Awaiting and Welcoming Challenges As Tip-Off Nears
November 06, 2021 | Men's Basketball, #ForBoston Files
Earl Grant isn't shying away from the oncoming storms of a basketball season. Neither are his Eagles.
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- The 2021-22 season for Boston College men's basketball kicks off on Tuesday night when the Eagles host the Dartmouth Big Green. As the first game in front of a Conte Forum crowd in over 600 days, there's a certain amount of weight involved. It is the first game for new head coach Earl Grant; an unprecedented unveiling unlike anything in the program's history.
Grant, the 13th head coach in the history of the BC men's basketball program, is a proven leader who experienced success at all levels of the game. He built the College of Charleston into a conference champion with a no-nonsense attitude, and he brought that outlook with him to the ACC this season. The butterflies, he and his team acknowledge, will remain real due to the confluence of events after the Eagles played the majority of their games in closed environments during a season in which their program underwent extreme changes.
"I have butterflies right now, honestly," said sophomore guard DeMarr Langford. "With the whole COVID year, having no fans, I was really thrown off going to games. Growing up, you'd see Coach K with that big Duke crowd behind [the bench], and I walked in and there was nobody there. It seemed like a nightmare. I was new coming into this, but I'm basically a freshman [again] with a second-year veteran mentality."
The emotions are real and spark the return of college basketball after a season marked by starts, stops, restarts and pauses. At Boston College, two pauses were part of a 4-16 regular season and a last place finish in the ACC standings, and the team's two conference wins came amidst four-game losing streaks in January and February.Â
BC failed to win a true road game for the first time since the 2016-17 season and ended its year with an 86-51 loss to Duke in the first round of the ACC Tournament. The program was, by then, already in transition after a coaching change surfaced after a loss to Syracuse around Valentine's Day, and the only silver lining came when the team rallied for a 94-90 win over Notre Dame.
The season ended with BC's program needing new direction and the Eagles found their compass in the no-nonsense coach from South Carolina. Grant had been an assistant at Wichita State and Clemson before he was hired by the Cougars to complete a full-scale program rebuild. His reshift in culture led the program to five straight winning records in the CAA, a period that included the conference championship and an NCAA Tournament berth in 2018. And his approach never wavered.
"I've been doing the same thing for the past 22 years," Grant said. "It's pretty simple. When you get up early, you get to the office early and coach a team before you go home. Then you go see your family for a bit and watch film, and you do it again the next day. Where you live really doesn't have any preference, whether you live in Boston, Charleston or Montana.Â
Grant had been to Boston annually, after traveling to play at Conte Forum with the Tigers and down the road at Northeastern with Charleston. He understood the atmosphere surrounding college basketball in the Hub. He knew the Northeast as a rugged, tough basketball region, and despite the extreme change to his home weather pattern, he accepted the position to become BC's next head coach in mid-March.
"I had a good familiarity of the city and vibe of playing in Conte Forum multiple times. This is a perfect mix. It's a fighter's place, and this city is for a person that is underappreciated with a chip on their shoulder."
Grant did not arrive in Boston under any false pretense about the fortunes of the BC program. He was at Winthrop and Wichita State while the Eagles dominated both the Big East and the ACC in the 2000's. In 2009, he was with the Shockers for their run to the CBI while BC earned a No. 7 seed before losing to tenth-seeded USC in the Midwest Regional. That was Boston College's last trip to the NCAA Tournament and, as of this year, that 12-year gap between NCAA Tournament appearances is the longest drought for the Eagles since the earliest days predated the program's first berth in 1958. Their last 20-win season was a decade ago, and the only other winning season over that period came in 2017-18 when BC made the NIT with 19 wins.
"I've been through storms plenty of times," Grant said, "and I'm sure there will be some stormy days here. I'm smart enough to know you just don't jump to the top of the hill in one day, and I've been through a storm in a lot of different places. We weather the storm, and we get to the other side of it. You have to fight through adversity together, you have to show up the next day, and you have to find a way to rally and get back on the horse to keep going into battle."
The battle is what Grant hopes to instill in the Eagles as they embark on their first season together. BC's roster returned a handful of regular players from last year but maintained a presence both in the transfer portal and on the recruiting trail. The team recruited Brevin Galloway from Grant's roster at College of Charleston and Quinten Post from Mississippi State while adding Drexel's T.J. Bickerstaff - who is from a family well-known in basketball circles.
They join a core around returnees Langford and his older brother Makai Ashton-Langford, as well as post players James Karnik, Justin Vander Baan, and Frederick Scott. The veterans and newcomers offer Grant competitive options on a roster loaded with four talented freshmen who will have opportunities to make an impact.
"This team will be in a battle every night," Grant said, "so they have to really embrace it and find a way to scratch and claw as much as we can. We will try to exceed as many expectations as we can this year, and hopefully that means we win more than everyone thinks we're going to win. There's going to be some adversity. We have to embrace it."
Boston College and Dartmouth tip off on Tuesday at 8 p.m. from Conte Forum. The game can be seen on the ACC Network Extra available through the ESPN online platform and family of mobile apps.
Grant, the 13th head coach in the history of the BC men's basketball program, is a proven leader who experienced success at all levels of the game. He built the College of Charleston into a conference champion with a no-nonsense attitude, and he brought that outlook with him to the ACC this season. The butterflies, he and his team acknowledge, will remain real due to the confluence of events after the Eagles played the majority of their games in closed environments during a season in which their program underwent extreme changes.
"I have butterflies right now, honestly," said sophomore guard DeMarr Langford. "With the whole COVID year, having no fans, I was really thrown off going to games. Growing up, you'd see Coach K with that big Duke crowd behind [the bench], and I walked in and there was nobody there. It seemed like a nightmare. I was new coming into this, but I'm basically a freshman [again] with a second-year veteran mentality."
The emotions are real and spark the return of college basketball after a season marked by starts, stops, restarts and pauses. At Boston College, two pauses were part of a 4-16 regular season and a last place finish in the ACC standings, and the team's two conference wins came amidst four-game losing streaks in January and February.Â
BC failed to win a true road game for the first time since the 2016-17 season and ended its year with an 86-51 loss to Duke in the first round of the ACC Tournament. The program was, by then, already in transition after a coaching change surfaced after a loss to Syracuse around Valentine's Day, and the only silver lining came when the team rallied for a 94-90 win over Notre Dame.
The season ended with BC's program needing new direction and the Eagles found their compass in the no-nonsense coach from South Carolina. Grant had been an assistant at Wichita State and Clemson before he was hired by the Cougars to complete a full-scale program rebuild. His reshift in culture led the program to five straight winning records in the CAA, a period that included the conference championship and an NCAA Tournament berth in 2018. And his approach never wavered.
"I've been doing the same thing for the past 22 years," Grant said. "It's pretty simple. When you get up early, you get to the office early and coach a team before you go home. Then you go see your family for a bit and watch film, and you do it again the next day. Where you live really doesn't have any preference, whether you live in Boston, Charleston or Montana.Â
Grant had been to Boston annually, after traveling to play at Conte Forum with the Tigers and down the road at Northeastern with Charleston. He understood the atmosphere surrounding college basketball in the Hub. He knew the Northeast as a rugged, tough basketball region, and despite the extreme change to his home weather pattern, he accepted the position to become BC's next head coach in mid-March.
"I had a good familiarity of the city and vibe of playing in Conte Forum multiple times. This is a perfect mix. It's a fighter's place, and this city is for a person that is underappreciated with a chip on their shoulder."
Grant did not arrive in Boston under any false pretense about the fortunes of the BC program. He was at Winthrop and Wichita State while the Eagles dominated both the Big East and the ACC in the 2000's. In 2009, he was with the Shockers for their run to the CBI while BC earned a No. 7 seed before losing to tenth-seeded USC in the Midwest Regional. That was Boston College's last trip to the NCAA Tournament and, as of this year, that 12-year gap between NCAA Tournament appearances is the longest drought for the Eagles since the earliest days predated the program's first berth in 1958. Their last 20-win season was a decade ago, and the only other winning season over that period came in 2017-18 when BC made the NIT with 19 wins.
"I've been through storms plenty of times," Grant said, "and I'm sure there will be some stormy days here. I'm smart enough to know you just don't jump to the top of the hill in one day, and I've been through a storm in a lot of different places. We weather the storm, and we get to the other side of it. You have to fight through adversity together, you have to show up the next day, and you have to find a way to rally and get back on the horse to keep going into battle."
The battle is what Grant hopes to instill in the Eagles as they embark on their first season together. BC's roster returned a handful of regular players from last year but maintained a presence both in the transfer portal and on the recruiting trail. The team recruited Brevin Galloway from Grant's roster at College of Charleston and Quinten Post from Mississippi State while adding Drexel's T.J. Bickerstaff - who is from a family well-known in basketball circles.
They join a core around returnees Langford and his older brother Makai Ashton-Langford, as well as post players James Karnik, Justin Vander Baan, and Frederick Scott. The veterans and newcomers offer Grant competitive options on a roster loaded with four talented freshmen who will have opportunities to make an impact.
"This team will be in a battle every night," Grant said, "so they have to really embrace it and find a way to scratch and claw as much as we can. We will try to exceed as many expectations as we can this year, and hopefully that means we win more than everyone thinks we're going to win. There's going to be some adversity. We have to embrace it."
Boston College and Dartmouth tip off on Tuesday at 8 p.m. from Conte Forum. The game can be seen on the ACC Network Extra available through the ESPN online platform and family of mobile apps.
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