wolfpack were virtually unstoppable in that regard and finished the night by shooting 55 percent from the floor.
BC couldn't match that output, and even though Post went 9-for-11 from the floor with five rebounds, the only other Eagle in double figures was Zackery, who played 22 minutes off the bench after battling through a shin injury that was sustained against Virginia Tech. The overall team shot 42 percent from the floor, but going 4-for-14 from outside created a chasm against the sharpshooting Wolfpack that wasn't easily overcome.
"There are one or two games every year that you have to take the box score and just tear it up and throw it away," Grant said, "and then there are one or two games every year where you play out of your mind and really just play an unbelievable game where you hope you can bottle that up. I thought we really defended, but they made a lot of contested threes. Then they got off to that good start in the first four minutes of the second half that got us down to 16 or 18, and it stayed that way until about five minutes to go. So again, every year, there are going to be those one or two games where you just want to throw them out."
The loss itself didn't significantly alter the ACC postseason picture, so putting the 30-point loss in the past shouldn't be terribly difficult for the Eagles, who remained tied for 10th place with Florida State after the Seminoles lost to Pittsburgh. Both teams are two games behind Syracuse and North Carolina for the final first round bye spot, and if the postseason started today, the Eagles would find themselves playing Louisville in the first round as part of a bracket path that includes seventh place Duke and Virginia, which is a top-10 team currently tied with Pitt for the league lead.
Pitt defeated Virginia by three in the immediate aftermath of the New Year's holiday, and the surprising upset blew the lid off the Panthers' emergence as an ACC contender. Selected as a bottom-tier team in the preseason polls after losing 20 games last year, they instead have won their most games since Jamie Dixon led the program into the ACC in the mid-2010s.Â
"We'll watch different games," said Grant, "but I'm studying us more because we still have to try to be consistent. We started playing freshmen a lot of minutes, so that's a little bit different from what most of the models of people in the league are doing, but we can build them for the future. We're hoping we can continue to develop those guys that buy into what we're doing defensive and offensively. So it's a lot less about the opponent, to be honest, and it's been more about us...it's more about just making sure that we show up and play BC basketball at the highest level."
Boston College and league-leading Pittsburgh tip off tonight at 9 p.m. from the Petersen Events Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The game can be seen on national television via the ACC Network with audio streaming via the Boston College Sports Network from Learfield, which can be heard locally on WEEI 850 AM and on satellite via Sirius/XM channel 392 and App channel 982 with streaming audio on the Varsity Network. Streaming video is also available through the ESPN platform of web-based and mobile devices.
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