BC 75, Bryant 55: Jackson’s 26 Lead Eagles to Blowout Win

For the first time this season, the Eagles have strung together consecutive victories.

On Sunday afternoon at Conte Forum, Boston College defeated the Bryant Bulldogs, 75-55. It is BC’s largest victory of the year to date and gives them their fourth win of the 2011-12 season.  Freshman Lonnie Jackson led the Eagles with 26 points, including having made seven three-pointers.

Since I was not tweeting and had the ability to pause the DVR when needed, I took notes during the viewing. It isn’t necessarily organized logically; it’s more of a stream-of-consciousness sort of thing.

• BC played very well in the opening minutes of the game, making some shots and collecting offensive rebounds.

• The Eagles had some good ball movement at times, particularly under the basket.

• Towards the end of the first, BC started getting more careless with the ball and jacking up threes. Mike Gminski noted, correctly, that Humphrey was “putting too much pressure on himself” by forcing that shot too often and not making them.

• Lonnie Jackson’s shot is smooth and effortless. He was tremendous today; absolutely brilliant performance shooting the ball and he got some rebounds. You might have thought he was Reggie Jackson with how he played.

• Defense overall wasn’t bad, but Bryant ended up getting their fair share of open looks and buried some jumpers.  Definitely improved from where it was.

• BC really started to fall apart towards the end of the first half and I was not impressed with the shot selection. It was a very poor end to a promising half. (They made up for it with a strong second half.)

• Turnovers were not a major issue for BC in the first half, with only three. They also managed to keep it under 10 for the game. That’s a definite cause for optimism.

• Humphrey had a terrible game. For a few games he looked better, but today he started doing the same things he was doing before that frustrated us, like jacking up threes at will. The idea is not for him to try, to use a baseball analogy, to hit his way out of the slump: it’s to take BETTER shots, not necessarily more.  When he takes 11 shots and misses 10, that hurts the team and on another day, it may have been costly.

• Heckmann committed too many fouls for the amount of playing time he got.  Still, somehow, he ended up with 10 points.

• Ryan Anderson had a good game, coming in with a double-double. Four of his rebounds were offensive.

• Again, when it mattered, Donahue kept BC down to a 9-man rotation. We are seeing the fruits of it with a more consistent effort.  I think we can expect a rotation like this going forward.

• Very encouraging to see Daniels end up with nine assists after none in the last game.

I don’t care if it’s Bryant or the School of the Blind: what I watched today and have seen for the last several games, compared to where BC was a month ago, is the difference between night and day. This does not look like the team that got mauled by Holy Cross and UMass. There is no doubt that BC has gotten better in recent weeks, but can they continue? Their next game is on Wednesday night against Sacred Heart, and that’s another one BC should win ideally.

It would seem that the Eagles — one would hope, anyway — are starting to become more confident. They will need all the confidence they can get before they enter the very tough stretch of ACC play in a few weeks.  BC might not win too many more games going forward, but lately, we’re starting to see that there’s something to work with here.