dlyon  Jan 6 2005 - 9:44am  Local Sports   

By MIKE SYPHER
Chronicle Sports Editor
HARTFORD — Shoulders slumped, eyes downcast, Craig Smith shuffled over to the sideline before settling into his seat.
The star 6-7, 250-pound junior forward on the Boston College men’s basketball squad had just been whistled for his fourth personal foul at the 5:44 mark of the second half in Wednesday night’s Big East Conference-opening match-up against the University of Connecticut at the Hartford Civic Center.
Down by a 46-43 margin with 14:16 remaining, Smith and his Eagles were cooked, weren’t they?
Think again…….
Who woulda thunk it, that Boston College would actually pick up its level of play and land a couple of hammer-head rights and lefts to the collective noggin known as Connecticut superiority in this suddenly expired New England rivalry?
“With Smith out, you could just see it in their eyes. It looked like they wanted to play harder,” said Husky sophomore Charlie Villanueva.
Without Smith in the lineup, the nation’s 25th-ranked Eagles would rip off an 18-5 run to take a 61-51 lead with 7:46 remaining, withstand one last Husky rally that tied the game at 70-all with 56 ticks left and then score the final five points of the contest to secure a 75-70 win over Connecticut in front of a raucous crowd of 16,294 fans.
Boston College (12-0 overall, 1-0 Big East), off to its best start in program history, out-scored the Huskies 22-14 before Smith returned with 4:51 to go and his Eagles up, 65-60.
The Eagles still maintained a 5-point edge at 70-65 after Smith (16 points, 6 rebounds) converted an airball into an inside hoop, Jared Dudley (17, 7) hit 1-of-2 free throws and Jermaine Watson picked Husky point guard Marcus Williams’ pocket and sailed in for a layup with 2:31 on the clock.
But the No. 10 Huskies (8-2, 0-1) rallied to tie the game at 70-all when junior Rashad Anderson (15 points, 5-of-15 from the floor) knocked in a three and then sank 2-of-3 free throws with 56 seconds on the clock.
BC coach Al Skinner called for a timeout after Anderson sank the first two foul shots of a 3-shot opportunity, setting up a last-minute play.
“I had a play I wanted to run,” said Skinner, who led his Eagles to the program’s first victory over UConn at the Civic Center since 1987. “It wasn’t like I wanted to freeze [Anderson]. I just wanted us to have a play prepared to run instead of stopping the game and trying to communicate then what we wanted.”
What Skinner and his Eagles wanted to do moments later was celebrate when Smith sank a pair of free throws with 35.4 seconds remaining.
Williams (7 points, 7 assists, 4 turnovers) inexplicably tried to force a bounce pass into Villanueva (8 points, 9 rebounds) in the paint on UConn’s next possession with Dudley, a 6-7 forward who scored 15 of his points in the second half while consistently posting up bigger Huskies, grasping the errant pass and drawing a foul.
Dudley’s pair of free throws with 21.7 seconds to go upped the lead to 74-70, Anderson missed a final wild three and junior BC guard Louis Hinnant (8 points) hit the front end of a 1-and-1 with 12.9 ticks left to seal the victory.