Thursday, March 10, 2011

One down, one critical game to go

BC beat Wake Forest, but not in the way I predicted. Instead of beating them inside, BC bombed away from 3 to pull away early and hold on in a sluggish second half. There wasn't much to say beyond that. BC played at their ideal tempo and ideal style. The defense was good and other than Raji's shooting, everything was good.


Yet the win against a weaker opponent and a few other dominoes around college football have BC among many "last four in" listings. I am not buying it. Enough other bubble teams have popped this week, plus some of our good wins are looking better (Texas A&M) and one of our bad losses (Harvard) is looking better. If we beat Clemson we are a lock. If we lose close, we are still probably in. If we lose big and some other bubble teams make a run, we may have a frustrating Sunday.


Although it is a bad matchup for us, I think we can beat Clemson. The Tigers are a good defensive team (problem No. 1). They play well on the perimeter (problem No. 2). They have a fairly functional offense (problem No. 3). So basically Clemson frustrates you and doesn't beat themselves. That is sort of what happened earlier this year. We got down, Biko was cold and our comeback was too late. However, things are slightly different now. We have tweaked the rotation, have improved our transition defense and have done a better job of slowing down big men.


I think we will win on Friday. In addition to Biko playing better, I think Raji will also play better than he did in the ACC opener. I think we will hit more 3s. I also think we will come out motivated knowing that the NCAA bid is on the line.

20 comments:

CT said...

With no inside presence whatsoever, we need Reggie to channel his inner Randolph Childress and take over the weekend.

Unknown said...

Can we listed to the game online? Where? Tried to listed to Meter and Huck yesterday via bceagles.com and got shut out...

Greg said...

Either ESPN3 or on the ACC website. Both have live feeds (although I think in some places it is blacked out).

Nick said...

Jerai Grant murdered us last time. I'm for double-teaming him a-la Williams, Allen and Zeller and living with the consequences.

I disagree that if we lose, we're probably still in. I'd like to agree, but people who know better seem to disagree strongly.

Peter said...

What happened to Danny Rubin? Did he get lost? Or did he just change his name to John Cahill? Not a big deal, but it just seems like he's disappeared from box scores and recaps.

America said...

Don't forget BC Hockey starts their run at another Hockey East Championship tonight!
"The Road to the Championship comes through Boston"

Great Pump up video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxVjwecYMUI

Bravesbill said...

BC cannot have Southern, Cahill, and Moton on the floor at the same time. Not going to score many points going 2 on 5.

Bravesbill said...

Ha, now it's Southern, Trapani, Cahill, Moton, and Paris. This is really the first time all season I have been vehemently against the lineup on the floor. This is harkening back to Al's days when he pulled this junk.

Darius said...

This is the beauty of being a 3-point shooting team--you're seldom out of it. Even though they're ice cold, Trapani does it all by himself to keep them vaguely in range for a comeback until the rest of the team wakes up. And now they do.

THAT'S why BC is a dangerous team in March.

Bravesbill said...

This looks exactly like their game in Clemson. Hopefully, they will be able to successful comeback this time. I won't hold my breath though.

Bravesbill said...

Josh Southern has the lowest basketball IQ I have ever seen.

jablo1313 said...

Its times like this when the benching of Dunn comes back to haunt us. Southern is not a naturally good rebounder, Trapani fights but is still only 6-8, and Corey Rajis getting pushed around out there right now. We. Need. More. Size.

CT said...

Wouldn't blame the committee if they left us out after that showing. Yikes.

Darius said...

Yow, that sucked.

Bravesbill said...

BC should look into hosting an NIT game now. There's no way the NCAA can overlook this loss, esp. with other bubble teams like Michigan, USC, and Colorado getting some big wins in their tournament against decent teams.

Unknown said...

Dunn may be the worst basketball player on the planet. There is a reasn he's not seeing any PT. Horrbile game, NIT here we come

Walter said...

That game was so disappointing.

I couldn't believe how they started; I could believe the rest of the way they played.

It's frustrating for them to get this close to the tournament and then lay an egg at the finish line.

I would be shocked if they made it in now.

neenan said...

Tough loss but we are still (barely) dancing on the skin of the bubble. Particularly with my Georgia 'Dawgs not bringing it today and crashing through the bubble

Nick said...

Re: the game and other bubble team results, this entire day was probably the worst case scenario for Boston College, culminating in that waived off buzzer beater for FSU.

WI_Eagle said...

I'm going back and forth on whether or not the VTech outcome was bad for BC. On the one hand a bubble team won a game and probably moved ahead of BC. On the other hand, if VTech makes the tournament it would be hard to justify not giving BC a spot considering that (coming into today) our RPI and SOS were well ahead of them, we had the same conference record, AND we swept them 2-0. They have a better win than us vs. Duke but we have less bad losses (they lost to UVA twice and GTech once). I'm on the bubble on this one...