Thursday Three-Pointer: Week Five

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- Parity in college basketball has been evident through the early weeks of the 2019-20 season. There have been upsets that serve as epitomes of brutality, some court storms, but all-in-all, these losses can serve as good barometers for the conference slates that start in earnest in late December. A loss by a national powerhouse can go by without feeling like the season is becoming catastrophic. Every team knows how the long season can create wins and losses without impacting March's trajectory.

All of that starts to change now. Conference play, which started in the ACC on opening night and continued through mid-December, rises like a tidal wave on the horizon after the holiday season. Its impending crash into the season's shoreline is hovering like a shadow, forcing teams to hit the right stride in order to begin making a push for postseason play.

"We've played really well the last three games," BC head coach Jim Christian said. "We've moved the ball well for the majority of games. There were stretches where we haven't, but we're in a good rhythm. Defensively, we've played consistently."

That last sentence underscores just how much the road instantaneously changes. BC had one game last week against Central Connecticut, a Northeast Conference team struggling to find its identity in the wake of a winless start. A sleepy start to the Eagle offense eventually led to a 28-point advantage and ended in a 19-point victory. It was the lone game during the team's exam period, a particularly stressful time for athletes balancing increased academic rigors against practice and preparation.

Once exams end, BC's young men will travel west to San Francisco to play California in the Al Attles Classic. It's the final non-conference game of the season and the last session before another 10-day layoff leads directly to Cameron Indoor Stadium and a New Year's Eve date with Duke.

"When we're good, we force turnovers and share the ball. Even the possessions we didn't score, guys made the extra play," Christian said. "We were playing to score a bit, but now we're getting ready to play a great team with Cal before playing Duke and Virginia, back to back."

1) D-(Fence Emoji)
Prior to starting its three-game win streak, BC entered the Notre Dame game with a clear understanding how its defense unraveled over its previous four games. It spent considerable time rebuilding and recommitting itself to stopping opponents on the defensive end. The Eagles re-established their offense-from-defense and rediscovered their stroke, stopping the downward trend.

They reinforced that upward turn against Central Connecticut by limiting 3-point opportunities and creating turnovers. On-court personnel identified switches and used communication to force 18 turnovers by the Blue Devils' starting five. It was part of a 23-turnover day that turned into 24 points for the Eagle offense.

"It comes back to who we're supposed to be," Jim Christian said. "We had to re-identify it...we got away from who we were defensively and what we've preached since the summer. In college basketball, there are stretches where you don't play well. In reality, you have to go through what you are. They understand that we're good, and we do certain things defensively. Now we just have to commit to doing them, which is easier said than done."

The Eagles now enter the Cal game with 212 forced turnovers, tied for seventh-most in the nation. Their 17.67 turnovers forced per game is third-most in the ACC and sits less than a percentage point behind Duke for second. Both teams are in the top 30 nationally, with individual tune-ups coming before they play each other to start conference play in earnest.

2) Chemistry Clinic
The amazing thing about BC's defensive resurgence is how the frontcourt is adapting to the temporary loss of Popovic. He's the only true sized center on the roster, so the combination of undersized forwards are negating opponents' posts and big men by playing smarter on possessions.

The integrated switching is determined through communication and situational awareness, and it requires chemistry among the remaining forwards. It winds up having an impact on both ends of the floor because BC's forwards will buzz and swarm to cause confusion and create opportunity on the window for rebounds.

Both teams had 24 defensive rebounds in the Central Connecticut game last week, but the Blue Devils only grabbed seven offensive boards. BC, meanwhile, had 16, scoring 11 second chance points.

Steffon Mitchell is experiencing a particularly strong breakout in Popovic's absence. He had 13 points, 12 rebounds, and a career-high six steals in the Central Connecticut game.

It came on the tail end of a two-game span on which he totalled 28 points, 25 rebounds, five assists and 11 steals, making him only the third Division I basketball player since 1996 to post those totals over two games in the last 23 years.

"I think Steff has a lot of good energy," Jim Christian said. "It spreads. He's done a great job. He's a really good player. Jared's playing really, really well. When you play within yourself, you do the right things time after time after time. The numbers don't lie."

It's not surprising, then, to see both players top BC's efficiency rating. Both players went over 20 against the Blue Devils in the formula that factors points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks against the difference of missed shots and turnovers.

"I'm definitely more confident," Hamilton said. "I put in a lot of work in the offseason and all summer, even when we got back up here for summer school with the team. I'm just trusting my work and being loose with the team."

"He's been our most efficient player over the last three games," Christian added. "He's just doing the things that he's really good at doing."

3) Crowded at the Top
The Cal game is a critically important test for BC because of the ACC's looming shadow. The league should have three teams inside the top 10 of the national rankings by the time the Eagles return from San Francisco, including their first two opponents.

It's very much a "pick your poison" for the top of the conference this year, and the polls reflect that attitude. Louisville lost its first game of the season and tumbled from the No. 1 ranking, usurped by Kansas in both the Associated Press Top 25 and Coaches Poll. The Cardinals retained a first place vote in the AP poll but ceded the remainder to three other teams, including Duke, which earned two votes for the top slot but hung behind Louisville at No. 4. Virginia, which lurks after the Duke game at home, is No. 9.

In the coaches poll, though, the Blue Devils are No. 3 after Louisville fell to No. 5. Virginia, which is still the defending national champion, is No. 7. All three of those teams, for what it's worth, only have one loss on the season.

It's part of an incredibly crowded national radar packed with power conference teams. Gonzaga is crashing the party as the No. 2 team in the poll, but it only reinforces how good the power conference teams are this year. The Big 12 and Big Ten are both partying with the SEC and ACC, and the Pac-12 is getting into the mix with Oregon, which played a simply amazing game against Michigan last weekend.

The only undefeated team, though, is Auburn, which is down at No. 12 in the AP poll and No. 9 in the Coaches Poll.

But since this is basketball, the nomenclature of "power conference" doesn't apply. Gonzaga, DePaul, Villanova, Memphis, Dayton, Butler have been factors early on and will make for interesting case studies as the calendar turns. Their respective early-season runs are only going to get much, much more serious as conference slates kick up.

Layup Line: Simply Golden
College basketball's east-west dynamic absolutely fascinates me. There isn't a ton of crossover because non-conference games are usually more localized, so games between eastern or central teams against the west always tend to draw an eyebrow or two. I point back to the Oregon-Michigan game last weekend, which was an instant classic worthy of an onion or two.

For its part, Boston College has never really played a ton of western teams. There have only been 21 games in 85 seasons of Eagle basketball against current members of the Pac-12, though it should be noted that three games against Utah all came when the Utes were part of either the WAC and Mountain West conferences.

So BC probably won't recognize how Cal is a very similar team when it heads to San Francisco to play in the Al Attles Classic. The Golden Bears have a very similar tradition to the Eagles that once held annual trips to postseason tournament before falling on harder times. Over the past two years, the team's struggled to consistently win basketball games, but they enter this weekend with the corner starting to turn.

Cal is 6-5 this season with a 6-1 record at home, though this game isn't being played in Berkeley. But after opening the year with four straight wins, including one over a sneaky-good Cal Baptist team, the Bears have lost five of their last seven. Three of those games, though, came against good basketball teams, including Duke, Texas and an 11-2 Saint Mary's team that just crushed Arizona State by 40 (and is somehow not ranked).

Jim Christian raved about Cal in his most recent press conference and the numbers back up Mark Fox's team in his first season in Berkeley. The Bears' early season games established them as a good defensive team and it makes for a game against BC between teams meeting at the same point in their trajectory.

BC and Cal will tip off at 5:30 p.m. eastern time on Saturday. The game can be seen on the Pac-12 Network with radio broadcast available on WEEI 850 AM.

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