Boston College should thump Virginia tonight in the ACC tournament. The Eagles wiped the floor with the Cavaliers in a 68-55 win last week that wasn't as close as the score suggests. In the first half, BC pummeled them, 37-23. After losing to Maryland on Saturday, Virginia has dropped nine straight games.
BC should thump Virginia, but it won't. This team thrives when expectations are low and crumbles when they are high. Look at the Paradise Jam. The Eagles played themselves into the loser's bracket with an appalling loss to a St. Joseph's team that finished the season with an 11-20 record, good for 12th place in the 14-team Atlantic 10 Conference. Or, look at the Harvard debacle. Having lost to the Crimson last year, the Eagles should have known not to overlook that game. Instead, they were on the wrong end of a seven-point loss, as Jeremy Lin torched them for 25 points.
Heading into Sunday's contest against NC State, BC had won three of four, but all that momentum was killed by a 12-point loss. With a four-point lead and their NIT dreams in the balance, the Eagles rolled over and allowed NC State to reel off a 13-1 run to steal the game.
Now BC needs to make a run to the ACC tournament final to have any hope of receiving a bid from the NIT. The Eagles lack the focus to put together that kind of run, though. They have two three-game winning streaks this season, but both were before the New Year. Since then, BC has managed to win back-to-back games just once. Their likely road to the final would include match-ups with Virginia Tech and Duke. This team is just too inconsistent to be taken as a serious tournament threat.
Plus, the Cavaliers have nothing to lose, which makes them a dangerous team. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone with faith in Virginia at this point. During their nine-game skid, the Cavaliers lost six straight by double digits. The losses haven't been pretty. Virginia never cracked 70 points over the stretch and failed to reach 60 points in five of the nine games.
The Cavaliers did show something in their 74-68 loss to the Terrapins last weekend, though. They showed moxie. Playing without star swingman Sylven Landesberg, who was suspended for the rest of the season for academic reasons, Virginia gave the hottest team in the ACC all it could handle.
It works to the Cavaliers' advantage that they played the Eagles last week, too.
After BC crushed Virginia in the first half, the Cavaliers actually outscored the Eagles 32-31 over the final 20 minutes. Although they took their lumps in the first half, the Cavaliers showed they can adjust their game plan. Unless Al Skinner has designed an inbounds play in the last week, BC probably won't have any surprises prepared.
Landesberg tweaked his hamstring two weeks ago against Miami and had been ineffective in the games leading up to the suspension. Since he went down, senior big man Jerome Meyinsse has caught fire. Meyinsse is only averaging 6.3 points per game, but he's scored 50 points on 19-of-22 shooting in his last three games. The Eagles could have their hands full in the low post, where they still have not found a reliable option. The trio of Josh Southern, Evan Ravenel, and Cortney Dunn has struggled to defend the rim. Those three are buried on BC's list of leading rebounders behind Reggie Jackson, Joe Trapani, Corey Raji, and Rakim Sanders.
Perhaps most importantly, Southern, Ravenel, and Dunn have become foul magnets. Because they can't stay on the floor, the offense can't develop a rhythm down low. It's becoming more about which big man has the fewest fouls, not which one is playing the best.
This has largely been a lost season for the Eagles. Nothing has really gone their way. Sure, they pulled off a pair of upsets against Clemson and Virginia Tech, but this season will be remembered for what could have been. A loss against arguably the worst team in the ACC in the first round of the tournament would be a fitting end to a frustrating year.
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