Woulda Coulda Shoulda

BC went down to Georgetown today in a hard fought battle to close out the Jared Dudley era. If you had told me at the beginning of the game that it would be a 1 point affair with 4 minutes to play, I woud've taken it, but I really hated the way BC fell apart after the last TV timeout. I'm talking about the muffed Dudley to Marshall handoff that led to a breakaway layup, the missed rebounds, the bad defense, the poor shot selection, etc. It was just a total collapse. Inexcusable.

I thought coming in that BC had to get big games out of at least two of their three scorers, and probably all three to win. Rice and Dudley delivered, Sean Marshall did not. Marshall was terrible. It was a microcosm of his entire career, a couple of buckets early, and then nothing. He was 4-16, missed his last 9 shots, and grabbed only 1 rebound. If he had even a decent game today, BC wins this one, and I think easily the way the Hoyas played.

The little things killed me, especially the loose ball on the floor with 3 BC players standing over it, watching Roy Hibbert pick it up for a dunk to push GTown's lead to 48-44. Also, allowing Georgetown to grab a rebound off a missed free throw and score to shave BC's 8 point lead to 5 with 12 minutes left. No boxing out, no hustle.

On the plus side, the Eagles played great for about 30 minutes, and were in a position to steal it. The first half was BC's best half of basketball since the home blowout of VTech a month ago. Rice was on fire, Dudley was hitting his shots, and Blair was playing great defense.

It was a great year, and like I said in my prior post, this game was gravy. If they had gotten by the Hoyas, it would have been a major, major accomplishment for a very flawed team. They deserve a lot of credit for getting this far with all the adversity they faced. But right now, things feel pretty hollow. The Sweet Sixteen was right there for the taking. In a few days, I'll feel a lot better about it. Right now, all I can say is "this sucks."