Before the season, and even recently before conference play started, the question was being asked: will BC win an ACC game this year? The easy answer was “yes”, especially since the ACC is not a great conference this year. After Duke, North Carolina and Virginia, there’s a noticeable drop-off. And as the Eagles progress over the course of the season, chances are they might knock someone off at home. It’s already happened, and with two straight wins they have likely surprised just about everyone except for the people in their locker room.

There’s only so much on can take from this start. After all, the Eagles did get blown out by North Carolina in the conference opener before rattling off the next two. They won at home and against two teams ripe to be knocked off in up-and-down Clemson and a Virginia Tech team that was a bit offensively challenged even with Erick Green (who missed the game with a sprained LCL in his left knee) healthy. But the wins, following the loss at North Carolina, also show that, as head coach Steve Donahue noted, that they are getting better at responding to adversity. That’s going to be a big plus for this team.

The young Eagles have bought into the offensive system Donahue wants them to play. They are generally moving the ball well offensively, although they have been turnover-prone. But when they’ve run the offense right, it has worked well and at times they have executed it wonderfully. More importantly, they have defended better than last season’s team, with the defense carrying the team at times. That was unthinkable last season.

“It’s been a fun group to coach,” said Donahue. “Everyone comes ready to play, and they do things consistently.”

You can see the development all across the team. Dennis Clifford is getting more consistent and is proving more and more to be a nice player to run the offense through. Lonnie Jackson is clearly a better player than he was in the first few weeks and is a legitimate shooting threat. Jordan Daniels continues to get better at the point, and Gabe Moton continues to fit the reserve role there. All of the freshmen still have plenty of room to improve, but seeing improvement now gives reason to believe more is to come.

There’s no question the Eagles haven’t suddenly become a team that looks like they’ll finish in the top four and wait until Friday to play in the ACC Tournament. A lot of basketball remains to be played and this team is still very inexperienced. They still turn the ball over more than 15 times per game (they had 19 on Saturday) and are getting out-rebounded by nearly six per game (they were out-rebounded 30-28 on Saturday). Their leading scorer, Matt Humphrey, is shooting below 33 percent from the field on the year and below 30 percent from long range.

Still, this 2-1 start can only help, and with it the team may be on their way to some over-achieving. A confident team is more dangerous than one lacking confidence, especially a young team that will basically be playing with house money all season long. Come February, when BC could be in a position to play spoiler against a contending team, they could develop into a team no one wants to play.

At times, the offense looked excellent. There were crisp passes to cutters, great movement without the ball, and some great reads of the defense that led to some easy baskets. There was a nice 14-3 lead early on, before reality set in and Harvard started getting stops. Even after that, there were times, particularly when Dennis Clifford was in the game and they were able to get him the ball, where the offense was a thing of beauty.

“I was pleased for long stretches of this basketball game,” head coach Steve Donahue said.

But at times, the offense was not good, and it came at a familiar time of the game. All night long, the Eagles defended at least reasonably well, with a pretty good effort at that end of the floor in the second half. While the defense was up to the task, the offense wasn’t after about the halfway point of the second half, and it kept the Eagles from mounting a bigger rally. While they managed to maintain contact, you never had the sense they were on their way to breaking through.

“I thought we lost our way offensively in the second half,” said Donahue. “It seems like every time we shot ourselves in the foot offensively, they took advantage of it.”

Clifford continues to come along well, leading the Eagles with 14 points and being the center of the offense. He hit several cutters early on when the offense was well-executed, and when he went out with early fouls the offense took a hit. Later, Harvard seemed to put an emphasis on denying him the ball, as they didn’t want to let him have a chance to survey the scene and find a cutter or open shooter.

The Eagles got a good ballgame from Patrick Heckmann, who has like all of the freshmen looked like he has unlimited potential at times and looked so-so at times as well. Heckmann had 13 points and looked very much at home in the offense, and he showed his ability to get by his man to score and handed out six assists on the night.

“The thing that I love about Patrick is that even though he makes a mistake, he wants to compete the next time and keeps coming at it,” said Donahue. “He’s got a trait that’s hard to find, a kid at that size that can go by people and still has a sense of passing.”

Most of all, the Eagles continue to improve defensively, holding Harvard to 41.5 percent shooting, including 39.1 percent in the second half. They still have plenty of room for improvement there, but it’s another step for this team a year after a lack of defense probably cost them some games and an NCAA Tournament bid.

Still, there is room for improvement there as the Eagles were out-rebounded 36-22 on the night. For the season, they have been out-rebounded by about five per game. Add that to creating less than 14 turnovers per game while they turn it over nearly 15 times per game, and this is a team that is losing the battle of possessions. That reduces their room for error. The opposing defense, and Donahue’s familiarity with them, does provide a lesson for his young team.

“I think that’s a lesson to be learned with young players developing,” said the Eagle mentor, who coached against many of the current Harvard players at Cornell before coming to Chestnut Hill. “My guys, in two years, you get bigger, you get stronger. Just watching the Harvard guys communicate out there, how they know each other so well and have such confidence and trust in each other. Tommy (Amaker, Harvard’s head coach) has done a fantastic job developing that defense.”

Harvard knocked off Boston College for the fourth straight year on Thursday. This time, it was very much expected, as Harvard clearly has the better team. Boston College gave them a ballgame for a while and had an early lead, and all in all showed signs of progress to go with areas for concern. If they maintained the level of play they had early on, it might have been a different ballgame. Looking away from the bottom line, the game was a mixed bag, but had some hopeful signs for the Eagles going forward.

With a young team, confidence is big, and head coach Steve Donahue has been talking about that all along. He knew the wins would be hard to come by and keeping up confidence would be a battle. There was no question the players would get better, and Donahue has constantly said that the players are doing what he has asked of them and then some. There hasn’t been a complaint about the effort and work ethic, and that’s not to be underestimated.

“Their effort is the same, their consistency in terms of execution is starting to get better,” said Donahue. “You kind of know what you can expect in a game now, and it makes you feel a lot better than earlier in the year, when I wasn’t sure what to expect at times.”

Looking just at individual players, it’s noticeable. Ryan Anderson and Dennis Clifford look like they’re starting to round into a reasonable frontcourt duo. K.C. Caudill has to improve his conditioning, among other things, but Anderson scored in double figures for the fourth straight game and Clifford set a new career high with 16 points and tied another with three blocked shots against Sacred Heart and is getting more consistent.

The perimeter is the bigger area, and one can see the progress reflected more. Lonnie Jackson has come alive and looks ready to play more minutes and take on a bigger role after scoring 26 against Bryant and having a big second half, including several key shots, against Sacred Heart. Jackson didn’t score in the first half but hit all four of his shots in the second. That, along with junior Matt Humphrey looking much more comfortable, has helped offset the difficulty Patrick Heckmann, arguably the most talented of the freshmen, had the last time out.

The point guard spot looked like a question mark early on, and while it’s not exactly the strongest area on the team, the Eagles look to be in a better place there now. Jordan Daniels looks much more at home and seems to be better every time out, while Gabe Moton is giving them solid minutes off the bench, especially at the defensive end.

“I think we’re a much better basketball team now that we can rely on Jordan to handle the ball,” said Donahue. “Early on, I thought it was an adventure at times to get the ball over halfcourt and get us into something.”

Daniels didn’t have a banner evening against Sacred Heart, but he still had four assists and two turnovers to lead the way as the Eagles had 16 assists and 13 turnovers. It marked the fourth time all season they had more assists than turnovers, and as a possible sign of momentum, it was the second straight game in which they did that.

Boston College won’t be the favorite against Harvard on Thursday night, and not just because the Eagles have lost three straight to the Crimson. The Crimson are simply a better team right now, and a case could be made that they were the better team last year as well. Even so, the Eagles will come into the game in a much better place than they were a couple of weeks ago, and while a win will be viewed as an upset, it wouldn’t be as much of a shocker as it would be a few weeks earlier.

“It’s huge,” said Donahue of winning three straight. “We’re been through a lot already in these couple of months. We’ve got a little more understanding of what it takes to win now. I think it’s huge that you have success, and they start believing even more, and then it snowballs.”

BC head coach Steve Donahue admits he’s been preaching to his team about winning four-minute stretches – covering the time between media timeouts in a game. Sometimes that’s what you have to do when wins are hard to come by, and it’s been known for a while that they were not likely to be plentiful for this team. Freshman forward Ryan Anderson talked about this a little more, noting that even though they’re competitors and thus don’t like losing, they are looking away from the bottom line when evaluating where they are.

“We’re not focusing on the end results of the games, we’re just focusing on getting better every single game,” said Anderson. “If we keep getting better, we know the wins are eventually going to come.”

Donahue said that the lack of a bottom line reflection on the team’s improvement is the biggest challenge. When losses mount, things are never easy, and that’s happened with this team. It can be hard to buy in to what the coaching staff is trying to do given the lack of results.

“I think we make progress every day,” said the Eagle mentor. “When you’re starting to build a program from where we’re at it, in terms of totally new, I think you see a slight progression every day, but it’s not going to be smooth. It’s not necessarily going to show on the scoreboard, and that’s the hard part.”

In the prior game at Providence, the Eagles didn’t look like a confident team for a good deal of the game, mainly in the first half. They looked very much like the less experienced team on the floor and like a group who was having a tough time from having lost games recently and trailing early on. The Eagles looked a little more confident in the second half, but never got over the hump despite rallying a few times.

Against Stony Brook, the Eagles came out with a good defensive mindset right away and shut down the Seawolves. They played solid defense early, then really clamped down in scoring the final 22 points of the half and holding the Seawolves without a point for the final 11:50 of the half. Stony Brook was just 5-33 from the field for the half, and the 11 points is a Conte Forum record for the fewest points in a half. Defense wasn’t something last year’s team excelled in, let alone this team, so this was a very good thing to see for Eagle fans.

Donahue saw the difference in confidence and understands where it was coming from. He knows he has a team full of players who were used to success, so this kind of adversity is new to most of them. In practice, they’ve tried to address the issue of body language by having players run, and perhaps it’s paying off.

“I thought for the first time, they felt the flow of the game, and even though Stony Brook made runs in the second half, I thought we answered it, and I never thought we changed our confidence level for the whole game,” said Donahue.

The more confident players started with point guard Jordan Daniels. His numbers on the day aren’t going to make anyone forget Troy Bell or Tyrese Rice, but he was clearly more confident in orchestrating the offense and getting the defense going. His body language was better and he was more aggressive at both ends of the floor. Daniels is a key simply because of his position, and right now they appear ready to largely ride or die with him and not as much of Gabe Moton at that spot. The added confidence also showed with players like Dennis Clifford and Anderson. In addition, you can see Lonnie Jackson improving and even Moton as well.

Boston College will come off its break for final exams on Sunday, when they host Bryant. The Bulldogs have generally played better than their 1-9 mark would indicate, but the Eagles have handled them the past three years even as they have looked like they were on the verge of turning a corner. They will enter the game a more confident team, ready for its last stretch of games before ACC play really tests this young team.

As UMass eventually built the lead up to 30, you could see more than just BC getting caught up in UMass’ speed. The Eagles looked like a team that didn’t have confidence, getting tentative at times offensively. The offense suffered greatly, aided by UMass’ length as that frustrated the Eagles on the glass, especially at the offensive end.

The Eagles are just 1-2, but both losses have been by large margins as they lost by 22 to Holy Cross on Friday. They weren’t especially impressive in the season opener, either, but you could at least chalk some of that up to the fact that it was their season opener. But there’s no questioning the youth on this team, and perhaps more importantly, that responding to adversity like this won’t be easy. Donahue’s opposite number on Monday night knows about it.

“We’ve all been there when you’ve got new guys that haven’t played and you’re trying to put them in, and the next guy doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, either,” said UMass head coach Derek Kellogg. “It just takes time. They don’t have anybody older to really help them get through the kind of rough times.”

It’s one thing to have a young team, but this Eagles team is different because the roster has turned over so quickly. With no player left over from the Al Skinner era in Donahue’s second season at the helm, this team doesn’t have much to draw on from the past, at least in college. Ryan Anderson, one of the freshmen, simply draws on his high school experience at Long Beach Poly, one of the better schools in that area.

“I’ve just been referencing my high school days, when my freshman year we weren’t a very good team, either,” said Anderson. “Growing up all the way to our senior year, we became a powerhouse, and that’s what we’re going to try to do here.”

Donahue said that the team is trying to come up with some kind of accountability. When there’s not much upperclass leadership simply because there’s so little in the way of upperclassmen on the roster, that becomes more difficult. It means these young players have to grow up faster than they would in some other situations.

Take freshman point guard Jordan Daniels, for instance. In 24 minutes against UMass, he had three assists and six turnovers while going 1-5 from the field. Donahue noted that it would be different if Daniels could be backing up Reggie Jackson, who was on hand for Monday night’s game, instead of having to start and initiate the offense. His minutes would probably be down, but so, too, would the turnovers. There would also likely be less concern about how the young man is from a confidence standpoint.

A team is going to go through adversity during games and certainly over the course of the season. Right now, Boston College is experiencing that in big doses. The big question is how they will respond to it as they get ready to head out west for the 76 Classic in Anaheim. There, they open with a veteran Saint Louis team that knocked off Washington on Sunday and would likely face Villanova should they knock off the Billikens.

After winning a third straight Ivy League title a couple of years ago, Donahue said that you don’t envision something like that. In a similar vein, you don’t envision something like Monday night’s thumping even when you know it will be a challenging season. The former was the result of the work done by the teams he put together and coached; the latter is the unfortunate result from a team severely lacking in experience just to get through a challenging time at the college level.

This season wasn’t expected to be one where the Eagles are a sure NCAA Tournament team. With that, fans are probably not disappointed in the bottom line. But the idea was that this would be a year to watch the team grow, and right now that’s probably proving difficult for the Eagle faithful.

With nine freshmen on the roster, no one in Chestnut Hill entered this season with ACC title expectations for the Eagles. In fact, anything short of a finish near the bottom of the season would solidify Steve Donahue’s status as a brilliant coach.

That would require quite turnaround.

The Eagles didn’t do anything particularly well in two blowout losses to Holy Cross and Massachusetts and a three-point win against New Hampshire. As Donahue’s teams are wont to do, the Eagles shoot lots of 3-pointers, with 44 percent of their shots from the field coming from behind the arc. But those shots aren’t falling frequently, as the team is shooting 31 percent from behind the arc.

One player who won’t be living behind the arc is Patrick Heckmann. The freshman guard from Germany has been a bright spot for Boston College, with 30 points and 13 rebounds in two games. He missed the team’s loss to Holy Cross with a sprained ankle. Heckmann is only 1-of-5 from 3-point range, but he’s 6-of-14 inside the arc.

Heckmann’s willingness to battle for boards at both ends of the court is good to see, and he could help set a tough tone for the Eagles, who will need to grind out victories this season. One negative trend in Heckmann’s game right now is his propensity to commit turnovers, as he’s got six turnovers compared to four assists. Of course, after only two games, it’s too early to be overly concerned about that.

The road won’t get much easier for Boston College this week. The Eagles are heading west to Anaheim, Calif., for the 76 Classic, and they’ll start the three-game tournament on Thanksgiving against Saint Louis. The Billikens have one of the toughest defenses in the country — again it’s early, but that’s true thus far — holding opponents to 34.2 percent from inside the arc and 26.5 percent from outside. As a team that already struggles to shoot, the Eagles figure to be in for a tough day. Cracking 50 points could be difficult.

But win or lose, Donahue needs his team to compete during each possession. The youngsters will improve only with hard work and game experience. That experience figures to feature plenty of losses for now, but that could start to change by February.

Donahue was already understanding what this entailed from practices and the team’s exhibition game. After Monday night’s 67-64 win over New Hampshire, it was driven home further.

“I probably didn’t have the right approach to the American International game,” said the Eagle mentor. “I’ve been very fortunate the last four years with winning a lot of basketball games and being on the right side of the ledger and player very well. I have to realize that we’re going to make a ton of mistakes out there, and I have to react properly.”

There was certainly a lot of room for growth from Monday night’s game. The Eagles were out-rebounded, didn’t shoot as well from the field as the Wildcats and shot less than 55 percent from the foul line. Only one player – graduate student John Cahill – had more assists (3) than turnovers (1) and the team had twice as many turnovers (14) as assists (7).

The Eagles didn’t look bad, but their effort on Monday night probably won’t win many ACC games. That’s to be expected, certainly, given the inexperience. Mostly, this team looked like a team that hasn’t played together much. They had good moments and bad ones, bright spots and concerning areas.

Three of the Eagles’ freshmen scored in double figures, with Ryan Anderson posting a double-double of 13 points and 10 rebounds. Patrick Heckmann wasn’t far from that as he had eight rebounds to go with 19 points. But Heckmann also had three turnovers without an assist, while Matt Humphrey, the Eagle with the most Division I experience entering the season, had five turnovers with one assist. It wasn’t all bad for Humphrey, as he looked more comfortable on the floor than he did in their exhibition game.

Donahue remembers how the last few teams he had at Cornell were so good that they pretty much ran themselves. Last year’s Boston College team was a veteran group as well, and one that had played together a lot, so they were similar in a key respect. This year’s team has neither of those attributes, so the contrast is apparent.

“For this group, there’s a lot of energy, a lot of stuff goes into each and every practice, a lot of work watching film and figuring out what’s best for this group,” Donahue said.

Heckmann, whose mother made it to town and took in his college debut, said the players knew there would be ups and downs. They came quickly, with the Wildcats having a six-point lead in the first half before the Eagles went on a 14-1 run to close out the half. The Eagles looked like they might be on the verge of breaking the game open in the second half, leading by 11 at one point, but they allowed the Wildcats to get within one possession several times. That led to one big bright spot on the night.

Every time New Hampshire got within a possession, Boston College would come up with an answer at the offensive end or a key defensive stop. They never surrendered the lead in the second half, making big plays when they needed to almost as if they were a team of seasoned veterans who didn’t get rattled.

Certainly, that wasn’t quite the case, and it helps that New Hampshire isn’t exactly a senior-laden team. But their ability to show some poise and make big plays is a plus, something one wouldn’t expect from a team like this.

Boston College started the season well on the bottom line, and showed an unexpected positive along the way. Still, Donahue knows what this season may look like, and it’s not necessarily a mirror image of Monday night.

“I’m going to be mentally prepared to realize that this isn’t going to look pretty. It’s just not,” said Donahue. “It’s unfair for me to assume that.”

The most salient thing about this year’s Boston College team is what’s new about it. 11 players are new, including seven scholarship freshmen on what might be the youngest college basketball team in some time. Among the holdovers, only three have even appreciable experience playing games in the program (senior John Cahill and sophomores Gabe Moton and Danny Rubin), and only one other has significant Division I experience (junior Matt Humphrey, a transfer from Oregon). Also noteworthy is that there is no one who played during the Al Skinner era save for senior walk-on Peter Rehnquist.

Humphrey, by far the most experienced player on the roster, should come in and play a lot of minutes right away, although he’s also adjusting to a different role. He’s a very good shooter, which will fit with Steve Donahue’s offense, and he’s familiar with the offense after practicing last year while sitting out. But he’s also being asked to handle the ball more than he has in his career, and some difficulty showed in the exhibition game because that’s not what he’s done best in his career. Rubin had good moments last year and started 23 games, while Moton was a reserve and figures to get his share of minutes this season as well, but where they fit with this current group isn’t clear right now. Rubin played just five minutes in Saturday’s exhibition game.

None of the freshmen come in with a significant billing, but a number look like solid prospects for a foundation. Local big man Dennis Clifford has come a long way in the last two years after he left a public school in his hometown to spend two years at Milton Academy. Already very skilled before the change, he’s more assertive at both ends of the floor and knows how to use his size to his advantage. He might be the center of this offense, as they want to get the ball inside to him as often as possible since he can not only score, but has always been a fine passer and has shooters on the perimeter to get the ball to. They may try to use him the same way Donahue’s last Cornell teams used Jeff Foote.

“We’ve got to find out, can we go to him a lot more, can he be consistent with his passing out of the post?” said Donahue.

Ryan Anderson might have the most upside and will likely see time at both forward spots. He led the team with seven boards in the exhibition game, and that’s an area for improvement based on this game as a smaller AIC team out-rebounded them 30-29. K.C. Caudill, a bulky post player, and Eddie Odio, who needs to add strength, will also see minutes in the frontcourt.

Patrick Heckmann looked good in the exhibition win over AIC as a versatile wing and appears to fit this offense perfectly. Don’t be surprised if the Eagles try to go big all over the court with him at the point for small stretches as there is no clear incumbent at the position. Jordan Daniels had no assists with four turnovers, while Humphrey and John Cahill, back after being a solid intangible player last year and sure to be one this year, will also handle the ball from the off guard position.

Not only is this young team trying to learn on the fly, but the coaching staff is as well. The Eagles didn’t play as well in the second half as the first on Saturday, and part of that comes from the nature of an exhibition game and the desire to experiment with players and combinations. Donahue said the staff is trying to figure out who should get minutes and what combinations work, and while that happens often it is exacerbated by the sheer number of newcomers on this team. He knew this was going to be a unique situation in terms of youth, but reality is setting in and he’s seeing it.

“The reality of it is every day you’re going through every little step of a basketball game in college,” said the Eagle mentor.

The Eagles don’t play a loaded non-conference schedule, but it’s not full of easy games, either. They could be 3-0 before heading to the 76 Classic on Thanksgiving weekend, since they get UMass at home in that stretch. But it won’t come easy, and after they get tested in Anaheim and against Penn State in the Big Ten /ACC Challenge, in December they host America East contenders Boston University and Stony Brook, an improved Bryant squad and Harvard, which has won three straight at Conte Forum.

Plenty of people have opined about how bad this team might be because of the youth. They were picked last in the ACC preseason poll, and many pundits are surely picking them there as well, and understandably so. But they weren’t picked high last season, either, and might have been in the NCAA Tournament had they pulled out a game or two that they had a chance to but didn’t. Like any coach, Donahue has his expectations for this team and knows the goal is still the NCAA Tournament.

“I don’t want to lose (the NCAA Tournament) as our ultimate destination,” said Donahue. “In the same sense, I would hope (fans) would judge it on having a little vision, watching how hard they play, how they improve during the season, and get an idea of what these kids might look like after 30, 40, 50 games in their college career as they all grow together.”

For Eagle fans, this is a season to enter with no expectations and just enjoy the young players as they grow. Having a program will help with that.

Projected starting five:

So. G Gabriel Moton
So. G Danny Rubin
Jr. G Matt Humphrey
Fr. F Ryan Anderson
Fr. C KC Caudill

Important departures:

Reggie Jackson: 18.2 ppg, 4.3 rpg, 4.5 apg
Joe Trapani: 14.8 ppg, 7.0 rpg, 1.8 apg
Corey Raji: 12.1 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 1.6 apg

Percent returning scoring and rebounding:

Scoring: 8.7 percent
Rebounding: 9.1 percent

Additions:

Matt Humphrey, junior guard transferred from Oregon
Ryan Anderson, ESPNU four-star freshman power forward from Long Beach, Calif.

Schedule highlights:

Best non-conference game: at Providence
Toughest conference stretch: Jan. 7-14 (at North Carolina, vs. Clemson, vs. Virginia Tech)

Outlook:

In his first season at the helm in Chestnut Hill, coach Steve Donahue propelled Boston College into the top half of the conference’s standings. En route, he helped turn Reggie Jackson into a bona fide star. Under Donahue’s tutelage, Jackson erupted for 18 points per game, and he guided the offense with nearly five assists per game.

For a second consecutive year, the Eagles won’t have lofty expectations. However, it would take a miracle for Donahue to get this team to more than five ACC wins. Boston College loses more than 90 percent of its scoring and rebounding, and nine of the 15 players on the roster are freshmen.

Prediction: 12th

Next: Clemson Tigers

Back to ACC preview

The Eagles won this game in a similar fashion to how they have won several others this season. They ran a very efficient offense and took good shots, and were good overall despite a couple of sloppy stretches and 14 turnovers. After having small leads and the game staying close for the first half, ending in a tie, the Eagles ran the lead into double digits thanks to their defense. Georgia Tech slowly made their way back, but didn’t have enough to tie although they got within three a couple of times.

“I thought the defensive end in the second half for us was the key, when we started getting some serious stops,” said head coach Steve Donahue. “I thought we did a very good job after, obviously, not a very good job in the first half.”

Donahue said Reggie Jackson, the team’s best player all season, had a couple of very good days of practice after spending time talking to him on Thursday. Whatever the message was, the junior guard certainly got it. He had 25 points on the day, going 8-9 from the field and making all three of his shots from behind the arc. That helped overcome some foul trouble and seven turnovers, which is a little out of character.

Naturally, he would rather not have had the seven turnovers, but Jackson was happy with the game for a simple reason.

“I’m satisfied with the win, so I’m not going to complain too much about it,” said the junior guard.

For his part, Donahue said he had no problem with it, especially since three of the turnovers came on offensive fouls as Jackson tried to make plays. A player takes risks when they get aggressive, and as long as that is how the turnovers happen Donahue won’t be upset with it.

The Eagles were more in character in this game than on Wednesday night. Against Harvard, too often they tried to do too much instead of playing the way they normally do, and it showed in the results. On Saturday, they stayed within themselves and the results were positive. They kept their poise as Georgia Tech slowly cut a 13-point lead all the way down to three, but got no closer, and brought the lead back up to 13 in the final seconds before a meaningless basket provided the final margin.

“I think there’s only one approach for me with things like that,” Donahue said of responding to the loss to Harvard. “One, you’re blatantly honest, we’re disappointed with how we played. But whether it was a great game or bad game, your next practice has to be your best. You can’t have any hangover from it. It’s easy to do that as a coach, to think about all the stuff you let go to not win a basketball game, but it doesn’t help you.”

The Eagles will need to have no such hangover with North Carolina State coming to town on Tuesday night. Much was expected of the Wolfpack before the season since they have a nice group of freshmen to go with their veterans, but the jury is out on them as they had an undistinguished non-conference run that included no NCAA Tournament resume wins. A lot of that has to do with Tracy Smith missing time due to injury. Regardless, the Wolfpack will come to town with something to prove, and they also come to town having won five straight games after blowing out Wake Forest in their ACC opener.

While the Eagles have managed to stave off rallies all season, tempting fate too much may catch up with them. They haven’t been good at putting teams away when they have a chance to, and while there is much to be said for staying poised and holding off a rally by making the plays late, it’s something that might be best if it’s not utilized very often.

“We have to find a way to progress and, once we break away, bury teams,” said Jackson.

Tuesday night might provide one such opportunity, if the Eagles turn the page as effectively as they did after the loss to Harvard.