Penn State 62, BC 54: PSU Slips Away from Young Eagles

It was close, but it wasn’t enough.

Boston College lost its first-ever ACC-Big Ten Challenge game here in 2011 as they fell at Conte Forum to the Penn State Nittany Lions, 62-54. The loss drops BC to 2-5.

The Eagles came out of the gate swinging, and though they missed some of those early shots, they fought their way out to a 12-4 lead, which evaporated in a very short amount of time. BC eventually got the lead back and held it going into the half. In fact, BC lead with less than eight minutes to go in the game, but Penn State tied it, and BC went quiet as they took the lead for good. Boston College made two field goals — both three-pointers — in the last ten minutes of the game, and only four in the last fifteen.

It was encouraging, if nothing else, that BC had a realistic chance of winning the game despite Patrick Heckmann having done virtually nothing. The problem is that too many other guys went cold, especially in the second half, and baskets were very hard to come by. The offense was problematic for much of the game; in the first half, I was especially displeased with BC chucking up a bunch of threes. Matt Humphrey was doing it again and it appeared as though Donahue voiced his displeasure with him not distributing the ball more. It wasn’t as bad as against New Mexico, and he seemed to do it less as the game progressed, but aside from grooming the young players, Donahue is going to have to get Humphrey’s game under control. I understand he was the leading scorer on BC, but when you take the most shots, chances are you will be. I’m hoping in particular to see improvement from him, because he does have talents which will be assets to this team.

At the start of the game, Kyle Caudill was getting the job done, using a nice shot and his size to get some short-range baskets (BC’s first six points, in fact), but for reasons that escape me, he didn’t score another point for the rest of the night because he only played 13 minutes. He made the most of those 13, also garnering three rebounds and two blocks. I’m surprised we didn’t see more of him.

Lonnie Jackson had some nice moments tonight, scoring eight points off the bench and showing some range (he came highly regarded as a shooter out of his California high school team, for what it’s worth), but unfortunately he missed all three of his free throw attempts. Speaking of, BC was 14-22 from the line, and that’s still not going to get the job done.

BC played hard on the defensive end and stayed aggressive, even though they did let guys get open here and there. I was encouraged seeing the Eagles swarm around the ball and go for steals on occasion.

On Twitter tonight, as I was leaving the game, I said this loss was “irritating.” I stand by it, and here’s why: I think the Eagles played like the better team for much of the game and should have won, and I was disappointed that they were unable to reward themselves with a win tonight. It’s one thing to get run out of the gym, but another to let one slip away, and regardless of how young or experienced a team is, it still sucks to see them give it their best shot and lead a good bit of the way, only to go cold at the end. Unfortunately, it happens, and it’s probably going to happen again.

There was some progress made here tonight, but not enough to result in a win. They will try to change that against Boston University this weekend.