BC 67, New Hampshire 64: Young Eagles Win Season Opener

Consider their confidence boosted.

The new-look Boston College Eagles basketball team found a way to beat the New Hampshire Wildcats in their 2011-12 season opener, 67-64. Boston College is 1-0 with the victory and New Hampshire falls to 1-1.

The Eagles showed a lot of early jitters. For the most part, the first half was sloppy and inconsistent, and the Eagles made a lot of the types of “freshman mistakes” you might expect. If anything, what was frustrating was just how many of those they were making, since they included very wild shots and sloppy passes. Once they calmed down, however, they began to play much better. The play of the first half had to be Patrick Heckmann’s buzzer-beating three to give the Eagles a 30-23 lead.

In the second half, Boston College played much better. They still missed some shots and had problems shooting the free throw for almost the whole game, but the Eagles cut down on the fundamental mistakes they were making. The game got very close at the end, but the Eagles were able to hold on despite a bunch of free throw misses (BC: 17-31 from the line tonight).

In fact, I would say that if there was anything that honestly displeased me about the game, it’s that they missed too many free throws. You can give them a pass for just about everything else, being young and their first game, but it doesn’t matter how young or experienced you are, you need to make the freebies. They left way too many points on the court tonight and this will have to be worked on.

Eagles fans got a scare in the second when Patrick Heckmann went down to the court with an apparent ankle injury which caused him to disappear into the locker room. Fortunately, he came back and contributed at the end of the game. He also happened to be the leading scorer in the game, as Heckmann ended up with 19 points. Heckmann didn’t just play well, he played smart, which helped the Eagles on the defensive end as well as the offensive. No question in my mind that he was the best player on the court for the Eagles or Wildcats.

Ryan Anderson and Dennis Clifford also played well for the Eagles, showing some life on the boards and getting to the basket (particularly Clifford, who showed BC fans some rare post moves). Anderson managed a double-double (13 points, 10 rebounds) in his NCAA debut. Eddie Odio had some athletic moves to the Eagles’ credit as well. John Cahill was invisible for most of the game offensively but hit a big three near the end. Most of the rest of the guys who got in the game either didn’t stand out or stood out in a bad way. Humphrey had 12 points and his only saving grace was making three three-pointers; otherwise he did not play well, committing five turnovers and only managing four field goal makes and four rebounds. He will have to play a lot better as the season goes on; so will Gabe Moton, who unfortunately was a non-factor in his 12 minutes and looked sloppy. These guys aren’t freshmen, so in fairness, we expect more. The good news is that it was only the first game and both can improve.

Tonight, in addition to looking at the score (which was a little closer than the game actually was), I was looking for general themes to take away from this team’s performance. This is the quick and dirty evaluation:

• Lots of careless freshman mistakes; played nervous early on
• Did a lot of things right; had some nice passes and played with effort
• Despite making a lot of mistakes, they didn’t play all that badly
• If you don’t know the name Patrick Heckmann yet, learn it
• There is definite talent to work with from the freshmen; they did most of the heavy lifting tonight

Any win for BC this season is good, so we’ll take it. Next up, they go out to Worcester to face Holy Cross.