BC’s Strong Second Half Powers Them Past Sacred Heart
By Daniel Emery
While most of college basketball fans had their eyes on Michigan State and Duke, 643 fans came to Conte Forum to watch the Eagles take over the second half in a 73-53 win over the Pioneers of Sacred Heart. The Eagles win puts them at 3-0 for the season.
Deontae Hawkins’ 22 points and 8 rebounds led the way for the Eagles. Hawkins was needed desperately as arguably Boston College’s best player, Jerome Robinson, had 4 points on 1-14 shooting.
It was a tale of two halves as Sacred Heart was leading at halftime 31-30 only to lose the second half 43-22 highlighted by a 25-5 run by the Eagles.
Sacred Heart jumped out to an early 13-5 lead which was highlighted by awful interior defense in the paint by the Eagles. At half, Sacred Heart had scored 20 points in the paint versus Boston College’s 6.Sacred Heart’s big men Mario Matasovic and Joseph Lopez led the charge for the Pioneer scoring the team’s first 10 points and combining for 18 of their team’s 31 points at halftime shooting 9-13 from the field. On the other hand, Deontae Hawkins was the only contributor on the Eagles with 13 points shooting 5-9 from the field and 3-4 from deep. At this point, Bowman and Robinson combined for 6 points shooting 3-14 from the field, which is not what you want from your starting guards and best players. Bowman was able to come out of his struggles in the second half, but Robinson did not.
The second half was a completely different story when a 25-5 run began with a Ky Bowman three-pointer. Steffon Mitchell was a star in this run making back to back tough layups followed by a corner three. Other highlights in this run included a block by Johncarlos Reyes and a steal by Bowman off of an inbound. Defensively they were amazing letting in only 5 points over the approximately 7-minute span of the run.
Eagle fans may be worried by the foul trouble of Nik Popovic and Johncarlos Reyes. Nik Popovic fouled out in only 13 minutes of play which is about a foul every two and a half minutes. Reyes was not as bad, but he contributed 3 fouls over his 17 minutes. In addition, Christian’s lack of trust in the bench is very worrying. Up by 22 points with only 5:33 left in the game, Christian had only put three bench players into the game. You would think that being up by so much with so little time left, Christian would put in his whole bench.
The Eagles look to improve to 4-0 this Saturday with a game against Texas Tech at Mohegan Sun in the Hall of Fame Tip-Off Tournament. With a win Saturday and a corresponding win by Northwestern, Boston College could face it’s first big test of the season Sunday against ranked Northwestern.