Joshua Beadle rose up and banked in a 3-pointer to stretch Boston College men’s basketball’s four-point lead to seven with 3:15 to go in the game. A little over a minute later, after Miami’s Matthew Cleveland cut BC’s lead back to four, Beadle hit another shot from behind the arc.
This time, it rippled through the net—no backboard needed. With the momentum firmly in his team’s hands, Beadle gave the Eagles their 71–64 lead with two minutes remaining.
“Someone said, ‘Put Beadle back in,’ and I’m glad we did, because he knocked in two threes,” BC head coach Earl Grant said. “He banked the first one, so obviously he has some help. He has some help from above on that one.”
The Eagles (9–5, 1–2 Atlantic Coast) went on to beat the Hurricanes (4–9, 0–3) 78–68 on New Year’s Day, starting off 2025 with the biggest home comeback in BC history.
BC trailed by as many as 19 points in the first half, but the Eagles came out of the locker rooms after halftime looking like a new team. Players that usually start were sitting on the bench for periods throughout the second half, as young Jayden Hastings and Luka Toews got time. The bench was energetic regardless, something Grant emphasized.
“A lot of starters were sitting on the bench while we were making a run,” Grant said. “Typically, you can look at the bench and get a good idea of who the program is.”
BC outscored Miami 49–27 in the second half as five Eagles put up double-digits.
“The guys never flinched,” Grant said. “They believed in what our plan was, and we actually started the execute the plan better in the second half, or the end of the first half.”
BC’s first lead of the game came with 8:52 left on the lock. Freshman Luka Toews, drove into the paint, pulling defenders with him, then dished the ball to Elijah Strong sitting in the corner.
Strong swung it up to McFarlane on the left wing, and McFarlane sank the three to put BC up 56–55. BC ended the game 38.5 percent from three, and held Miami to five makes on 23 attempts from behind the arc.
The Hurricane’s 21.7 percent clip from three showed improvement from BC’s 3-point defense, as the Eagles have recently made a habit of letting opponents sink nine or more threes on more than 40 percent shooting.
“In the first seven games we were 6-1, we were giving up five threes a game,” Grant said. “And then in the last five or six games, I think we were giving up nine or 10 threes. So it’s something that we wanted to emphasize in some of our schemes, ball-screen coverages, to force them to take tough shots.”
Elijah Strong couldn’t get things going in the first half. Like the rest of his team, though, that all changed after halftime. He scored 11 points in the second half.
Chad Venning might have been one of the only consistent players for the Eagles offensively. He scored three straight baskets with about five minutes left in the first half, sending BC into halftime with a 12-point deficit—a three-possession game that seemed much more manageable than its once 19-point hole.
The comeback win relied on BC’s defense, but Miami was facing struggles the Eagles didn’t force, too.
The Hurricanes were missing their leading scorer, their head coach suddenly stepped down last week, and they went just nine of 14 from the free-throw line in Wednesday’s game.
Regardless, BC’s intensity, 40 rebounds, and 21 made free throws, was enough to get them a comeback win and its first victory in the ACC this season.
“First conference win—it’s a good feeling, because obviously starts a new year,” Beadle said. “We got a lot of goals that we want to achieve, and we feel as though this team, we can achieve a lot of things. We can take over the ACC.”
Leave a Reply