RECAP: Boston College Eagles Can't Keep Up With Duke Blue Devils, Lose 81-64

At some point during the Boston College Eagles matchup against the Duke Blue Devils, the reality of the futility of the Eagles' efforts became apparent.

That isn't to say that, heading into the game, the result wasn't already apparent. After all, the Eagles tipped off as 16 point underdogs to the Blue Devils. Yet, with the Eagles holding a lead for 7:45 of the first half, and only going into the locker room down by 13, a nonpartisan observer would have taken pity on the Conte faithful in attendance Saturday for having but a smidgen of hope for a potential upset.

Alas, an upset was not in the cards for the Eagles, who fell to the Blue Devils 81-64 for their first loss in conference play.

"I thought it was a really good win for us," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "BC has been playing so well…they play really good defense and they're together."

Despite Krzyzewski's perception of the Eagles defense, BC was unable to contain freshman guard Brandon Ingram. Ingram found solitude in the corner of the Conte Forum court on multiple occasions, and the Eagles seemingly did not have an answer for him. On four separate instances where Ingram found solitude, he made the Eagles pay from deep.

"We would lose [Ingram] and it was rotations," BC coach Jim Christian said. "They're such a drive team that our main thing was to keep the ball out of the paint early, which we didn't. They were rotation plays, and he's a great player. You gotta give something up. We were not going to let them get to the rim early in the game, and that's why we had the lead early in the game, he made us pay a little bit. You got to pick your poison."

Ingram led the way for the Blue Devils with 25 points, but one would be remiss to not note that he was not the only one in double digits. Grayson Allen and Matt Jones put in 17 and 16 point efforts in, and Luke Kennard added 17 points to the Blue Devils' effort during his 27 minutes off the bench.

"[I was] happy for some things, but disappointed in a lot," Christian said. "We missed a lot of shots tonight. We told the team, to win these games, at the end of the day, you just have to make plays you make every day. We missed point blank shots, we missed wide open shots. You're not going to beat them if you're going to miss wide-open shots."

Despite the loss, Eagles fans can take solace in the result of the matchup given the performance of the team. Given the collective youth of the team, and compounding the youth with the overall difficulty of the Eagles' opponent, the loss seemed inevitable.

The overarching reality of the game, however, was that, for a rebuilding team, the effort pushed the Eagles forward.

With a team trying to find its footing in one of the nation's most competitive basketball conferences, we can't ask for much more than that.