Eagles Survive And Are Alive and Well
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. – Don’t schedule the funeral for the 2006-07 Boston College basketball season just yet.
There’s no question the Eagles face a major challenge after the well-documented personnel losses that came to pass last week. That was visible in Saturday’s 74-54 loss at Clemson, although that loss can’t just be pinned on personnel – Clemson is a tough place for visiting teams to win even when the Tigers aren’t very good, and this Clemson team is good. On Tuesday night, the Eagles returned home and survived for an 85-82 win over Florida State in a game that had no shortage of drama and not just on Sean Marshall’s game-winning three-pointer as time expired.
For Marshall, it was a great case of redemption. He was saddled with foul trouble earlier in the game, then missed a free throw in the final minute.
“I got kind of down on myself, because I’m a senior, this is my last year, I shouldn’t be missing shots like that,” the senior guard said of the missed free throw.
This game might be what we can expect from the Eagles the rest of the way if they are to make the NCAA Tournament. That’s not to say that if they still had Sean Williams and Akida McLain, this game would have been a blowout, but make no mistake about it: this team has a different look and has to do different things to win the rest of the way.
“We cannot allow a team to shoot 50 percent against us and expect to win. We have to be better defensively,” said head coach Al Skinner, leading a theme echoed by one of his captains.
“We have to keep these guards out of the middle,” said senior forward Jared Dudley. “We have to overplay them and make them go to the baseline. Our defensive execution has to get a lot better.”
There were times in this game where the Eagles looked to be in trouble. They struggled to attack Florida State’s 1-3-1 zone often in the first half and at times in the second, as they had a number of possessions where the ball simply moved horizontally well behind the three-point line before they would rush a shot at the end. On some occasions they managed to get a basket, but on others they rushed a bad shot, which makes their nearly-53 percent mark from the field in this game rather remarkable.
Tyrese Rice (26 points, six assists and just one turnover) bailed them out time after time with some amazing shots in traffic as the shot clock was running down. With 1:21 left and three seconds on the shot clock, he put up a three-pointer that hit the back rim, went dead and dropped in. Then with 32 seconds left, he drove and double-clutched a runner from the free throw line to put them up 82-80.
“That’s what he does,” said Dudley of the sophomore guard. “It’s like me down low, that’s what I do.”
Florida State star Al Thornton had 22 points and eight rebounds, with several clutch baskets during the back-and-forth final minutes. He scored eight straight Seminole points, including two free throws that gave them the lead against after Rice’s clutch three-pointer. In the final minutes leading up to Marshall’s shot, he matched almost every score by the Eagles save for a Seminole turnover on one possession and a short fade-away that fell short with 18 seconds left.
Rice, along with Dudley and Marshall, combined for 71 of the team’s 85 points. In sharp contrast, their opponent had five players score in double figures. As good as those three are, and as much as they need Rice to play more like last night instead of in the erratic fashion he has at times this year, the Eagles really need other players to step up in the event that one of those three has an off-night or gets in foul trouble, as Marshall did as he sat for nearly nine minutes with four fouls.
“I think what happened is Tyrelle (Blair), Shamari (Spears) and Marquez (Haynes) are seeing that they have to do more in order for us to be successful,” said Skinner of the response to the dismissals.
Clearly, the Eagles will have to ride their top players. Skinner isn’t worried about fatigue because he played every minute he could in college and expects good players to be ready to do the same thing. The Eagles are talking like a team capable of still winning the ACC. A fan or casual observer might think they’re a little crazy, but these Eagles have silenced critics before and nothing that happens in the world of college basketball nowadays is truly shocking.
