They say you miss every shot you don’t take. Unfortunately for Boston College men’s basketball, its leading scorer didn’t take a lot of shots on Tuesday night.
Hand Jr. shot just two shots in the first half of the Eagles’ 74–56 loss to Virginia (9–10, 2–6 Atlantic Coast).
He didn’t get many chances to do so in the second half, either, as he was ejected 3:29 into the period after shoving his defender and being called for a flagrant two.
“I gotta go watch the film,” BC head coach Earl Grant said. “I’m not sure exactly what happened. I didn’t see anything malicious, you know. And Donald Hand doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body.”
Forty-eight seconds after Hand Jr. saw himself off the court, Virginia’s Elijah Saunders, who was 4-of-7 from the field and 2-of-2 from three up to that point, got ejected for doing something very similar to what Hand had just been thrown out for.
Two ejections in the matter of a minute briefly distracted from the fact that the Eagles (9–10, 2–6) were down double-digits to one of the only two teams that went into the game ranked lower than BC in the ACC. As soon as the game settled back down, though, reality set back in.
The Eagles went into halftime of the game down 41–23. That’s the most points the Cavaliers have scored in the first half of any game this season.
“The game was over pretty quick—not over—but the game was really separated early,” Grant said. “And then I thought for 34 minutes we played pretty good basketball. It was even the rest of the way, but the first six minutes, they delivered a knockout punch, we were down 15.”
BC scored four points in the first 6:26 of play.
“It’s pretty simple,” Grant said. “We didn’t make some shots early. They made nine threes.”
Meanwhile, Virginia’s early success came largely from the 3-point line as 27 of its first half points came from behind the arc, and at a 60 percent clip. Isaac McKneely went off, shooting 4-of-5 from three in the first half and ending the game with six made threes.
“McKneely was exceptionally efficient,” Grant said. “Thought he was aggressive, and he really impacted that game with his shooting.”
Saunders and Andrew Rohde also both shot 2-of-2 from behind the arc in the opening period, propelling the Cavaliers to an early lead that plagued the Eagles for the remainder of the matchup.
BC’s troubles didn’t just hold them back on the defensive end.Offensively, the Eagles committed 14 turnovers and shot 4-of-15 from three. Freshman Fred Payne made two of those threes, and he finished the game with a team-high 17 points on 7-of-10 shooting from the field.
Going into the game, the two teams were among the coldest in the ACC. BC was on a four-game losing streak, and Virginia was on a five-game losing streak of its own.
But throughout its dominant win, Virginia looked anything but cold. The Cavaliers shot 52 percent from the field and 55 percent from three en route to shattering its losing streak and drawing BC’s out.
The Eagles matched the Cavaliers’ 33 points in the second half, but the first-half hole they had fallen into was too much for them to handle, regardless of Payne’s efficient offensive performance.
The loss moved the Eagles to second-to-last place in the ACC, in front of only Miami, which is still winless in conference play.
“Sometimes it’s a makes-miss game,” Grant said. “If the ball’s going in on that night, the way it went in for them, you probably—whoever you played—you’re probably gonna be down 14, 15 points pretty early.”
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