On Saturday afternoon, the Boston College men’s basketball team hosted the Syracuse Orange in Conte Forum. A back-and-forth game that featured a lot of late game scoring eventually ended with an Orange win, 79-71, in large part thanks to Syracuse guard JJ Starling’s 26 points.
The first half of the game was a bit of a defensive slugfest on both sides with Syracuse taking a small early lead and then going on a 5-minute scoreless stretch. The Eagles couldn’t get much going themselves when the defense stepped up, but Donald Hand worked his way into the paint to keep BC in the game alongside some three-point shooting by Joshua Beadle and others that allowed the Eagles to tie the game as halftime approached.
From there BC jumped out to a small lead that they held for much of the second half, but Cuse never let the game get too far out of hand. Strong defense from Jayden Hastings, Chad Venning and other Eagles restricted Syracuse’s ball movement and forced Starling to do a lot of work by himself, and the Eagles always seemed to respond on the other end of the floor to a Syracuse momentum shift. But BC’s luck ran out as the second half began to enter its final stretch and Eagles started missing more shots. The Orange took advantage, retook their lead with just over 5 minutes to play, and then held on during an exciting final two minutes that saw BC make plenty of shots in their comeback attempt but not enough to overcome Syracuse’s free throw shooting. Boston College dropped their second ACC game in a row and now must travel to South Bend on Tuesday for a match-up with Notre Dame.