Great players don’t lay down after a few missed shots, a couple bad plays, or even an entire poor first half. They keep shooting, keep fighting, and eventually, they find their rhythm.
Fairleigh Dickinson’s Terrence Brown averaged 21 points per game going into Saturday’s matchup against Boston College men’s basketball—good for 11th in the nation. For the first 20 minutes of the game, though, he didn’t look like that kind of player—the kind that can average more than 20 points per game—as BC held him to five points.
Elite-level shooting from Ahmed Barba-Bey and his 31 points managed to keep the Knights in the game long enough for Brown to make his comeback. Then, Brown did what great players do—he found his rhythm.
His 15 second-half points weren’t enough to grab a win over the Eagles, though. Neither was an 8-of-9 shooting performance from behind the arc from Barba-Bey, as FDU (4–11) went home with a 78–70 loss to BC (8–5, 0–2 Atlantic Coast).
That’s because waiting to stunt the Knight’s progress at every corner was Donald Hand Jr., who ended the game with a career-high 29 points and went 9 of 9 from the free-throw line.
“He’s in here every morning before 7 a.m.,” BC head coach Earl Grant said about Hand. “So nothing will surprise me with him. He has a chance to be a special player and have a special year.”
Hand has shot 7 percent better from three and 12 percent better from the free-throw line so far this season compared to last. He’s tallied three triple-doubles—all games the Eagles have won—and leads BC in scoring, averaging 15.3 points.
“Coach does a great job not to let us hang our heads,” Hand said about bouncing back after the Eagles’ loss to Southern Methodist. “You know, it’s next play. Nobody’s gonna feel bad for us. We just gotta bounce back. We can’t let one loss affect the next game.”
After Chad Venning put BC on the board 17 seconds into the game, Hand went on a seven-point scoring run, putting BC up 9–5 behind four points in the paint and a three.
“My teammates found me, and they trusted me,” Hand said. “Shoutout to my teammates, because they really put me in spots that I’m comfortable in.”
The Eagles stayed in control for the majority of the contest, preserving at least an eight-point cushion for most of the game. But still, they could not seem to stop Barba-Bey. With 50 points on the board for FDU, he had scored exactly half of them. He ended the game 10 of 12 from the field and 88.9 percent from three.
“He had a career night,” Grant said. “Got [our lead] to 16 points and the reason it got back to five, is that he made three threes.”
Going into Saturday’s game, BC’s opponents averaged 36.2 percent shooting from behind the arc. That puts the Eagles at 317th in the nation in 3-point defense.
FDU shot 41.2 percent from three on Saturday.
Although BC didn’t defend well from three, it did hold the rest of the Knights—discounting Barba-Bey and Brown—to 19 total points as Venning tallied a team-high four blocks.
“We’re going to pursue our best version of ourselves,” Grant said. “We’ve had some flashes that our best version is really, really a good thing.”
That, combined with the Eagles outrebounding FDU 37–24, allowed BC to come away with a win in its final non-conference matchup.
“Non-conference is over, you get 11 games,” Grant said. “We’re 8–3. I think most teams in the country would love to be 8–3.”
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