Photo by: John Quackenbos
Eagles Shootaround: Week I
November 17, 2022 | Men's Basketball, #ForBoston Files
BC went 2-1 with wins over Cornell and Detroit Mercy before an upset loss to Maine capped the week.
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- Basketball is the one sport where fashion mattered. Players and coaches dress a certain way, and thanks to the magic of social media, what someone wore into the arena or on the sidelines meant almost as much as what happened on the court.
At times, the college game felt like more of a runway in Milan thanks to Jay Wright's wardrobe turned into regular headline-generating material. His hand-crafted pinstripes occasionally produced iconic double-breasted, three-piece patterns, and that checkerboard suit with the pocket square pushed him past Sports Illustrated and directly into GQ.
COVID-19 changed that, but across college basketball, coaches are slowly returning to the formal fits that defined the sideline game, and this year, Boston College head coach Earl Grant found his way back into his formal wear by wearing suits on the sideline for the Eagles over the more comfortable, dry fit options.
"It's been two years without it," Grant said, "and I enjoyed the comfort of the pullovers. But, you know, this is a profession and I've been in it for 20-something years, and I just thought it was important for us to go back to wearing suits. After two years of the polos, as comfortable as they were and how much less stress it was packing for road trips, I just thought it was important to understand that this is a profession."
Grant's first three games under the suits produced a 2-1 record, and while the Eagles clearly didn't play perfect basketball, the head coach believes the process of putting together a successful men's basketball program is a well tailored one. He lauded the resilience of the wins over Cornell and Detroit Mercy while acknowledging the inherent difficulties associated with a bad loss to Maine. In each game, BC played with toughness, but the negatives that bit back against the Eagles are items that he intends to approach with a level-headed professionalism as the team's weekend trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands for the Paradise Jam event looms this weekend.
"Over the last 10 days, with the circumstances that we face, we've actually grown," Grant said. "We've actually gotten better with guys that I didn't think we'd be playing much this season playing 25 or 30 minutes . I think there's going to be some growth as it pertains to the overall season, but sometimes, in order to grow, you have to go through some tough times. So I think that's where we are. We've played three games, we've lost one but won two, and I thought our guys showed good character.Â
"We lost a two-possession game," he explained, "but with the margin being so slim, especially early in the first 10 minutes, we needed to be better. We needed to be more mature and work for better shots, and I didn't think we did a good enough job of that."
Other observations from a wild first week in college basketball:
1) Stop, thief!
Jaeden Zackery's journey to Boston College is well-documented for how he flew under the radar of nearly every college basketball coach as an underrated junior college transfer. His arrival solidified Earl Grant's backcourt last year with a rugged, tough player who knew what it was like to ride the bus for long road trips in the brutal Florida heat.
He was one of six players in the nation to make at least 50 field goals last year while shooting 47 percent from outside, but his league-leading three-point field goal percentage as a freshman keyed off his ability to lockdown on defense. He tied the Dana Barros' record for steals by a freshman last year when he swiped 57 possessions from opponents, which was good enough for ninth in the nation in total steals and 12th in the nation on a per-game basis, and he arrived back into the BC lineup with six takeaways in the first two games against Cornell and Detroit Mercy before grabbing an additional takeaway against the Black Bears.
"He has great instincts and great anticipation," said Grant. "He would have been a great safety in the NFL because he's fast, physical and can anticipate [the play and the pass]. I think that's nature, and I don't think that's necessarily nurture because he tied Dana Barros' record for steals. He's off to another good start for us, and it's just about finding a way to get the ball into his hands. He's got a knack for it, and it's a unique thing that he [can do]."
Zackery's shooting percentage battled a bit of a lid on the can in the latter two games of the last week, but his ability to generate offense from his defensive stands kept BC moving within Grant's system. He dished a career-high seven assists against Cornell with four steals, one short of his career high, and his double-digit scoring has been a part of the backcourt with Makai Ashton-Langford for the better part of a year-plus. Through three games, it also led him to average between 12 and 13 points per game with a remarkable consistency, at least in output, to the BC offense.
"I know I played well on defense last year," he said, "and I kind of learned how to watch the person with the ball. My man would sit in the middle, and I learned how to read when they're dribbling and when they're about to dribble. That's how I get a lot of steals because once they've started dribbling, they can't pick it up, so I get a lot of steals when they're dribbling. But I kind of keep my head on a swivel, too, so I can kind of see everything."
2) Those were the days.
All things change, but the era of the traditional big man feels like it's increasingly disappearing into the rearview mirror. Pat Riley's New York Knicks aren't exactly walking through the door, but the days of watching Bill Curley go tete-a-tete against Dikembe Mutumbo, Malik Sealy, Alonzo Mourning, and Michael Smith in the battles of the Big East Conference were seemingly long gone the first time Joel Embiid kicked a pass outside after standing under the basket without anyone around him.
The concept of playing center or power forward is completely different, and while ACC play features tough battles in the paint, big men are increasingly required to step outside the post to play face-up basketball in a one-on-one situation against another center or small forward. Seven footers shoot three-pointers and run the floor, and offenses are built around five-out formations with nobody under the basket.
"Maybe 10 years ago, one of my last years at Wichita State, our bigs didn't shoot any threes," said Grant. "They just wanted to go inside, rebound 12 times, and play inside, and that was for both the [center] and [power forward]. By the time I got to Clemson and left Clemson in 2014, we had to get a four-man that could shoot. That's the X-factor, and it shifted from 2010 to 2015."
The transition between big men over the Boston College's last three three coaching eras illustrates how the role of a center shifted. Seven-footer Josh Southern averaged six points and five rebounds per game without a single three-pointer, but his successor, 7-1 Dennis Clifford, attempted 31 shots from outside the arc. Clifford transitioned into Nik Popovic, who, like Quinten Post, stood close to seven feet tall and the Eagles moved towards a style that allowed the 6-11 Bosnian import to fire 130 three-point attempts over four years. He hit 36 of those shots - five more than Clifford even attempted - and opened the door for James Karnik and Post, who combined for 21 three-pointers last season alone.
"European players had something to do with it," Grant said, "and then you see bigger guys like Kevin Durant and making threes and rebounding and pushing the ball. It's a change in the game, and some of the Europeans have changed the game to a world where the big guys can shoot."
3) Silver linings.
BC's loss to Maine would have been unavoidable under any circumstances, but the recency bias of it forces everyone to take a good, hard, long look at how an ACC team lost to a team ranked approximately 350th in the KenPom ratings and 319th in the Torvik scale. The Black Bears entered Monday as the 304th-ranked team in ESPN's Basketball Power Index, and the Eagles were the overwhelming favorite to improve to 3-0 while earning their 64th overall win against the America East Conference.
The Eagles instead lost, and there isn't any real way around talking about it. They didn't shoot well offensively and struggled to hit shots from outside, and they surrendered almost 40 rebounds to a Black Bear squad that still played well on the glass despite giving up size and physicality to a BC roster that looked tired and lacked cohesion.
"Our energy was very low," Grant said. "I could feel it early on. I didn't think we had the energy that we needed in the first five minutes. Guys have been playing hard and playing a lot of minutes, but I thought the energy was low early. In the middle of the game, we really picked it up, especially towards the end of the first half, but we just needed to be better for 40 minutes."
The good news is that energy levels for a full two halves is easily correctable with rest and recovery, and gaining players back into the lineup should help balance how much certain players see the floor. Playing too many minutes early in the season is painful for players who don't quite have the muscle memory that comes from playing 25 or 30 games, and cramping at the end of games became commonplace as BC continued to whip itself into full game shape.
Gaining DeMarr Langford, Jr. back to form will help alleviate some of that, and the eventual returns of Quinten Post and Prince Aligbe offers relief for a roster that played four different players more than 28 minutes against Maine. The entire roster really only ran seven players deep against the Black Bears, and in the third game of the season, the need to create a 10-man rotation should help create new combinations thanks to the attrition already experienced.
"There are a lot of combinations and a lot of variables," Grant said. "You go into the preseason planning to have a certain style, and all of that planning is for the style that you were playing. A lot of those guys aren't playing right now, so I think we're putting certain players in unique situations. They've done a good job of adapting to the situations we've put them in, but it hasn't been easy. Neither of the three games we played were easy, and we just came up short."
Layup Line: You put the lime in the coconut
BC heads to the tropics this week to play in the annual Paradise Jam hosted at the Sports and Fitness Center in St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It's the Eagles' third appearance in the event and first since the 2008-09 tournament-bound team finished sixth after losing to Northern Iowa in the fifth place consolation game.
The early season tournament has been a staple of the college basketball season since 2001 and usually features a couple of high-profile opponents guaranteed to cross paths over the three-day event. The teams themselves are all assured of three games, and the bracket's consolation and championship format allows each team to draw a different team based on which teams win on the first day.Â
The winner of the first game on Friday between the Eagles and Patriots will draw either Belmont or Tarleton State with either Buffalo or Drake playing either Howard or Wyoming in the second round. Winners and losers then advance into their respective matchups on Monday, where the champion of the event is crowned for the one team finishing with a perfect 3-0 record.
The event itself is televised completely through ESPN3, and BC's first game against the Patriots is on Friday night at 8 p.m. with online streaming coverage available through ESPN's family for web-based and mobile devices. The second game is either on Saturday or Sunday and will tip-off at either 5:45 p.m. or 8 p.m., depending on schedule, with Monday's result to be determined by the results of the second round.
At times, the college game felt like more of a runway in Milan thanks to Jay Wright's wardrobe turned into regular headline-generating material. His hand-crafted pinstripes occasionally produced iconic double-breasted, three-piece patterns, and that checkerboard suit with the pocket square pushed him past Sports Illustrated and directly into GQ.
COVID-19 changed that, but across college basketball, coaches are slowly returning to the formal fits that defined the sideline game, and this year, Boston College head coach Earl Grant found his way back into his formal wear by wearing suits on the sideline for the Eagles over the more comfortable, dry fit options.
"It's been two years without it," Grant said, "and I enjoyed the comfort of the pullovers. But, you know, this is a profession and I've been in it for 20-something years, and I just thought it was important for us to go back to wearing suits. After two years of the polos, as comfortable as they were and how much less stress it was packing for road trips, I just thought it was important to understand that this is a profession."
Grant's first three games under the suits produced a 2-1 record, and while the Eagles clearly didn't play perfect basketball, the head coach believes the process of putting together a successful men's basketball program is a well tailored one. He lauded the resilience of the wins over Cornell and Detroit Mercy while acknowledging the inherent difficulties associated with a bad loss to Maine. In each game, BC played with toughness, but the negatives that bit back against the Eagles are items that he intends to approach with a level-headed professionalism as the team's weekend trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands for the Paradise Jam event looms this weekend.
"Over the last 10 days, with the circumstances that we face, we've actually grown," Grant said. "We've actually gotten better with guys that I didn't think we'd be playing much this season playing 25 or 30 minutes . I think there's going to be some growth as it pertains to the overall season, but sometimes, in order to grow, you have to go through some tough times. So I think that's where we are. We've played three games, we've lost one but won two, and I thought our guys showed good character.Â
"We lost a two-possession game," he explained, "but with the margin being so slim, especially early in the first 10 minutes, we needed to be better. We needed to be more mature and work for better shots, and I didn't think we did a good enough job of that."
Other observations from a wild first week in college basketball:
1) Stop, thief!
Jaeden Zackery's journey to Boston College is well-documented for how he flew under the radar of nearly every college basketball coach as an underrated junior college transfer. His arrival solidified Earl Grant's backcourt last year with a rugged, tough player who knew what it was like to ride the bus for long road trips in the brutal Florida heat.
He was one of six players in the nation to make at least 50 field goals last year while shooting 47 percent from outside, but his league-leading three-point field goal percentage as a freshman keyed off his ability to lockdown on defense. He tied the Dana Barros' record for steals by a freshman last year when he swiped 57 possessions from opponents, which was good enough for ninth in the nation in total steals and 12th in the nation on a per-game basis, and he arrived back into the BC lineup with six takeaways in the first two games against Cornell and Detroit Mercy before grabbing an additional takeaway against the Black Bears.
"He has great instincts and great anticipation," said Grant. "He would have been a great safety in the NFL because he's fast, physical and can anticipate [the play and the pass]. I think that's nature, and I don't think that's necessarily nurture because he tied Dana Barros' record for steals. He's off to another good start for us, and it's just about finding a way to get the ball into his hands. He's got a knack for it, and it's a unique thing that he [can do]."
Zackery's shooting percentage battled a bit of a lid on the can in the latter two games of the last week, but his ability to generate offense from his defensive stands kept BC moving within Grant's system. He dished a career-high seven assists against Cornell with four steals, one short of his career high, and his double-digit scoring has been a part of the backcourt with Makai Ashton-Langford for the better part of a year-plus. Through three games, it also led him to average between 12 and 13 points per game with a remarkable consistency, at least in output, to the BC offense.
"I know I played well on defense last year," he said, "and I kind of learned how to watch the person with the ball. My man would sit in the middle, and I learned how to read when they're dribbling and when they're about to dribble. That's how I get a lot of steals because once they've started dribbling, they can't pick it up, so I get a lot of steals when they're dribbling. But I kind of keep my head on a swivel, too, so I can kind of see everything."
2) Those were the days.
All things change, but the era of the traditional big man feels like it's increasingly disappearing into the rearview mirror. Pat Riley's New York Knicks aren't exactly walking through the door, but the days of watching Bill Curley go tete-a-tete against Dikembe Mutumbo, Malik Sealy, Alonzo Mourning, and Michael Smith in the battles of the Big East Conference were seemingly long gone the first time Joel Embiid kicked a pass outside after standing under the basket without anyone around him.
The concept of playing center or power forward is completely different, and while ACC play features tough battles in the paint, big men are increasingly required to step outside the post to play face-up basketball in a one-on-one situation against another center or small forward. Seven footers shoot three-pointers and run the floor, and offenses are built around five-out formations with nobody under the basket.
"Maybe 10 years ago, one of my last years at Wichita State, our bigs didn't shoot any threes," said Grant. "They just wanted to go inside, rebound 12 times, and play inside, and that was for both the [center] and [power forward]. By the time I got to Clemson and left Clemson in 2014, we had to get a four-man that could shoot. That's the X-factor, and it shifted from 2010 to 2015."
The transition between big men over the Boston College's last three three coaching eras illustrates how the role of a center shifted. Seven-footer Josh Southern averaged six points and five rebounds per game without a single three-pointer, but his successor, 7-1 Dennis Clifford, attempted 31 shots from outside the arc. Clifford transitioned into Nik Popovic, who, like Quinten Post, stood close to seven feet tall and the Eagles moved towards a style that allowed the 6-11 Bosnian import to fire 130 three-point attempts over four years. He hit 36 of those shots - five more than Clifford even attempted - and opened the door for James Karnik and Post, who combined for 21 three-pointers last season alone.
"European players had something to do with it," Grant said, "and then you see bigger guys like Kevin Durant and making threes and rebounding and pushing the ball. It's a change in the game, and some of the Europeans have changed the game to a world where the big guys can shoot."
3) Silver linings.
BC's loss to Maine would have been unavoidable under any circumstances, but the recency bias of it forces everyone to take a good, hard, long look at how an ACC team lost to a team ranked approximately 350th in the KenPom ratings and 319th in the Torvik scale. The Black Bears entered Monday as the 304th-ranked team in ESPN's Basketball Power Index, and the Eagles were the overwhelming favorite to improve to 3-0 while earning their 64th overall win against the America East Conference.
The Eagles instead lost, and there isn't any real way around talking about it. They didn't shoot well offensively and struggled to hit shots from outside, and they surrendered almost 40 rebounds to a Black Bear squad that still played well on the glass despite giving up size and physicality to a BC roster that looked tired and lacked cohesion.
"Our energy was very low," Grant said. "I could feel it early on. I didn't think we had the energy that we needed in the first five minutes. Guys have been playing hard and playing a lot of minutes, but I thought the energy was low early. In the middle of the game, we really picked it up, especially towards the end of the first half, but we just needed to be better for 40 minutes."
The good news is that energy levels for a full two halves is easily correctable with rest and recovery, and gaining players back into the lineup should help balance how much certain players see the floor. Playing too many minutes early in the season is painful for players who don't quite have the muscle memory that comes from playing 25 or 30 games, and cramping at the end of games became commonplace as BC continued to whip itself into full game shape.
Gaining DeMarr Langford, Jr. back to form will help alleviate some of that, and the eventual returns of Quinten Post and Prince Aligbe offers relief for a roster that played four different players more than 28 minutes against Maine. The entire roster really only ran seven players deep against the Black Bears, and in the third game of the season, the need to create a 10-man rotation should help create new combinations thanks to the attrition already experienced.
"There are a lot of combinations and a lot of variables," Grant said. "You go into the preseason planning to have a certain style, and all of that planning is for the style that you were playing. A lot of those guys aren't playing right now, so I think we're putting certain players in unique situations. They've done a good job of adapting to the situations we've put them in, but it hasn't been easy. Neither of the three games we played were easy, and we just came up short."
Layup Line: You put the lime in the coconut
BC heads to the tropics this week to play in the annual Paradise Jam hosted at the Sports and Fitness Center in St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It's the Eagles' third appearance in the event and first since the 2008-09 tournament-bound team finished sixth after losing to Northern Iowa in the fifth place consolation game.
The early season tournament has been a staple of the college basketball season since 2001 and usually features a couple of high-profile opponents guaranteed to cross paths over the three-day event. The teams themselves are all assured of three games, and the bracket's consolation and championship format allows each team to draw a different team based on which teams win on the first day.Â
The winner of the first game on Friday between the Eagles and Patriots will draw either Belmont or Tarleton State with either Buffalo or Drake playing either Howard or Wyoming in the second round. Winners and losers then advance into their respective matchups on Monday, where the champion of the event is crowned for the one team finishing with a perfect 3-0 record.
The event itself is televised completely through ESPN3, and BC's first game against the Patriots is on Friday night at 8 p.m. with online streaming coverage available through ESPN's family for web-based and mobile devices. The second game is either on Saturday or Sunday and will tip-off at either 5:45 p.m. or 8 p.m., depending on schedule, with Monday's result to be determined by the results of the second round.
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