Trio Grande Leads BC Over TTU

Thanks to its Big Three, Boston College will live another day. Tyrese Rice (26 points), Sean Marshall (21), and Jared Dudley (19) lived up to their billing Thursday afternoon, pacing the 7th-seeded Eagles to an 84-75 win over Texas Tech in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Offense was not difficult to find Thursday, for either team. Neither the Eagles nor the Red Raiders played a whole lot of defense. BC often forgot about the perimeter while Tech allowed significant gaps under the hoop. While the final shooting percentages weren’t mind boggling (BC’s 52% outdid Tech’s 46%), the pace of the game was a little surprising. Neither team is known for its scoring prowess, but for sustained periods, mainly the middle 20 minutes of the game, both squads traded buckets like it was a Suns/Mavericks matchup.

BC’s foibles down the stretch of the regular season, when the Eagles dropped five of their last seven games, stemmed mostly from the inconsistency of its three leading scorers. One would carry the offense for long stretches as the others watched, making it difficult for BC to establish a reliable offensive attack.

That wasn’t the case against Bob Knight’s Red Raiders. Rice, Dudley, and Marshall took turns, in that order. The first half belonged to Rice, with a side of (John) Oates. Rice scored 13 points in the first 20 minutes. BC’s sophomore point guard abused Tech in the paint, unleashing his unlimited supply of creative shots amid a host of defenders, big and small. The 6-foot-10” junior Oates, meanwhile, knocked down three shots from behind the arc, including two in a row to give BC an early, six-point lead.

Tech’s pair of junior guards, Martin Zeno and Charlie Burgess, countered with a combined 20 points of their own, but a full dish of Rice and Oates (who put back a Rice miss with four ticks left) was good enough to keep the Eagles on top of a first-half shootout, 41-39.

The 10th-seeded Red Raiders kept up the pace to start the second half, just when Dudley started to emerge as the 2,000-point scoring stud that BC fans are used to seeing. Dudley, who now needs just seven points in the second round to pass John Bagley as BC’s all-time leading scorer in the tournament, put back two offensive boards and hit four of five shots in the first 6:21 of the half to convert nine of his 19 points. Tech, though, nailed back-to-back threes to claim a 58-54 lead with 13:21 remaining.

That’s when Marshall took over. The senior co-captain, who led BC with 23 points in its ACC-tourney loss to North Carolina, netted 15 of his 21 points in the second half. When the Eagles went down four, Marshall rattled off 11 of their next 14 points. Once Rice, after a Marshall layup, reclaimed the lead with an open three-ball, Marshall dropped two-straight triples of his own to put Tech in a 68-62 hole with less than nine minutes left.

As Tech scrambled, and failed, to punch back, BC’s trio delivered the final blow with a few key buckets down the stretch. When it came down to free-throw shooting, Rice had that department covered. The Eagles’ best shooter from the charity stripe during the season (79%), Rice sunk all six foul shots he attempted in the final :41.

With its win over Texas Tech, BC has earned a chance to play this weekend. The road to advance further, though, is a rocky one. In order to make the Sweet 16, a feat they accomplished last year and six times total in the school’s history, the Eagles must go through Georgetown. The former Big East rivals have never met before in postseason play, but the Hoyas, the #2 seed in the East region, are sure to be heavy favorites.