Gritty, Not Pretty Returns Tonight

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- The first game of a college basketball season is pretty miniscule to the grand scheme of a year. It doesn't win a national championship or build a tournament resume, and it won't answer questions or offer explanations about a team's performance or place in its conference race. It has little to no impact on a league tournament, and the only banners hung prior to tip-off are the ones celebrating previous accomplishments by last year's champions.

That first game holds no inherent meaning to a whole lot of anything, but for head coaches like Boston College's Earl Grant, the possibility of making a statement is more of an opportunity than any spot in the standings. It holds virtue, especially after months of preparation, simply because it's the proverbial "next game," and nothing is more critical than Monday's tip-off against Cornell.

"You just take it one game at a time because you want to be playing your best basketball in March," said Grant, "so it's a process and a pursuit to become a really good team. Our pursuit started 25 practices ago, but the games start on Monday. We're going to take it one day at a time, one game at a time, and try to play to our standard to see if we can go and accomplish the goals we're trying to accomplish within each game, with the hope that we grow as the season goes along."

The elements leading up to the opening tip-off add buzz to the first game for a team which returns its top three scorers from last year - not to mention more than 70 percent of the team's overall offensive production. Three players - Makai Ashton-Langford, DeMarr Langford, Jr. and Jaeden Zackery - averaged in double figures in scoring and a fourth, Quinten Post, narrowly missed the mark with 9.4 points per game.

More than three-quarters of last year's minutes are back from a team that narrowly missed the semifinals of the ACC Tournament last March, and three players who started 30 or more of last season's 33 games are back in uniform. Compared to the 27 percent of last year's minutes played, it's a complete turnaround of continuity from a program that didn't have a full two-thirds of its offensive production when it took the floor for Grant's first game of the year.

"We have returners that actually understand what's important for BC basketball at this present moment," Grant said. "Some of the things that I've tried to emphasize to them, we tried to do last year, in terms of day-to-day stuff. We went through some of that last year while trying to establish values of how we're going to live and act and how we're going to play. Having those guys back helps."

That included a blend of transfers and freshmen who spent last year hardening themselves, whether they knew it or not, for the long haul grind of a season provided by an ACC basketball program. Four-star recruit Prince Aligbe is arguably the hottest name of that group, but the additions of fellow four-star recruits Donald Hand, Jr., Chas Kelley, and Armani Mighty should, over time, firm up the present tense of the team's depth chart while simultaneously building for future starts. Three-point threat Mason Madsen, meanwhile, transferred from Cincinnati, where he averaged just under 12 minutes for a Bearcat team that missed the postseason despite 18 wins and an appearance in the American Athletic Conference quarterfinals.

"We recruited a couple more guys who can shoot the ball," Grant said, "so I hope that translates into percentages. We have made some shots in our scrimmages, and we've made some shots in practice, so I think that's an area where we should be able to see some improvement. That's our hope, because we recruited guys that are shooting pretty well."

How they blend into the lineup is still unknown, but an opening round against Cornell should at least offer real results and tape towards the team's future build even as it's the first matchup against the Big Red since Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford to become president of the United States. In 90 previous season openers, Boston College has won 70 times, and last year included a 16-point win over another Ancient Eight program in Earl Grant's debut against Dartmouth.

In total, the Eagles are 96-30 against the Ivy League and are 61-14 when facing programs other than Harvard. More than half of those losses were against Dartmouth, a team BC beat for the 23rd time last year, and the remaining six defeats came against 30 wins over Brown, Penn and Yale despite the Ivy League landing consistently better than the No. 16 seed among mid-major conferences.

More significantly, last year's champion, Yale, entered the tournament as a No. 14 seed and nearly upset third-seeded LSU in the First Round despite the league's two-year gap in national tournament participation after it opted out of the 2020-2021 season. It was the second consecutive championship for the Bulldogs after they entered the 2019 NCAA Tournament as a No. 14 seed, though the 2017 champion, Princeton, was a No. 12 seed and a 13th-seeded Harvard team memorably took North Carolina to within a single bucket of an upset in the 2015 Round of 64 after winning first weekend games in the previous two tournaments.

The Big Red remain the high water mark in that respect after advancing to the Sweet Sixteen in 2010 with wins over fifth-seeded Temple and fourth-seeded Wisconsin, but a downturn in the years since bottomed out in 2013-2014 when they went 2-26 with one conference win. They markedly improved over the next four years, but it wasn't until last season that Cornell hit the .500 mark when it finished 15-11 with a 7-7 record in league games in its first season of the post-Covid era.

The year included an 8-1 start, and a mid-November loss to Penn State preceded the Big Red's two games against ACC opponents in December to close non-conference play. They later won three straight games over Ivy League opponents and after winning consecutive games over Yale, Columbia and Princeton, the latter of which was a season sweep, a four-point loss in the Ivy League Tournament ended their best season since arguably the Steve Donahue era.

"They lost four seniors but have a lot of guys returning who did play," Grant said. "They like to shoot the three and play fast, and they give good effort on defense. I've been impressed with watching some of their games from last year. They do a lot of good stuff, and Brian Earl is doing a good job.

"It's certainly going to be a challenge, like all of the games are and the first one is,' he added. "We typically play against Ivy League teams, and we've played [league teams] in scrimmages. They're going to be well-coached, and particularly Cornell, they try to play fast. They like to shoot those threes, and with their effort on defense, it's going to be a good challenge."

Monday's season tip-off starts at 8 p.m. following the conclusion of the Boston College women's basketball opener against UMass-Lowell. Both games can be seen on the ACC Network Extra as part of the ESPN online streaming platform, and the men's game can be heard additionally on the Boston College Sports Network from Learfield, locally in Boston on WEEI 850 and on the Sirius/XM app channel 985, with additional streaming available through the Varsity Network.

Related News

Next Event

Related Videos