More than a spark, the Bulldogs needed somebody to catch fire. And just as the game appeared to be slipping away, senior Caden Diggs got hot.
The 6-foot-7 senior scored 13 straight points in the late third and early fourth quarters, willing a comeback and giving the No. 4 Bulldogs the momentum they needed to finish off a 51-49 victory in Potomac.
“I just wanted to take over the game if I could,” Diggs said. “Really assert myself. The scoring wasn’t going the way we wanted tonight, but we knew if we could find some energy we could get things going.”
The Bulldogs (20-2) and Hoyas (18-4) have separated themselves from the rest of the IAC this winter, playing at a level that has only been touched by out-of-town visitors and the local elite. Tuesday’s win not only gave Bullis a regular season sweep of its most obvious conference challenger, it also preserved the program’s perfect record in the IAC and put the Bulldogs in position to earn at least a share of the league title.
The conference tournament, held in less than two weeks, will determine which team holds the other half of that title and could feature a rematch of Tuesday’s game as its championship matchup.
“We know that’s a great team over there,” Diggs said. “So we’re expecting to probably see them again down the road.”
Diggs racked up 21 of his 25 points in the second half. The long-armed playmaker, an Old Dominion signee, scored Bullis’s first 10 points of the fourth quarter, getting his team within one with three minutes remaining.
“A lot of people may be surprised by that performance, but my teammates and I have known he has that in him,” senior guard Tyler Boston said. “We know we can rely on him in big games.”
The Bulldogs, playing in front of a large home crowd that included Virginia Tech Coach Mike Young and Marquette’s Shaka Smart, rode the wave from there. A few defensive stops, paired with some clutch free throws from Boston, handed Bullis an unlikely and important victory.
“This is a high-powered offense, so we knew the points were going to come eventually,” Boston said. “At halftime, we only talked about sticking together and finding the effort we needed to make a comeback.”