The "Walking Disaster" beats Michigan

In my perusing of the blogosphere, I found that many expected the Eagles to lose.  Sports writers, bloggers, and college hoop fans everywhere, even some of our own, did not think BC could go into the Crisler Arena and take down the Wolverines.  The scoreboard tells a far different story, however, as BC won 62-58 in a game that was not nearly as close as the final tally indicates.

After observing some of Michigan's early games, and watching all of this one, I can say with confidence that they're honestly not very good.  Yes, they have talent, and I'm not here to berate them much, but all I heard for days was that Michigan was a lock and that the Eagles would not be able to stop them or play well in their fearsome arena.  This, my friends, is why basketball games are played on hardwood courts and not pieces of paper (and, after having looked at the piece of paper a few days ago, I wasn't convinced Michigan was that much better than BC, anyway).  In fact, it was proven which team was better tonight, and that team was BC.

For the vast majority of the game, save a few minutes where BC played flat and let Michigan make runs, the Eagles totally outplayed the Wolverines.  If it weren't for the turnovers (13) which seemed to come in bunches or other assorted dumb mistakes, BC would have won by double digits.  A win is a win, however, and the Eagles are 5-2, never having lost a game in this Challenge.

The facts we had before us prior to this game indicated that BC is a far better rebounding team than Michigan.   This played out exactly as expected tonight, as BC was +15 in that category (41-26).  I had also heard that Michigan wasn't shooting well recently, and that was certainly the case as they didn't even make a third of their shots.

I can't finish this article, however, without mentioning Corey Raji, who had a scorching first half and finished with 24 points.  When this team gets Rakim Sanders back (soon, hopefully), they will be just fine.  All BC has done now is win back-to-back road games against major-conference opponents without their best player.  For BC basketball fans, there is nothing to be gloomy about, at least not at this point.  Sure, they were lousy in the Virgin Islands, but they're undefeated in the continental 48 so far this season.  If you had told me that Rakim Sanders would play for about 3 minutes in the first 7 games of the season but BC would be 5-2, I'd have taken that.  This is not a bad team, and the Eagles have proven it yet again tonight.