The Boston College Eagles Men’s Basketball team defeated the Hampton Pirates on Tuesday night, winning 63-52.
The game started out with Boston College leaning on Fred Payne on offense. He was their bright
spot during the first 5 minutes of the game, as he scored 5 points plus a steal and helped them take an early 9-6 lead. However, during those five minutes the Eagles committed 3 early fouls — the calls were not going their way. As time progressed, the Eagles were allowing too many offensive boards where the Pirates capitalized.
BC’s defense began to tighten up and Hampton’s offense quickly evaporated. Luka Toews entered the game and dished out 3 early assists, two of them that led to made three’s by Jason Asemota and Marko Radunovic. It was all BC during the next 8 minutes, as they went on an 18-5 run and took a 27-11 lead. Despite the Pirates struggling on offense, they continued to get calls which kept them lurking around. With 3:38 left in the first half, it was 28-17 Eagles.
Jason Asemota began to have an impact by the end of the first half with solid defense and drew fouls. His impact kept gave the Eagles enough of a cushion on their lead, with the Pirates still finding ways to stay in the game. Just when the Pirates began to find points and cut the lead to eight, he hit a last second three and BC led 37-26 at halftime.
Following halftime, the Eagles came out with super high energy thanks to back to back dunks by Aidan Shaw and Jayden Hastings, the former being a fast break alley oop. With 15:23 left, BC led 43-30 with Hampton finding no consistency on offense. Following the first timeout, the Eagles began to draw fouls and get to the line. It was their only source of offense as they began to miss open looks, many being three’s. Defensively they continued to hold their own even with the shaky offense. It was 48-32 Eagles with 11:05 to go.
The sloppy play continued from BC on offense but were bailed out from the Pirates inability to score. By the 7:05 mark, The Eagles pounded the ball inside and scored six straight points from Boden Kapke and Luka Toews, leading 58-36. The duo’s contribution inside the paint built the rhythm needed to keep a comfortable lead. Hampton started to full court press and added pressure late, but missed threes and fouls drained any source of fight left from them. It wasn’t a pretty showing late — the press really stalled the Eagles flow. Still, a wins a win!
Fred Payne led the BC scorers with 14 points. Boden Kapke added 10 points while Caleb Steger dished out eight assists. The Eagles shot 39% from the floor and made only five threes, but forced Hampton to shoot 35% on the other end.
Up next, Boston College will host Davidson on Friday, 11/21 at 3:30 pm.
