Eagles Hoping Lessons Learned Pay Dividends in Home Opener

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- The start of college basketball season offers a near-formulaic schedule for every team. Preseason favorites play each other in opening tournaments, but the bombast eventually establishes a quieter rhythm prior to the first league game of the season. Coaches shift their teams to stress different strengths, and the focus is always on improvements. Polls and bracket predictors feverishly interpret every game, but the real drive is still months from starting.

That's a normal season, but nobody expected the 2020-21 season to ever resemble previous years. No coach had a road map for traversing a season during a pandemic, and every team threw their rhythmic improvements out the window.

The schedule responded in kind and accelerated the chaos by offering a "we got next" mentality. Events like Mohegan Sun's Bubbleville created compelling matchups and housed preseason tournaments, but games scheduled and rescheduled around available teams. It was a delightful chaos forcing teams to search internally for answers because daily scouting simply didn't exist in its traditional form.

Boston College found its way through the Mohegan event by playing marquee games against some familiar faces, engaging with former Big East rivals Villanova and St. John's as well as local foe Rhode Island. It drew into a matchup against Florida on three days' notice in the Roman Legends Classic, but a 1-3 start contextualized the difficulty of playing power schools in almost every game.

Bubbleville closed at the end of last week, but the Eagles' chaotic start continued with their first true road game, at Minnesota, on Tuesday. They played a new game amidst the accelerated, hectic basketball timeline, but the same result as Mohegan emerged in an 85-80 overtime defeat.

"We have to be sounder and keep doing what we do when we (are trying to) get the lead," head coach Jim Christian said. "We had a couple of guys come out of character and try to do too much, and we took a couple of bad turnovers and a bad three. That's not what we need to be doing in those situations, and we have to learn from it."

Just like that, the early non-conference rush ended and the rushed nature of college basketball settled into a normal flow. BC fell to 1-4 on the season and the obvious frustration at a missed opportunity permeated. It unfortunately will not ease BC into its ACC schedule because there's no way to soften the start. The frenzied five-game start is only an appetizer to a brutal stretch, even in an unorthodox year, but the blank slate on the horizon isn't receiving a lighter Eagle roster. They will be battle-hardened, a necessity for the grueling grind of the league and the road that begins next Saturday against Syracuse.

Here's what we learned from BC's losses to the Gators and Gophers:

1) Doing more while doing less.
Being able to do more is sometimes as simple as doing less. BC built a 15-point lead on Minnesota on Tuesday night but watched it evaporate when the team stopped playing its system. The frustration multiplied itself on the floor, and the Eagles fell behind because they lost their mental strength against the Gophers.

"We ran the sets that we were running the whole night," Jim Christian said. "We just weren't making the same reads and letting the ball move for quick reads. So we sub (in other players). If we weren't in foul trouble, we would've subbed (more)."

Foul trouble handed opportunities to Minnesota, and the Gophers went 23-of-33 from the line compared to BC's 8-for-10 numbers. Both CJ Felder and Steffon Mitchell fouled out, and James Karnik and Makai Ashton-Langford finished with four fouls. It robbed the Eagles of all three of their big men as time wound down. Minnesota's 6-11 Liam Robbins, meanwhile, was 5-for-10 from the field for the Gophers while both he and Marcus Carr - one of the nation's leading scorers - combined for an 11-for-16 night shooting at the stripe, more free throws than the entire BC roster combined.

2) Heart of Glass?
Losing to Minnesota stung for a host of reasons, but the game offered a clearer look into BC's team-based rebounding strategy at both ends of the floor. Seven Eagles grabbed at least four boards, and three players rebounded two shots on the offensive end one game after BC nearly outrebounded a Florida team that shot 56 percent from the floor.

"Five guys rebound the basketball," Jim Christian said. "Every guy has a responsibility when (an opponent) shoots the basketball. It's no different from our team than it is for (any other) basketball team. It's gang rebounding. Five guys go to the glass."

The Minnesota game further featured the fourth leading rebounder in the team's first five games after CJ Felder grabbed double-digit boards for the first time in his career. He played aggressive on the glass even as he drew nearer to his fifth foul and further recorded one of the team's three blocks. He further shot 4-of-7 from the field and narrowly missed a double-double by a point.

"(Felder fouling out) takes a lot off the court," Jim Christian said. "It took our best rebounder out of the game and put us in some different ball screen coverages that we just blew."

3) From the Association
The NBA shortened its offseason calendar after its Bubble completion and sprinted through its free agency period while balancing the Draft. The abbreviated period didn't lack headlines, though, and a couple of Boston College names crossed the newswire after Jared Dudley hoisted his first Larry O'Brien Trophy with the Los Angeles Lakers.

Dudley announced the start of his 14th season this week by returning to the Lakers for a second season. An elder statesman presence, he averaged a career low last year while primarily playing a backup role to the loaded frontcourt of Anthony Davis, Kyle Kuzma and Markieff Morris. He was, however, notably on the floor when the Lakers clinched the championship in Game Six.

Dudley is joined in the City of Angels by Ky Bowman after the guard signed with the cross-arena Clippers in the offseason. Bowman was a delightful surprise for Golden State last year after the Warriors dropped out of contention and averaged more than seven points with just under three assists and three rebounds with 12 starts for Steve Kerr, and the Clippers pounced to sign him less than a week later. Former Eagles guard Reggie Jackson also signed on to stay with the Clippers for the 2020-21 campaign.

Layup Line: Onto the ACC
The ACC's gristly results from the ACC/Big Ten Challenge filtered in throughout the night on both Tuesday and Wednesday as Big Ten teams dominated the annual event. Two Tobacco Road programs - Duke and North Carolina - lost their games by double figures to Illinois and Iowa, respectively. Penn State crushed a nationally-ranked Virginia Tech team by 20, and only Miami struggled its way to a 58-54 win.

That sets a particularly strong tone for Saturday's conference opener between Boston College and Syracuse. The Orange are 3-1 to BC's 1-4, but their resume took a hit with their 10-point loss to nationally-ranked Rutgers. They narrowly beat Bryant in the first game of the season, and consecutive blowouts over Niagara and Rider easily converted into forgotten short memories after dropping their game in Piscataway.

Boston College and Syracuse will tip off at 1 p.m. from Conte Forum in Chestnut Hill. The game can be seen on ESPNU with radio broadcast available on WEEI 850 AM.

Eagles Hoping Lessons Learned Pay Dividends in Home Opener

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Players Mentioned

Makai Ashton-Langford

Ky Bowman

CJ Felder

James Karnik

Steffon Mitchell