CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. – When Corey Maynard committed a sideline violation trying to inbound the ball with 3.9 seconds left and his team up by two, Tim O’Shea naturally wondered for a moment ifa case of deja vu was not far away.
“I said, no, this can’t be happening,” said the Bryant head coach. “If they had hit a shot there, I think I would have gone down to the mental hospital by the Charles River, just check me in for a few days. After all we had been through, I didn’t think the basketball gods could be that cruel.”
O’Shea was able to leave Conte Forum on the Bryant team bus on Sunday. Bryant finally broke through against Boston College, getting their first win in five tries against the Eagles by a 56-54 margin, the biggest win in the young Division I history of the program.
“It wasn’t that long ago, five years ago, the biggest game on Bryant’s schedule was Bentley, or Stonehill, those were the two biggest games,” O’Shea reflected. “Now, five years later, we beat Boston College. That’s remarkable.”
The first half was ugly on both sides, with neither team doing much offensively between bad shots and bad decisions with the ball. Both teams shot below 35 percent from the field, and BC was 2-12 from long range as part of their struggles. About the only good note is that Bryant had seven assists on nine made field goals, a sign that if they moved the ball they had a chance to make a shot.
In the second half, the Bulldogs showed some perseverance and how this team is going to be tougher to beat later in the season. Boston College looked ready to take over the game at times, getting all the momentum in running the lead up to 46-38. But back came the Bulldogs, as they scored the next seven points as part of a 13-3 run to take the lead, and all BC could do the rest of the way was tie it at 51.
That’s the kind of perseverance this team has had to show. While O’Shea has taken a long view of the program from the minute he took over for Max Good just as they went to Division I, losing hasn’t been easy. It never is for competitive kids, which is what this team has had, and perhaps it was even harder last year because they had some success two years ago that included a four-game winning streak.
“We have a lot of experience and maturity in the room, so I know that it’s easier to bounce back when you have guys who have been there,” said guard Dyami Starks, who led the Bulldogs with 17 points, all in the second half. “To bounce back from the two losses we have this year and the losses we had last year, I knew we could do it. I knew we had guys who really care.”
There is plenty of growth on this team. Some of it is talent: adding Starks this season has been big after he sat out last season as a transfer from Columbia, while Joe O’Shea (the coach’s nephew) gives them another shooter to balance out Alex Francis inside. Having Maynard healthy after he missed a lot of last season makes a difference as well, as he takes a lot of pressure off senior Frankie Dobbs and Starks.
Speaking of Francis, who recently surpassed 1,000 career points and just reached 500 career rebounds on Sunday, his growth is noteworthy. The team’s growth can be noted in how they won on a day when Francis was 2-16 from the field for a season-low six points. But Francis had eight rebounds and tied a career high with four assists, a sign of his growth. In his first two seasons, all too often he would force up a highly contested shot before he would pass the ball back out to the perimeter. Now he’s looking for his teammates more.
“The Alex of a year ago would have gotten frustrated and just stopped playing,” O’Shea reflected. “I would have had to sub him, he would have yelled at me, I would have yelled at him. Now he’s grown up and matured, and he’s becoming a really good player, and he’s benefiting from playing with better players.”
Added Starks: “Give all the credit to that kid. He knows after this game, he didn’t shoot well from the field, but we still won. It just shows that he knows how to win, and he can help us in winning without scoring, and that’s tremendous.”
O’Shea noted that the character of those in the program – namely coaches and players – has been steady throughout the time it has been in Division I. They haven’t had numerous players transfer out from the early struggles, and the coaching staff has remained largely intact for much of his tenure, though Dwayne Pina, the lone holdover from the Division II days, headed over to Brown this off-season. They have stuck with the plan, and for the players it has also meant a terrific education.
The Bulldogs have a more manageable schedule this year, and perhaps it is now paying dividends. Instead of having more road games against high-major schools, many of which they had to do for financial reasons, the Bulldogs came home after getting blown out at Indiana and at Providence to get a win over New Hampshire and then made the short trip to Brown and got their first win over the Bears. That undoubtedly helped them come into Chestnut Hill and beat the Eagles.
Now that the program is eligible for the NCAA Tournament, it’s more about the here and now for Bryant. The progress has been good, but as O’Shea noted, getting wins validates that better than anything. Surviving a close call in a game that might have gone the other way is another sign that things are getting better for this program after some struggles.
“Sometimes the basketball gods say, you’ve had enough,” O’Shea said.
