Boston College Athletics
Photo by: Meg Kelly
November 16, 2023 | Men's Basketball, #ForBoston Files
Once, twice, three times a winner to start the season for BC.
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- There is a tendency in the first month of college basketball season to avoid believing in a team's overall performance. Programs are widely viewed by how they're "supposed" to play, and anything outside a standard deviation from those expectations is easily tossed aside as a fluke or aberration. Good teams - the really historic blue-bloods who go to the tournament on an annual basis - can't possibly have a bad year, and the rebuilding teams can't possibly catch them based on those early returns.
Seeing is believing, but the first two wins didn't do much to convince even the most level-headed basketball observer that Boston College have started to turn the corner with its wins over Fairfield and The Citadel. The rationale being that an ACC team should actively expect to beat those teams overcame the Eagles' overall dominance took on a very clear and different perception to the start of BC's 2023-24 campaign. The Eagles' wire-to-wire dominance against Fairfield, emerging with a gritty win in a true road game against a rugged Citadel squad, and stepping up to play a RIchmond team that has cut the nets down at the Atlantic 10 tournament in the not-so-distant past have all been on display through the opening two weeks of play.
The first 13 minutes of Wednesday's game against Richmond gave those detractors much-needed ammunition after the Spiders jumped out to a 14-point lead, doubling up BC at 28-14 midway through the first half.  A subsequent media timeout flipped a switch within the Eagles' huddle that forced BC to confront its opponent's overall web of defensive switches.
"I thought we broke down offensively a few times and made some uncharacteristic mistakes," said head coach Earl Grant. "Defensively, we weren't necessarily executing the gameplan. We weren't doing what we said we needed to do to be successful. So it took until the middle of the first half before we decided that we were going to do what we said we needed to do to be successful. We got over handoffs and were physical and tough."
The players on the floor wouldn't ever let Richmond run its system to perfection again and Boston College dominated the Spiders over the next 27 minutes, especially on the defensive end. Entering the game, Richmond was averaging better than 90 points per game and connecting on better than 50% from the field. After BC yielded 28 points in the opening 10 minutes, the true grit limited the Spiders to 33 points over the next 30 minutes, leading to the Eagles' third consecutive win to start the season.
1)Â It's mighty-mighty, just letting it all hang out.
Earl Grant loves to preach defensive-minded basketball and a term the Eagles use to measure that proficiency overall is "brick."Â While not great on offense, a brick on the defensive end is used to describe three straight defensive stops against an opponent and it has been quickly adopted as the team's overall mantra while quantifying situational basketball in a way that doesn't normally appear on the game book and stat sheet.
"We want to get multiple stops," Grant said, "and we want to stack them as much as we can throughout a game. It's hard to build a house if you don't lay the first brick, and you have to start somewhere, so what we try to do is stack them throughout the game."
The idea is leading the Eagles to adopt even more selflessness against an opponent's offense, and virtually every Richmond shooter finished Wednesday's game without any kind of efficiency to their performance after The Citadel's three-point shooting dipped from 7-for-13 in the first half to 3-for-12 in the second. And while it's also true that the Bulldogs shot 48 percent from the floor, BC dwarfed their 28 points in high leverage situations in the paint by scoring 50 points and largely abandoning the three-pointer in the second half.
"It starts with playing gritty," said Claudell Harris Jr., "and just defending the other opponent. We keep count of how many stops we've had, and our goal is to get seven bricks per game. I don't think we're losing if we get seven bricks because the offense is going to come naturally from those stops."
2) That's why it's easy, it's easy like Sunday morning.
BC's staple hallmark is always going to be its defense, but the Eagles broke out and evolved offensively following Quinten Post's straightforward, monster performance against Fairfield. The Citadel game was one example of how the guards began attacking the basket after foul trouble limited Post to 10 points and two rebounds in 19 minutes, but the Richmond game was a completely different set piece after the Eagles began spreading the ball around through their depth to produce their first dueling double-doubles in over four years.
"They (BC)Â played hard," said Grant after the Richmond win. "They got hard-nosed rebounds and guys were running in to grab second chance points. I know Prince was great, and Devin and some of the guards were running in and getting rebounds. That was just a total team effort. I thought we needed to attack the paint, whether it was through post-ups or offensive rebounds, so they did a good job of it."
Aligbe finished the Richmond game with 15 points and a career-best 10 boards, but his performance within the lines illustrated what happens when players bear down for the sweat-based equity points on both sides of the floor. Nearly half of his boards were offensive, and both he and McGlockton were on the floor for half of the Eagles' points. The ball ran through each of them approximately once every five plays, and they both helped dominate opponents by contributing to the aforementioned brick-laying.
"We tell ourselves that we have to do things like win the last four minutes of the first half and the first four minutes of the second half," Aligbe said. "Practicing that just helps us with understanding how much each possession matters in those four minutes and what could benefit down the road. That's really it, but it helps us be prepared and comfortable on the floor."
3) Gonna be some sweet sounds, coming down on the night shift.
Wednesday's Richmond win brought back sweet memories of Boston College's defensive background after the first two games struck a more offensive tone, and while Coach Grant admitted he'd like to score points, there was something about watching his team bear down defensively in the second half that reminded him about the hallmarks and trigger points that make the Eagles exactly who they are.
"With our scrimmages and the first two games of the season, we were averaging about 87 points per game," said the coach. "We were scoring a lot of points - and I want to score a lot of points - but I know that at the end of the day, you have to have a staple and something to stand on. We have to stand on our defense to the best of our ability because it gives you a chance to win."
Richmond entered Wednesday with wins in its first two games after destroying both VMI and Siena with 90-point overlays. The game over the weekend against the Saints included a 42-point win with four players in double figures, of which one - King - scored 10 points against BC. Isaiah Bigelow scored 17 points in 18 minutes in the Siena game but fouled out against BC with one made basket, and DeLonnie Hunt shot 3-for-9 without an assist. That Neal Quinn scored 21 points was by design, and the Eagles kept funneling the ball through the 7-foot former Lafayette big man.
"We asked if Quinn could beat us," Grant said. "We didn't try to take him, but we tried to take stuff away from everybody else and asked if he could beat us. He had a really good game, but it wasn't good enough to beat us."
Post-Game Huddle: 'Cuz Baby, now we got bad blood.
Located along the Cambridge side of Mass Ave., the Hemenway Gymnasium looks like the quintessential Harvard building. Its brick exterior fits right into the classic look of the Ivy League campus, and the high windows and pale lightning makes the interior basketball court feel like it did when Boston College failed to hit a basket in the first-ever meeting with Harvard on January 15, 1906.Â
BC went 6-of-9 on free throws to score all of its points, and after Harvard eased up on its performance in the second half, a general dislike emerged between the rival institutions as the home side defeated the College visitors, 42-6. They wouldn't meet again for 31 years, but after trading wins through the post-World War II era, the rivalry emerged as a heated piece of Massachusetts basketball lore despite the Eagles going undefeated over a 12-game stretch between 1976 and 1992.
The Ivy League was largely dominated by Penn and Princeton over those years, but Harvard supplanted them as a mid-major powerhouse following a switch from Frank Sullivan to Tommy Amaker. Within three seasons of his hire, Amaker was a 20-win coach, and the Crimson advanced to consecutive Sweet Sixteen appearances as part of a four-year run atop the Ancient Eight.
It was during that time that Harvard arguably overtook BC as the Massachusetts basketball powerhouse after the Eagles went through the beginning of their downturn. The schools didn't meet annually, but after Harvard beat BC in January 2009, a six-game winning streak emerged with five straight wins at Conte Forum. A semi-surge in the middle of the 2010's sent BC back to the postseason as NIT qualifiers, but the teams ceased playing one another after Harvard snapped a two-game losing streak with a 74-66 win during the 2016-17 season.
This rivalry never truly stayed dormant, as both teams faced off almost annually in closed-door, super-secret scrimmages, but the seven-year gap between regular season matchups is the longest drought between games since the formation of the Big East in 1980 put it on hold until 1986. It's one of those parochial matchups in Boston that dates back to an older era and it's a game that establishes a central focus for basketball-centric power in a state boasting a rich tradition of successful programs within the city itself.
He who wins this matchup owns Boston, and he who owns Boston - historically, at least - owns the Commonwealth's college basketball tradition.
Boston College and Harvard will tip off on Saturday at 5 p.m. with television coverage available on ACC Network Extra, which is available through ESPN's online family of mobile devices and Internet apps. The game can also be heard on WEEI 850 AM with Josh Maurer and Danya Abrams providing the broadcast from courtside at Conte.
Seeing is believing, but the first two wins didn't do much to convince even the most level-headed basketball observer that Boston College have started to turn the corner with its wins over Fairfield and The Citadel. The rationale being that an ACC team should actively expect to beat those teams overcame the Eagles' overall dominance took on a very clear and different perception to the start of BC's 2023-24 campaign. The Eagles' wire-to-wire dominance against Fairfield, emerging with a gritty win in a true road game against a rugged Citadel squad, and stepping up to play a RIchmond team that has cut the nets down at the Atlantic 10 tournament in the not-so-distant past have all been on display through the opening two weeks of play.
The first 13 minutes of Wednesday's game against Richmond gave those detractors much-needed ammunition after the Spiders jumped out to a 14-point lead, doubling up BC at 28-14 midway through the first half.  A subsequent media timeout flipped a switch within the Eagles' huddle that forced BC to confront its opponent's overall web of defensive switches.
"I thought we broke down offensively a few times and made some uncharacteristic mistakes," said head coach Earl Grant. "Defensively, we weren't necessarily executing the gameplan. We weren't doing what we said we needed to do to be successful. So it took until the middle of the first half before we decided that we were going to do what we said we needed to do to be successful. We got over handoffs and were physical and tough."
The players on the floor wouldn't ever let Richmond run its system to perfection again and Boston College dominated the Spiders over the next 27 minutes, especially on the defensive end. Entering the game, Richmond was averaging better than 90 points per game and connecting on better than 50% from the field. After BC yielded 28 points in the opening 10 minutes, the true grit limited the Spiders to 33 points over the next 30 minutes, leading to the Eagles' third consecutive win to start the season.
1)Â It's mighty-mighty, just letting it all hang out.
Earl Grant loves to preach defensive-minded basketball and a term the Eagles use to measure that proficiency overall is "brick."Â While not great on offense, a brick on the defensive end is used to describe three straight defensive stops against an opponent and it has been quickly adopted as the team's overall mantra while quantifying situational basketball in a way that doesn't normally appear on the game book and stat sheet.
"We want to get multiple stops," Grant said, "and we want to stack them as much as we can throughout a game. It's hard to build a house if you don't lay the first brick, and you have to start somewhere, so what we try to do is stack them throughout the game."
The idea is leading the Eagles to adopt even more selflessness against an opponent's offense, and virtually every Richmond shooter finished Wednesday's game without any kind of efficiency to their performance after The Citadel's three-point shooting dipped from 7-for-13 in the first half to 3-for-12 in the second. And while it's also true that the Bulldogs shot 48 percent from the floor, BC dwarfed their 28 points in high leverage situations in the paint by scoring 50 points and largely abandoning the three-pointer in the second half.
"It starts with playing gritty," said Claudell Harris Jr., "and just defending the other opponent. We keep count of how many stops we've had, and our goal is to get seven bricks per game. I don't think we're losing if we get seven bricks because the offense is going to come naturally from those stops."
2) That's why it's easy, it's easy like Sunday morning.
BC's staple hallmark is always going to be its defense, but the Eagles broke out and evolved offensively following Quinten Post's straightforward, monster performance against Fairfield. The Citadel game was one example of how the guards began attacking the basket after foul trouble limited Post to 10 points and two rebounds in 19 minutes, but the Richmond game was a completely different set piece after the Eagles began spreading the ball around through their depth to produce their first dueling double-doubles in over four years.
"They (BC)Â played hard," said Grant after the Richmond win. "They got hard-nosed rebounds and guys were running in to grab second chance points. I know Prince was great, and Devin and some of the guards were running in and getting rebounds. That was just a total team effort. I thought we needed to attack the paint, whether it was through post-ups or offensive rebounds, so they did a good job of it."
Aligbe finished the Richmond game with 15 points and a career-best 10 boards, but his performance within the lines illustrated what happens when players bear down for the sweat-based equity points on both sides of the floor. Nearly half of his boards were offensive, and both he and McGlockton were on the floor for half of the Eagles' points. The ball ran through each of them approximately once every five plays, and they both helped dominate opponents by contributing to the aforementioned brick-laying.
"We tell ourselves that we have to do things like win the last four minutes of the first half and the first four minutes of the second half," Aligbe said. "Practicing that just helps us with understanding how much each possession matters in those four minutes and what could benefit down the road. That's really it, but it helps us be prepared and comfortable on the floor."
3) Gonna be some sweet sounds, coming down on the night shift.
Wednesday's Richmond win brought back sweet memories of Boston College's defensive background after the first two games struck a more offensive tone, and while Coach Grant admitted he'd like to score points, there was something about watching his team bear down defensively in the second half that reminded him about the hallmarks and trigger points that make the Eagles exactly who they are.
"With our scrimmages and the first two games of the season, we were averaging about 87 points per game," said the coach. "We were scoring a lot of points - and I want to score a lot of points - but I know that at the end of the day, you have to have a staple and something to stand on. We have to stand on our defense to the best of our ability because it gives you a chance to win."
Richmond entered Wednesday with wins in its first two games after destroying both VMI and Siena with 90-point overlays. The game over the weekend against the Saints included a 42-point win with four players in double figures, of which one - King - scored 10 points against BC. Isaiah Bigelow scored 17 points in 18 minutes in the Siena game but fouled out against BC with one made basket, and DeLonnie Hunt shot 3-for-9 without an assist. That Neal Quinn scored 21 points was by design, and the Eagles kept funneling the ball through the 7-foot former Lafayette big man.
"We asked if Quinn could beat us," Grant said. "We didn't try to take him, but we tried to take stuff away from everybody else and asked if he could beat us. He had a really good game, but it wasn't good enough to beat us."
Post-Game Huddle: 'Cuz Baby, now we got bad blood.
Located along the Cambridge side of Mass Ave., the Hemenway Gymnasium looks like the quintessential Harvard building. Its brick exterior fits right into the classic look of the Ivy League campus, and the high windows and pale lightning makes the interior basketball court feel like it did when Boston College failed to hit a basket in the first-ever meeting with Harvard on January 15, 1906.Â
BC went 6-of-9 on free throws to score all of its points, and after Harvard eased up on its performance in the second half, a general dislike emerged between the rival institutions as the home side defeated the College visitors, 42-6. They wouldn't meet again for 31 years, but after trading wins through the post-World War II era, the rivalry emerged as a heated piece of Massachusetts basketball lore despite the Eagles going undefeated over a 12-game stretch between 1976 and 1992.
The Ivy League was largely dominated by Penn and Princeton over those years, but Harvard supplanted them as a mid-major powerhouse following a switch from Frank Sullivan to Tommy Amaker. Within three seasons of his hire, Amaker was a 20-win coach, and the Crimson advanced to consecutive Sweet Sixteen appearances as part of a four-year run atop the Ancient Eight.
It was during that time that Harvard arguably overtook BC as the Massachusetts basketball powerhouse after the Eagles went through the beginning of their downturn. The schools didn't meet annually, but after Harvard beat BC in January 2009, a six-game winning streak emerged with five straight wins at Conte Forum. A semi-surge in the middle of the 2010's sent BC back to the postseason as NIT qualifiers, but the teams ceased playing one another after Harvard snapped a two-game losing streak with a 74-66 win during the 2016-17 season.
This rivalry never truly stayed dormant, as both teams faced off almost annually in closed-door, super-secret scrimmages, but the seven-year gap between regular season matchups is the longest drought between games since the formation of the Big East in 1980 put it on hold until 1986. It's one of those parochial matchups in Boston that dates back to an older era and it's a game that establishes a central focus for basketball-centric power in a state boasting a rich tradition of successful programs within the city itself.
He who wins this matchup owns Boston, and he who owns Boston - historically, at least - owns the Commonwealth's college basketball tradition.
Boston College and Harvard will tip off on Saturday at 5 p.m. with television coverage available on ACC Network Extra, which is available through ESPN's online family of mobile devices and Internet apps. The game can also be heard on WEEI 850 AM with Josh Maurer and Danya Abrams providing the broadcast from courtside at Conte.
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