McGlockton Returns Home With Peachy Performance

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- Devin McGlockton's performance in Boston College's 95-87 win over Georgia Tech this past Saturday quickly entrenched itself as an instant classic. By the purest of numbers, a 30-point game and career-high night by a beloved, blue-collar member of the team would have turned heads. But the fact that the local guy led the erasure of a 16-point deficit with 19 minutes to play solidified the program's third-biggest comeback victory and a critical, much-needed win.

"I'm so happy for Dev," said head coach Earl Grant. "He's a loyal guy. He was the first guy that signed up to play for Boston College three years ago. He was home and he had a great crowd. I knew he played a good game, but I didn't realize he had that type of performance. He's an every day guy, and I'm just really proud of him."

Saturday night represented one game to the course of the entire season, but missed opportunities against N.C State and Wake Forest gave the trip to Atlanta a bit more urgency than a standard ACC matchup. Having watched a seven-point lead in the second half evaporate to the Demon Deacons stung even more with the earlier overtime loss to Wolfpack and starting the conference season 0-3 with a loss at Georgia Tech felt like a potential pitfall of a start to the second season of conference play.

The analytics crowd tended to agree, installing the Yellow Jackets as a slight favorite in most metrics. Georgia Tech entered the day having won five of its first six games at McCamish Pavilion, including an eye-opening early December win over Duke, which knocked the nationally-ranked Blue Devils clear out of the top-10 race for a couple of weeks. Under freshly minted head coach Damon Stoudamire, GT entered the game having won eight games in 13 tries, including gritty wins over both Penn State and UMass.  Indeed, the voices giving life to those storylines couldn't wait to yell and scream when the Eagles gave up 11 unanswered at the end of the first half and they would've been accurate in their assessment of how BC played. Georgia Tech had gone 9-for-18 from beyond the arc and scored 51 points by shooting 57 percent overall.

"We were really out of character in the first half," said Grant. "I don't know if it's because we haven't played a lot of games lately, but we just couldn't execute our game right. They made us pay and they made nine threes. We wanted to go out and be better and tighten up some screws. We just did a great job of moving the ball and playing team basketball."

Grant added, "We had 38 and usually I see 38 or 40 and I feel pretty good because they usually have 32 or 31. To see 51, it was really out of character for us, but in the ACC, teams can really score. I think nine threes is the thing that really got us. That's 27 points, so we talked about cutting into their threes. We just went out and played and halved it. By the middle of the half, we were up, so we did a good job of just chipping away at it."

That BC was able to get moving was one thing, but the team basketball that BC displayed broke the Yellow Jackets's back. Post, the All-American candidate, led BC in scoring in the first half, with 13 points. As the versatile center so often does, he played what the game gave him and became a facilitator. The ball still went through him, but his five assists in the second half opened opportunities for McGlockton and Claudell Harris Jr., who combined for 35 second half points.  That they were able to hit the shots made it easier for the Eagles to continue trusting them and the patience that followed saw BC slowly cut into the Georgia Tech advantage until it evaporated entirely. With McGlockton controlling the inside - and connecting on 3-of-4 from the perimeter - and Harris' expansive range, the momentum was on the side of the Eagles early and often in the final frame.

"I don't know if it was the toughest we played this season, but I thought it was a great snapshot of a group digging themselves out of a hole," Grant said. "They really believed in what we executed and it was beautiful to watch and see. It was beautiful to be a part of. I don't want to be a part of that hole, but it was beautiful to see them dig out of the hole."

The headlining act, though, remained McGlockton, who connected on 12-of-15 shooting and added five rebounds, two assists, two steals and a blocked shot. He hit more shots than any ACC player and scored more points than any other ACC game to this point this year, and he obliterated his previous career-high in scoring by dropping the 30 points in 32 minutes of action.  It came one game after he fell one rebound short of a double-double in the Wake Forest game - a game where one extra rebound might have significantly altered the second half outcome. His elevated play in ACC games has him ranked second in scoring (19.3 ppg) and field goal percentage (.719) while ranking ninth in rebounding (7.7 rpg).

"We went to him a little bit but a lot of it was organic," Grant said. "They might not guard him as much on the perimeter, so we told him to take the threes if he likes him. He took four, and we could probably go to him more. He's not one of our top options, but he blends and then at the end of the game, he goes 12-and-8. If there's a matchup that's in his favor, we're going to go him."

More than that, the latest breakthrough occurred only 45 minutes away from his hometown of Cumming, Ga. McGlockton, who is shining for BC in 2023-24 as a redshirt sophomore, is proving to be a poster child for the mantra "Trust the Process." A player willing to redshirt, trust his coaches, put in the work when the end goal is seemingly out of sight, and compete night-in and night-out is admirable. To see the fruits of their labors unfold on a national stage, for McGlockton and Grant - the player and coach who believe in each other - it is a wonderful thing to behold.

McGlockton Returns Home With Peachy Performance

Players Mentioned

Claudell Harris Jr.

Devin McGlockton

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