Boston College men’s basketball gave up 17 3-pointers to Dartmouth on Friday afternoon. That was the story of the game, and—not coincidentally—the story of the Eagles’ second loss of the season.
“It’s hard to lose a game when your team has 17 threes,” BC’s Joshua Beadle said.
On paper, Dartmouth (3–3) shouldn’t have handed the Eagles a loss. The Big Green’s only two prior wins this season came to Vermont State University – Lyndon and Sacred Heart. Neither of those schools are nearly as good statistically as BC (6–2) has been this season.
How the game looked on paper didn’t seem to matter in the slightest, though, as the Eagles’ defense failed time and time again to effectively defend Dartmouth and suffered an 88–83 loss at home.
Several of Dartmouth’s initial 3-pointers were uncontested, and that didn’t change throughout the entire game.
“We changed up our ball-screen coverage a little bit,” Beadle said. “At the end of the day, it didn’t really work.”
Dartmouth started the game 3–7 from the arc and jumped out to a quick lead. Fifteen of its first 19 points were from behind the arc.
“We gave them some belief,” BC head coach Earl Grant said. “And they fed off that belief.”
Grant didn’t like what he saw to start the game, and substituted the entire lineup for BC—five in, five out.
“I thought we came out flat, and we were searching for the right lineup to get the energy level going,” Grant said.
BC’s substitutions throughout the game did little to help. No matter the personnel, the Eagles couldn’t stop Dartmouth from behind the arc. Cade Haskins hit six 3-pointers, Jayden Williams hit five, and Brandon Mitchell-Day and Connor Amundsen each hit two.
Coming into Friday’s game, Haskins had hit five 3-pointers in the last three games combined.
“You know, it’s very humbling, because we’re a lot better than what we showed,” Grant said.
Contrary to what its 5–23 performance from the 3-point line might suggest, BC wasn’t necessarily bad offensively. The Eagles’ 83 points were the most they’ve scored all season.
But basketball is a numbers game, and that’s not a game the Eagles won. They shot 52 percent on field goals.
Even shooting 52 percent from the field didn’t help BC’s chances, since the Eagles allowed Dartmouth to sink 55 of its 3-point attempts.
“It ultimately just came down to getting stops,” Beadle said. “And we just couldn’t do that.”
Beadle and Elijah Strong combined for 27 of the Eagles’ points in the second half, and Beadle scored a career-high 19 points while shooting 8–10 from the field.
Strong recorded two blocks in the last few minutes of the game, continuing his streak of toughness at the end of games.
The Eagles’ performances came too late, though, and the rest of the team didn’t contribute enough to the comeback effort. Three Eagles—Chad Venning, Beadle, and Strong—combined for 65 percent of BC’s total points. Nearly all of Venning’s 17 points came in the first half.
The Eagles didn’t look like the team they did in the Cayman Islands Classic a few days ago. Instead of looking confident in the clutch, they looked panicked.
At the end of the game, Beadle got passed the ball in the corner. He had it cleanly stolen from him, Dion Brown had to commit a foul, and Dartmouth sank two free throws to extend its lead to six.
Beadle was fouled at the end of the game and made one of two from the stripe, sealing BC’s 88–83 loss.
“You never really expect to lose until the buzzer’s even,” Beadle said.
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