A tough loss despite the hard fight by BC.
Despite a hard fought performance by the BC Men’s Basketball team tonight, they were defeated by the Virginia Tech Hokies 72-63. This loss puts the Eagles at 3-14 on the season in the ACC with one game to go — unfortunately another season to forget.
After coming off the bench in his past two games following his injury, Donald Hand Jr returned to the starting lineup to help share the load offensively with Fred Payne.
Virginia Tech won the tip and missed on their opening possession. Following a bad pass by Aidan Shaw on the Eagles first crack on offense, VA Tech’s Neoklis Avdalas drained a 3 pointer. Hand Jr followed it up with a travel, and the Hokies scored on a pair of FT’s. Another score by VA Tech put them up 7-0, and it looked ugly early.
By the 15:00 mark, Avdalas made his second 3 pointer and the Hokies led 14-4. After a TV timeout, Fred Payne scored on back to back possessions with a layup and a transition dunk. But, the team still had no answer for Avdalas as drilled his third 3 pointer after. Luka Toews responded with a 3 of his own, but this would be the last BC field goal for the next five a half minutes. With 5:37 to go in the first half, VA Tech led 30-13 with Avdalas up to 14 points — outscoring the Eagles by himself.
VA Tech’s Ben Hammond scored the next five points for the Hokies. Boden Kapke added a made 3 pointer in between Hammond’s possessions, but a 35-18 deficit was looking worse by the minute with Virginia Tech in total control. The Eagles closed out the half on a 6-0 run with Kapke, Jayden Hastings and Chase Forte cutting into the lead with layups, and the score was 35-24 Virginia Tech.
It looked promising for BC as they started the second half by scoring four quick points and cut the lead to seven. The Hokies had plans of their own and quickly regained their composure, scoring on their next two possessions. Despite the offensive adjustments, the Eagles still had problems defending the Hokies 3’s.
The offense started flowing through Payne, who scored 6 points in the first seven minutes. Forte was showing a positive impact as well as a playmaker. On an extra pass by Forte, Payne scored on a reverse layup. This score cut the lead to eight (48-40 VT) with 12:15 to go. VT’s Christian Gurdak turned the ball over, and Forte dished out another assist to Aidan Shaw who scored easy with a dunk. A 7-0 run by BC forced Virginia Tech to timeout.
BC kept carving up the Hokies zone after the timeout. Payne found Shaw on a dunk and cut the lead to six. Just when the Hokies looked like they were pulling away again, Kapke scored a 3 pointer to keep the game not out of reach. Ben Hammond responded with a 3 to put the Hokies up 67-52, but BC refused to go away. Two layups by Fred Payne and Jayden Hastings and a put back by Kapke cut the lead back to nine with 2:40 to go.
As tough as the Eagles were fighting down the stretch, time was running out. Virginia Tech held on, and defeated BC in a must needed win for the Hokies.
Without a doubt the Eagles best player of the game goes to Boden Kapke. HE scored a new career high 25 points on 11-19 shooting with eight rebounds. Fred Payne scored 16 and added 12 rebounds of his own. As a whole the Eagles shot 42% from the floor and just 5-22 (23%) from three.
BC travels home where they face Notre Dame this Saturday, 3/7. Tip off is at 12:00 pm EST.
Category: General Sports
