BC struggles against scrappy Sacred Heart

The ingredients for a trap game were there, including the thin crowd (announced as 2,137) and a lopsided win early in the week.

Then, of course, there was Boston College's opponent yesterday afternoon, Sacred Heart (4-7), which arrived at Conte Forum with losses in three of its last four games and trailing, 4-0, in the all-time series.

It was the kind of script that cast Sacred Heart as the underdog, and BC (12-2), with a game against No. 1 North Carolina on Sunday, as the obvious favorite.

Or as Eagles coach Al Skinner called it, "an easy game to overlook."

It would be the easiest way to explain why Sacred Heart went bucket for bucket with BC for most of the first half, why the Pioneers sprinted down the court for layups, spotted up for threes, and worked the glass for tip-ins, and why it took so long for the Eagles to realize that Sacred Heart was there to beat them.

And even though they fell short, taking an 89-76 loss, the Pioneers gave BC something to think about.

"I can't really say our game Sunday played a part in it," said BC point guard Tyrese Rice, "because I didn't hear anybody really talking about it."

It goes back to something the Eagles dealt with when they played Bryant Dec. 10.

"I think it was lacking just because of the team we were playing," said Eagles guard Rakim Sanders. "A lot of times we'll play a team like Sacred Heart or teams like that, we tend to think that it's going to be an easy win for us . . . We just felt that just because we have Boston College on our jersey that we're supposed to win, and it doesn't work like that."

Sacred Heart coach Dave Bike said he wanted his team to catch the Eagles sleeping and dictate play early. Breaking out to a 21-17 lead behind Chauncey Hardy (14 points) and Joey Henley (team-high 18 points and seven rebounds) was the quickest way for the Pioneers to put their fingerprints on the game.

It didn't change, Bike said, until Rice, Sanders, and the rest of the Eagles decided they wanted to be a part of it.

Sanders, who scored 12 of his game-high 20 points in the second half, was one of the main sources of energy for BC, running the floor, attacking the rim, and throwing down dunks. That energy was needed with one of the Eagles' best hustle players, Corey Raji (5 points), dealing with an illness before the game, and another, Joe Trapani, having his nose and ankle injured during it.

Eventually, Bike said, "they played the way they wanted to."

Skinner said it took his team too long to react.

"It wasn't till they knocked us down about the 10th time that we started to respond to that and we started to exert ourselves a little bit more, and it's unfortunate that we had to wait that long," he said.

A BC trend has been to learn lessons and still win, but this game made Skinner rethink whether his team is ready to start its Atlantic Coast Conference schedule.

"If you would have asked me that last game [an 84-62 win over San Francisco Monday], I would have said we were where we'd like to be," Skinner said. "Today, it's a little different story. I'm sure we will be prepared to play. I think mentally we're in a good place. And the most important thing again is that we did win the ballgame and we did enough good things to win."

BC's ninth straight win served as a last-minute lesson before conference play.

"We have to be ready to play from the beginning," said Rice (18 points, 8 assists, 7 rebounds). "We have to be ready regardless of the circumstance. We have to be ready if there's one person in the stands or 10,000 people in the stands because we're playing for ourselves and we're playing for Coach Skinner."

"You want to play well," Skinner said. "But I guess this gives me an opportunity to do a little butt-kicking in practice the next couple of days. I can use that as motivation and get them back on track."

Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com.