This was a basketball game. Or at least that's what I'm being told. I was there, but I'm exactly sure how much basketball was being played. It wasn't pretty, but Boston College eventually walked away with a 67-50 win.
Let's get the somewhat confusing stuff out of the way first. This was an exhibition game for Philadelphia University, but it counts for Boston College. But it doesn't count towards BC's RPI. It's basically just a loophole so that BC can schedule a game against a lower level team without it hurting their RPI. I don't think it's that weird that we're playing a team like Phila U this late in the year. Duke plays Gardner-Webb tomorrow. North Carolina is playing Northern Kentucky in a couple of weeks. Games like this are supposed to be easy 30-point blowout wins that essentially act as a practice. Of course, nothing is ever easy for these Eagles.
Sunday at noon during finals week is a terrible time for a basketball game. There was hardly anybody at the game and the energy level in the arena was sleep-inducing. I think I saw a couple of students studying for their exams in the stands because there weren't any tables left at O'Neill. Games that start this early are always atrocious. They are typically much lower scoring than normal because nobody can shoot. And that's exactly what happened in this game. Truthfully, I didn't think BC was playing that poorly -- they just couldn't make any shots. Shots were open and the ball movement was good, but they weren't hitting anything. An easy solution to that would be just consistently feed the big men down in the paint. PhilaU has nobody as big as Ryan Anderson or Will Magarity and BC scored at ease when they went inside. But, for whatever reason, BC never really committed to doing it.
The defense was better, but it's kind of hard to judge when you're playing a team like PhilaU. They can't really shoot either. And aren't very good.
I think most people will agree that this wasn't a very good showing by BC, but it was mostly just the offensive end of the floor. That makes me wonder...when has offense been the problem with this team? I can't really recall this team struggling to score so far this season. It's always been that they haven't been able to stop people. Part of me wants to chalk this up to just a sloppy effort and poor shooting on a Sunday morning, but it's clear that BC hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt. I'm not really sure what to make of this game.
#FreeGarlandOwens. Always and forever.
Why can't Olivier Hanlan just take over a game like this? Nobody on PhilaU can stop him, so why not just score all the time? I know that Hanlan is trying to get his teammates more involved and be more of a passing point guard this year, but that doesn't mean he can't take over and be aggressive when the opportunity presents itself.
I'll have a little bit more after I go to Steve Donahue's press conference and then I'll be writing final papers for the rest of the day. This game was a decent way to procrastinate from doing my school work. But I'm not sure it was much more than that. Oh well -- a win is a win and this team needs all the wins it can get.