Time For the Detractors to Take Notice
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. – Will all the nay-sayers give it a rest now? Will anyone start to recognize that Boston College is actually a very good team?
No matter what the Eagles have done this season, no one has been sold on this team. The critics say that they haven’t beaten anyone, they nearly lost to mid-major teams, they don’t blow teams out. But they have won, and won plenty, and on Saturday, they won one of the most highly-anticipated games at the school in a long time.
The Eagles’ 65-60 victory over Syracuse ended with fans rushing the court. The sellout crowd, which arrived early in a city known for late-arriving crowds, gave the game a terrific atmosphere, and the play on the court lived up to the game’s expectations. The players saw the lines outside of Conte Forum well before the game and couldn’t believe it. It was almost as unbelievable as some will view the Eagles’ win.
“It was a great feeling to play with this crowd,” senior guard Jermaine Watson said. “They were going crazy before they even got in the building, they were out front – I thought they were going to riot before the game!”
It was the first matchup ever in Conte Forum of two top ten teams in the rankings. The fans knew, much like anyone else who has followed Boston College, that the home team was perceived as the underdog despite being ranked higher, having a better Big East record and overall record, and a higher RPI. None of that matters in this perception-is-reality world, a world where the Eagles were never expected to have anywhere near the season they have had. Certainly, no one could have predicted a Big East-record run of 20 consecutive wins to start the season, but few figured that this team would even be a contender despite returning four starters from a team that went 24-11 last season and lost at the end to the national runner-up.
“For some reason, people are surprised that we’re good this year,” Watson said. “For some reason, people thought we were going to finish about fifth in the Big East. For some reason, even after we started winning, people said, ‘who have we beat’. People have just been doubting us with ‘who have we beat’, well now they know who we beat. It’s not questionable anymore. We beat Connecticut, we beat Syracuse, we’re on top of the Big East.”
Saturday night’s win now gives the Eagles more breathing room at the top of the Big East. With an 11-1 record in the conference, they are two games ahead of Connecticut, whom they beat in their only meeting this season. Syracuse and Pittsburgh, which lost Sunday afternoon to Villanova, are three games back in the loss column with two weeks left to play. As they have throughout the season, the Eagles won the game a little more convincingly than the score might indicate.
Craig Smith played like an All-American on Saturday night. He grabbed every big rebound, including several offensive rebounds that he turned into putbacks en route to 16 points and 15 rebounds. There were a couple of times where he simply stole the ball right from a Syracuse player and turned it into a basket. His numbers don’t begin to demonstrate his value in this game, however; one had to see the game to see the plays he made at so many crucial junctures, much like teammate Jared Dudley often does. Dudley led the Eagles with 21 points, but what most will remember his is tip-in over the taller Hakim Warrick (6’9″) and Craig Forth (6’11”) that even Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim couldn’t believe, though he felt it was symbolic of the biggest reason the Eagles won the game.
“There’s really nothing to look back on in this basketball game other than the fact that we just didn’t rebound the basketball,” said Boeheim.
Indeed, the Eagles outrebounded the Orange by a 45-31 margin, grabbing 18 offensive rebounds along the way and turning them into 19 second-chance points. They also had 19 assists on 22 field goals, and they didn’t all come from the positions one might expect; senior center Nate Doornekamp led the way with six, while backup point guard Steve Hailey had five and Dudley added four.
Hailey played a key role in the victory because the Eagles had to play the final 13:37 without starting point guard Louis Hinnant. Hinnant was whistled for his fourth foul at that point, then a bad technical foul when he got up and walked away, visibly not happy but not doing anything that appeared to warrant a technical. It was his fifth foul, putting him on the bench for the rest of the way. All Hailey did was more than capably run the show, not committing a turnover and helping the Eagles get a couple of runouts.
“Stevie came out and played tremendous, he played his role,” said Smith, who played with Hailey at Worcester Academy. “When one of our soldiers goes down, with foul trouble or whatever it may be, somebody else is willing to step up. That’s what this team is all about, having each other’s backs.”
It all came naturally to Hailey from the coach’s vantage point.
“He was into the game the whole time,” said Skinner. “In timeouts, he’s offering a couple of suggestions, he’s into it. When it was time to play, he was only executing some of the things he was explaining.”
So let’s get this straight. The Eagles are in first place in the Big East by two games now. They won at Connecticut in front of a very hostile crowd. They beat Syracuse without their starting point guard for most of the second half, they held All-American Hakim Warrick to just 12 points (two in the second half), they held teammate Gerry McNamara to 5-17 shooting. They have won close game after close game (14-1 in games decided by ten points or less), demonstrating on a consistent basis that they know how to make plays down the stretch to win games. They have been ranked in the top ten in RPI for the vast majority of the season.
In other words, we have a pretty good team here. The questions about how good this team really is should be answered; talk of how the Notre Dame loss was “the beginning of the end” for them, as some suggested, has been shown to be nonsensical. But the players know that Saturday night’s win likely doesn’t silence the detractors.
“No,” Smith said when asked if he thinks this will quiet them. “We’ve still got a long way to go. I think we’ll have to get down to St. Louis or something.”
“We’re always perceived as an underdog,” said Watson, who scored 11 points and made five free throws in the final minute. “I just love being a part of this team. Our guys just come out and we just get it done, night in and night out.”
And that’s what counts the most. The Eagles win games. No one, including the players, will tell you the Eagles are as talented as any team out there. But talent doesn’t win ballgames, and we’ve seen that time and time again in any sport, not just college basketball. Whereas some teams lose those close games – their nearest Big East rival, Providence, is currently 1-9 in games decided by five points or less this season – Boston College has done nothing but win those games. That is more a strength than something to look down on them for, and it will certainly help in the Big East Tournament and the NCAA.
“As a basketball player, those close games, you live for them,” Watson said. “You live to be the guy on the free throw line, or be the person that makes that big shot or gets that stop on defense. We don’t shy away from that as a team.”
The Eagles are not shying away from anything, and the results thus far show it – whether the critics want to admit it or not.
