One week ago, Boston College men’s basketball began a critical three-game homestand, hoping to turn around a disappointing season with a win or two on the Heights.
On Saturday, BC exited that homestand on a three-game losing streak following defeats to Miami, Stanford, and California, and with one of its best players sidelined due to injury.
The Golden Bears (18–8, 6–7 Atlantic Coast) used lights-out three-point shooting to take an early advantage and led wire to wire for an 86–75 victory over BC (9–16, 2–10) in Conte Forum.
Cal made 14 threes and shot over 48 percent from deep.
“They made 14 threes,” BC head coach Earl Grant said. “It’s hard to do that. You know, you can defend them great. You can be open. Making 14 threes is not an easy thing to do, so you got to give them some credit.”
BC got off to a slow start, making just one field goal in the first 6:40. Cal used that stretch to take a 15–4 lead before Luka Toews made a jumper with 13:19 on the clock to cut it to nine.
A 3-pointer by Toews two minutes later capped off a 7–0 Eagles run and cut the Cal lead to four. The two teams went back and forth for the next few minutes before Cal caught fire from three.
First, it was Mantas Kocanas cashing from deep to give Cal a 27–17 lead with 7:51 left in the first, and then it was the Chris Bell show.
Before the half was over, Bell scored 11 straight points for Cal to give the Golden Bears a 15-point lead. He finished with a game-high 22 points on 8-of-13 shooting and 6-of-10 shooting from three.
“Chris is not afraid of the big moment,” Cal head coach Mark Madsen said. “Every time he shoots it, he thinks that ball is going in. He’s just an extremely confident individual.”
Five points from John Camden increased Cal’s advantage to 20 points, but another bucket from Toews and a three from Fred Payne brought the score to 43–28 at the half.
Cal went 7 of 16 from deep in the first half, while the Eagles shot just 35.7 percent from the field and went 3 of 13 from beyond the arc. Turnovers were another killer for the Eagles through the first 20 minutes—they gave the ball away eight times, leading to 10 Golden Bears points.
“We usually take the threes at a pretty good level,” Grant said. “But today they were able to make the shots from the perimeter, and that was the difference in the game.”
The Eagles’ offense finally found its groove to start the second half, scoring 12 points and two threes in the first five minutes. Unfortunately for BC, Cal matched that with 12 points of its own and maintained a 15-point lead.
That ended up being the story of the second half—whenever BC made a run, Cal found a way to answer.
“It seemed like every time we cut it [to] nine or 10, somebody made a big three,” Grant said.
After barely missing a layup, Chase Forte went to the line with a chance to cut BC’s deficit to 10 with about eight minutes to play. He made just one of his free throws, and the Golden Bears responded with another run, capped off with a Bell three, to go up 80–66.
A Toews jumper with 2:16 left cut the lead to single digits for the first time in the second half, making it 80–71. But the Golden Bears had one more clutch shot in them, as John Camden nailed a shot from beyond the arc to put Cal back up 12.
BC’s offense improved in the second half, outscoring Cal 47–43 and shooting nearly 60 percent from the field, but it was not enough as the Eagles continued their slide down the ACC standings.
“I thought we played really well [in the second half],” Grant said. “We shared the ball, we defended, but we didn’t put two halves together.”
