This one there for the taking
MINNEAPOLIS -- Some losses are tough to live with. This one might be impossible.
It was as if Boston College was afflicted with some kind of Death Wish. The Eagles did unto top-seeded Villanova as few have done, driving the Wildcats out of their four-guard scheme almost immediately and making them play BC's game. But Villanova moves on and BC goes home because BC killed itself with turnovers.
Oh, sure, the ending had nothing to do with that. The ending was sad enough, however. Needing one last stop to get themselves into the Elite Eight, BC had a horrifying lapse at the worst possible time, allowing Villanova's Will Sheridan to catch an inbounds pass with no one around with just over three seconds to play. What choice did Sean Williams have but to go for the block, or the goaltend, I should say? The call was correctly made, Louis Hinnant was way short on the desperation three, and Villanova staggered off the court as a 60-59 overtime victor in a game that will plague BC for a long time to come.
''I mean, you can't really explain it," sighed Craig Smith, who ended his BC career with yet another double-double (14 points, 14 rebounds). ''It is tough. It was tough, losing by 1. Not much you can say."
Tough? Yes, very tough. For this was a team constructed to go far in the NCAA Tournament. We will leave the argument as to whether this was BC's best team ever for some later date, but there was no doubt that this group had a chance to do big things against this particular NCAA field. And the way this thing started, it looked as if this reallly was going to be the BC team that would get to the Final Four for the first time in school history.
BC had Villanova down, 25-9, 14 1/2 minutes into the game. BC would later have the Wildcats down by 9 (43-34) with 9:37 to go. In both cases the major reason the Wildcats were able to creep back into the game was BC's astonishing carelessness with the ball.
BC shot well enough to win an NCAA Tournament game. But no team that has 49 shots attempted and 21 turnovers deserves to win. Villanova, by contrast, shot 35 percent. The Wildcats had 60 field goal attempts and only 11 turnovers.
Those turnovers? What was going on, anyway?
''When we attacked the basket we were fine," BC coach Al Skinner said. ''But there were times when we got real passive, and [we committed] what I thought were careless turnovers."
And then there was free throw shooting. The Eagles are not known for their prowess at the line, and they lived up to their reputation by shooting 8 for 17 from the stripe, as compared with Villanova's 14 for 20.
It was not as if the Eagles were facing the reincarnation of the Wisconsin-Milwaukee team that so disrupted them last year, either. Villanova is not a pressing team. BC did itself in with zig passes when someone was zagging or with a variety of transgressions that are not usually part of the Eagles' game. When, for example, is the last time Jared Dudley dropped two fast-break transition passes out of bounds and also threw a pass away, and all in a three-minute stretch of the second half?
But perhaps it was not meant to be. Perhaps the evening was destined to belong to someone on the other team. No one would argue the premise that Villanova had the best player on the floor. If you're a Wildcats booster, you start construction of a Randy Foye shrine in your rec room sometime today. If he didn't come up not just big, but humongously big, BC would have survived itself.
Foye is a 6-foot-4-inch guard with everything known to man in his offensive arsenal, with a gigantic heart as a kicker. On an evening when chief running mate Allan Ray was struggling through a 3-for-15 nightmare, Foye did what coaches are always telling us great seniors are supposed to do; namely, pick up the team and carry it across the finish line. Foye had 21 of his game-high 29 in the second half and overtime, and did it in professional style, mixing long jumpers with truly artful drives. He was also 7 for 8 from the line.
Sean Marshall, whose early offense propelled BC to a 9-0 lead, made Foye work hard for everything. With a lesser effort on Williams's part, Foye might have had 40. But Foye was the master of his own fate. On this occasion it was impossible to imagine that there is a better guard in America. There may be, and Washington's Brandon Roy likewise had his forum last evening, but last night no one was better than Randy Foye.
It did look as if BC might pull it out. Down by 3 with 40 seconds left in regulation, Dudley nailed a rather large tying three with 28 seconds left, doing so with two men, as Johnny Most might have said, inside his shirt (a 4-point opportunity might have been warranted). Williams, the master shot-blocker, then saved the game by coming from St. Cloud, or somewhere, with a Russellian block of a potential winner by Kyle Lowry to send the game into overtime.
BC appeared dead once again in the OT, first trailing by 5 (56-51) after a Foye three, and then trailing by 3 (58-55), with 43.7 seconds to go. But Dudley shook free for a layup, and then Smith, on what would turn out to be the last post-up of a great BC career, took a feed and powered in a layup to give BC the lead at 59-58 with 12.2 seconds remaining.
The ending? Tough. Foye went into the pack, losing the ball out of bounds with no call. That might have been a break for BC. But on the subsequent inbounds play, the normally alert BC crew lost its bearings, and there was Sheridan all alone. Williams did what he had to do. Hey, maybe the refs would blow the call.
Nope. They got it right. They might not have gotten some other big ones right, but they got that one right.
What happened, anyway? How did Sheridan get so loose at such a big moment? ''I just thought we were overly aggressive," explained Skinner. ''I thought we understood what we wanted to do, but, obviously, we didn't get the job done."
They almost got the job done, but you know what they always say about ''almost." The game, and the berth in the Elite Eight, was available for BC. Let the wouldas, couldas, and shouldas begin.
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@globe.com. 
