Harvard 79, Boston College 63: Eagles Embarrassed by Crimson for 5th-Straight Year

For the Boston College Eagles men’s basketball team, bad keeps getting worse when the Harvard Crimson are in town.

On Tuesday evening at Conte Forum, on a day that has already delivered attention to Boston College, the basketball team brought some particularly negative focus to themselves. The Harvard Crimson defeated the Eagles, 79-63. It is Harvard’s fifth-straight win over BC, and with the loss, the Eagles fall to 3-5 on the season.

In the first half, Boston College played to within two points, but the second half was incomprehensibly bad by the Eagles. It was what Eagle Action’s Eric Hoffses called “one of the worst halves [he’s] seen BC play in a long time,” including the 2011-12 debacle of a season, and few are in any position to disagree.

On offense, BC has been able to do a few things, and today the fans saw the re-emergence of Ryan Anderson after having been hampered by injury, but defensively was another story. The Eagles played a very bad game when Harvard had the ball, particularly in transition defense. They were also hopelessly incapable with regards to holding onto the ball, as Boston College turned the ball over four times in the first minute and a half of the second, setting a bad tone en route to 15 total for the game.

BC shot 58% from the floor and Harvard 55%, but Harvard took more shots, made more threes, and got to the free throw line a lot more often. It seemed that they could do whatever they wanted and BC was not going to be able to stop them. Dennis Clifford did not play, but let’s be honest: Clifford doesn’t win this team the game when they’re getting run out of their own gym. Perhaps he mitigates the damage, but losing by this much to a squad like Harvard is, and has been, a team effort.

There is no one fix for Boston College basketball, because so many things are going wrong. Steve Donahue is a good man, but at some point (as we learned in football), that isn’t enough. His team will have to start making some progress soon.

Boston College will try again on Saturday against St. Francis College (NY).