Eagles Coast Past Cavaliers

The Boston College men's basketball team continued to build momentum as they head toward next week's ACC tournament by defeating the Virginia Cavaliers, 68-55, last night at Conte Forum. The Eagles have won three of four games with only a road trip to NC State on Sunday remaining before the conference championship.

Corey Raji led the BC attack with 18 points and nine rebounds. Tyler Roche, playing in his final home game, added four points. The Eagles held Sylven Landesberg, who torched BC for 32 points in a game last season but played last night with a bruised right thigh, to 13 points on six-of-15 shooting.

"With his [Landesberg's] injury and our energy, you knew it was going to be a long night for him," said head coach Al Skinner. "I don't think we did anything in particular. He had a great game against us last year, and I think we remembered that. Guys took a lot of responsibility to work him as best they could."

The Eagles erased any enduring memories of Landesberg's performance by opening the game on a 13-2 tear, punctuated by a Josh Southern hook shot that forced Cavalier head coach Tony Bennett to burn a time out within the first four minutes. The timeout slowed down a BC offense that was effective in transition, but it didn't do much to jumpstart the anemic Virginia attack.

By contesting almost every shot the Cavaliers took, BC was able to limit them to 35 percent shooting overall, and 22 percent shooting from 3-point range, in the first half. At one point, Virginia went almost seven minutes without scoring, as BC stretched the lead from four to 12. The Cavaliers finally scored on a Landesberg layup with 2:40 to go, but they only managed a single free throw for the remainder of the half, going into the locker room down 37-23.

"Virginia's a very good team shooting the basketball," Skinner said. "It was important for us to get out and defend that. When you start going out and defending shooters, that means [they] have got to work.

"Our focus was on not giving up a lot of good looks, particularly around the 3-point line. We needed to do a good job defending. If they did a good job getting shot around the three-point line, we know we were going to be in for a long night."

BC defended the perimeter well, and Virginia made only two 3-pointers on 13 attempts during the contest.

Although the Cavaliers shot 58 percent in the second half, they were never able to trim the deficit to single digits. The Eagles had an answer for every Virginia basket; the only time the visitors ever put together a run of more than four points was when they reeled off the final five points of the game over the last two minutes.

"Defensively – collectively – we've been limiting second shots and doing a good job on the boards," Raji said. "If we do this again next week, we'll be in a pretty good position heading into the ACC tournament."

The loss was Virginia's eighth in a row after starting ACC play by winning five of its first seven. The Cavaliers have the inside track to the nine-seed in the conference tournament, which would likely mean a rematch with the Eagles.

"They'll be better prepared for us next time," Skinner said, "but I like where we are and what we've been doing."