I know I, like many BC fans, have not spoke fondly of this year's basketball team. Coming into the year there were high expectations based on the way the squad finished last year and the fact that the team had all its talent coming back, but needless to say BC has not come close to living up to these expectations. The non-conference schedule was brutal and minus a win against a mediocre Washington team The Eagles did not win one of the marquee games. Their defense has not been good at all and their inability to rebound has been staggering. I know some of this is due to the fact that the team has been without center Dennis Clifford all season, but you would figure the team would have been able to adjust by February. Finally, the team has not been able to close out games. I am not saying BC would be a tournament team, but there were a handful of games that come to mind where BC had a chance to win and somehow blew it in the end. The game at Notre Dame and most recently at Georgia Tech come to mind. With all this being said, somehow the stars aligned last night at the Carrier Dome and the Eagles were able to beat the #1 ranked and undefeated Syracuse Orange.
BC clearly came in with a game plan last night and worked it to near perfection. The game plan was to minimize the number of times Syracuse touched the ball by holding the ball on offense until the final seconds of the shot clock wined down. While this made for a very boring game, especially in the first half, it proved to be very effective. Two stats in particular stuck out to me when looking at the box score. One was BC was 11-22 from 3 point range whereas Syracuse was 2-12, and the biggest eyeopening number to me was BC actually out-rebounded the Orange 40 to 37. Ryan Anderson played a hell of a game in the post, not only by grabbing 14 rebounds but also making some big baskets down low late in the game. Olivier Hanlan had one of his best all around games this season by hitting clutch 3's and making some buckets by driving hard to the hole. The biggest surprise for me however may have been the German born Patrick Heckmann. Heckmann has been one of the toughest players to understand this year and although he has not gotten much playing time as of late, he made a big 3 and backdoor basket in overtime. Overall, this was a definition of a team win and I am happy the team finally had something special to celebrate. Most importantly however as many have mentioned, including Coach Donahue in his post-game interview with ESPN, this win meant a little something extra with the passing of long time SID Dick Kelley this past week.
After witnessing BC's miraculous upset last night it made me start to think about some of BC athletics' best wins. This win in particular reminded me a lot of BC's football win over Notre Dame in 1993 when no one gave BC a shot to beat the then #1 ranked Irish in South Bend. Also, there were some correlations between BC's win in football over again undefeated Notre Dame in 2002 and last night's win over Syracuse. In 2002 Notre Dame broke out the green jerseys, result BC won, last night the Orange broke out the blue shorts, result BC won. Florida State also did a similar thing in 2006 when they wore all black against BC, granted they weren't undefeated, but BC still won. Moral of the story is don't unveil new uniforms against the Eagles.
Will this win save Steve Donahue's job? I don't think so. Although I am very happy for him, the team still has only 7 wins on the year. You can tell by watching him and hearing his constant whistling that he gives it his all every game but the big sticking point in determining his future is the fact the team has never made the tournament under his leadership. I just hope that this victory will boost the team's confidence and help them finish strong. BC next plays Saturday at Miami.
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