Eagles Come Up Short

With a 1:27 to go and his Eagles trailing North Carolina by three, Jared Dudley reached into his bag of tricks and pulled out old reliable.

Dudley fired up a three – a desperate attempt to tie – and, knowing it was off the mark, leaned into Reyshawn Terry and flopped to the hardwood. It’s a move that only a few seasoned, NBA veterans have mastered, but Dudley had been doing it since he was a freshman. Draw the foul, sink the free-throws, tie game. Dudley (game-high 22 points) knew the drill.

The deafening, sellout crowd of 8,606 chanted his name as he settled his feet on the stripe, then went silent when he was ready to shoot. The fans, all donned in yellow giveaway T-shirts, were waiting to explode every time Dudley sank one.

But they never got the chance. Dudley missed all three.

“I’ve missed many free-throws, many game-winning shots before, it’s part of basketball,” Dudley said after the game. “If I dwell on it and I keep missing, it could hurt my teammates. I just know next time I’m going to have to make them.

“Anytime you start struggling from the free-throw line, it’s all mental. I don’t think it’s really physical, if it is you wouldn’t be in the game. Once you keep missing, it’s kind of hard to block out.”

Later, with 10 seconds to go, Dudley had another chance to tie from the same spot – the left wing, in front of press row – but Terry learned from his mistake and gave Dudley no chance to create contact. The attempt fell short and UNC’s Ty Lawson iced the game with a pair of freebies. The Tar Heels took the game, 77-72, and in doing so, overthrew the Eagles from their perch atop the ACC standings.

The charity stripe was not so charitable to BC on Saturday night. Dudley missed six altogether (7-13) and the Eagles hit just 11 of their 21 attempts. Carolina, meanwhile, was 16-20. The numbers make it look like BC was the visiting squad, struggling to concentrate in a hostile environment. But, as Tyrese Rice pointed out, the Eagles should have had the advantage as the home team.

“I’ve never seen us miss this many free-throws in our own gym,” Rice said. “Maybe on the road, but not in your own gym where you get to practice all the time and knock down shots all the time. It was just tough.”

Rice, as he had done in four-straight games prior to Saturday, notched the 20-point mark. He was just 2-7 from behind the arc and didn’t hit a three in the second half, but was virtually unstoppable off the dribble and creatively found ways to score in traffic.

Going up against a marquee opponent, Rice was brimming with confidence.

“I’m never going into a game thinking we’re going to lose,” Rice said afterwards. “I’m always going to think we’re going to win, regardless of who it is. You could put the Lakers on the court I’d feel like we’re going to win the game.”

With 5:29 left in the first half, on the first possession after Dudley was forced to the bench with three fouls, Rice turned heads by faking a pass to the corner and kissing a floater off the glass from the left side. He got fouled on the play and missed the ensuing free-throw, but the wild shot gave BC a 31-30 lead.

When the Eagles made a run at UNC in the final minutes, Rice was at the forefront of the charge. BC was down seven with 3:50 to play and, after Dudley hit two foul shots (again a product of his uncanny flopping ability) to cut it to five, Rice rose up from the left elbow and dropped in a jumper over Lawson as the shot clock buzzer sounded.

The Tar Heels drained the clock down below the one-minute mark after Dudley’s adventure at the line, but they couldn’t convert a basket and the Eagles remained just one possession away from evening the score. Perhaps due to his struggles from downtown in the second half (0-4), Rice passed on a triple and turned to his old reliable: the dribble-drive.

Hoping to create a three-point play, or maybe just hoping to keep BC in the game, Rice drove to his left and tossed up a prayer from eight feet away as he fell out of bounds on the baseline. When the ball banked in, UNC’s Tyler Hansbrough shook his head in disbelief and the Eagles were within one with :28 left.

“I really don’t even know how it went in,” Rice said after the game. “I just tried to get it up on the backboard because if I didn’t they would’ve called a travel.”

North Carolina showcased all of its weapons Saturday night. Hansbrough (17 points, seven rebounds) was his usual crafty self on the inside and frustrated the Eagles with his ability to draw fouls. Brandon Wright’s (13 points, three blocks) elastic wingspan created matchup problems for BC on the inside. Lawson’s (13 points) darting speed gave the Tar Heels an answer to Rice’s penetration capabilities. Wayne Ellington’s (12 points) smooth stroke from any spot on the floor was almost undefendable.

They might not have been firing on all cylinders, but Carolina had five players (if you include Terry, who had 10 points) who could take over offensively. The Tar Heels’ balanced attack put BC in a few different holes throughout the night. The Eagles fought back from eight down midway through the first half, thanks to a rare stretch of accuracy from long distance by Rice and Dudley, but let UNC rebuild a six-point lead by halftime.

BC trailed by nine twice at the beginning of the second half, but staged a 14-6 run to tie the game with 10:09 to play. Terry then caught fire over the next seven minutes, hitting two three-pointers and scoring eight points during a 12-5 Carolina run.

The Eagles nearly climbed out of that seven-point hole, but fell a few free-throws short of completing a late comeback.

BC had an opportunity this week to stake a claim as a national contender, playing in front of a national audience at home against both Duke and Carolina. But the Eagles, though they came close both times, failed to earn a win.

“It’s frustrating…You’re playing two top programs of all time,” Dudley said. “Every time this opportunity presents itself you want to try and steal it, we just didn’t get one. It’s not like the season’s over, we still got to go and steal one against [Virginia] Tech.”

The Hokies are next for BC, Wednesday night in Blacksburg. For the third-straight game, the Eagles will be playing on ESPN and the national stage. Opportunities are still present for Dudley and his teammates, but with just three games left in the regular season, they better start seizing them