For the first half of Boston College men’s basketball’s matchup against Notre Dame, the teams looked pretty evenly matched. In the second half, bit by bit, that narrative started to unravel.
The first half ended with a buzzer-beater three from Donald Hand Jr. that stopped the Irish from heading into the half on a 9–0 scoring run. Nonetheless, the last few minutes of the first half felt pivotal—the turning point between what felt like an even game, to a game Notre Dame could run away with at any moment.
The Irish (8–9, 2–4 Atlantic Coast) did end up running away with the game, beating BC (9–8, 1–5) 78–60. The Eagles have now lost seven of their last 10 games.
With 2:05 left in the first half of Monday night’s game, something shifted.
BC was up 30–27 at the time. Chad Venning had just charged under the basket, fought off his defender, and laid it up behind him. But after finishing the bucket, Venning said something to his defender, and it all went downhill from there for BC.
“I thought most times a referee will warn a kid before you give him a tech,” BC head coach Earl Grant said. “I think we were up four at that time—we had good rhythm.”
Venning was called for a technical foul—giving Notre Dame two free throws plus possession of the ball. Markus Burton sank both free throws, bringing the game to 30–29 BC.
Matt Allocco forced a foul on Luka Toews on the ensuing free possession, then sank one of his two free throws.
For Notre Dame, whatever the referees heard come out of Venning’s mouth yielded three free points.
“He gave him a technical foul that chopped the game up,” Grant said.
Venning was taken out of the game right after that, and redshirt freshman Jayden Hastings took his place.
“We went with Jayden Hastings,” Grant said. “You know, he’s been really good for us, but he’s a young guy, hadn’t been in these moments. And he looked like a young guy.”
That moment was momentum-swinging, but it wasn’t the whole reason that BC lost a game by 18 points after trailing by just three at the half. The Eagles did gain a lead in the second half, even leading by four points after an Elijah Strong three with 17:26 left.
“I thought we played a great game, you know, up until about the eight-minute mark left,” Grant said. “It was a one-possession game.”
It’s hard to pinpoint just one thing that went wrong for the Eagles. Was it their 16 second-half turnovers? Or the fact that they gave up 17 offensive rebounds compared to their own seven?
At some points in the game, it was less about what the Eagles were doing wrong and more about what the Irish started doing right.
In the first half, Notre Dame turned the ball over nine times. BC scored 11 points off those turnovers. In the second half, though, the Irish turned the ball over just once, stripping the Eagles of potential points in transition.
Throughout the second half, BC watched what had been a tight game slip out of its reach.
“They got five guys returning from last year,” Grant said. “That’s a huge difference in a tight game. That’s a huge difference because now you got to execute. Now you got to get stops. Now you got to really trust your system, you got to trust each other.”
Hand scored 11 of his 17 points in the first half, Venning only put two points on the board in the second half, and despite shooting more than 50 percent from three, the Eagles couldn’t find a way to stay in the game as Burton and Tae Davis combined for 46 points for the Irish.
A highlight-reel-worthy tomahawk dunk from Davis early in the game started him off, and he didn’t stop after that. He led Notre Dame with 26 points, eventually leading his team to a conference win.
“We didn’t execute at the level we needed to execute,” Grant said. “And they did.”
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