Boston College faces Louisville in the second of Tuesday’s three first-round games at the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament in Greensboro, N.C.
The 10th-seeded Eagles (15-16, 9-11 ACC) had a shot to earn a bye to the second round before falling 73-65 to Georgia Tech at home on Saturday.
T.J. Bickerstaff led three double-figure scorers with 15 points and added nine rebounds, but Boston College took a hit when fellow senior forward Quinten Post (team-leading 15.2 points, 5.7 rebounds) left with an ankle injury less than three minutes into the game and did not return.
“A sprained ankle, nothing more than that,” Eagles coach Earl Grant said. “It’s day-to-day. We saw him (Sunday), he was moving around better.”
The Eagles will look to go on their second straight postseason run after winning twice in Brooklyn last year before suffering a buzzer-beating quarterfinal loss to Miami.
“It’s a new season,” Grant said. “As much as I would like to harp on the Georgia Tech game, we’ve got to move on pretty quickly. … We’re excited about (the tourney). We feel like we have made a lot of progress in the last month, so I think we can continue to make that progress.”
BC’s late run included wins at Florida State and Wake Forest, as well as its third top-25 victory on Feb. 22 against then-No. 6 Virginia.
The 15th-seeded Cardinals (4-27, 2-18) dropped their last four regular season games, including 75-60 Saturday at No. 13 Virginia.
Redshirt freshman Mike James tied his career-high with 24 points, but the Cavaliers’ 58 percent shooting night was way too much for Louisville to overcome.
“They pretty much got anything they wanted,” Louisville coach Kenny Payne said. “We seemed like we were a step behind everything defensively. The pace with which they run their offense was hard for us to deal with.”
Prior to Saturday, junior forward JJ Traynor had averaged 12.0 points and 6.2 rebounds while shooting 8 of 13 from long distance over five games. Virginia held him to eight points and without a 3-pointer.
The lone head-to-head meeting between BC and Louisville this season was a 75-65 win for the Eagles on Jan. 25. It was the second straight game in which Post and Makai Ashton-Langford both eclipsed the 20-point mark.
El Ellis scored a team-high 17 for Louisville in that game. Ellis and James canned three 3-pointers each.
–Field Level Media
