Photo by: Meg Kelly
Thursday Three-Pointer: Jan. 18, 2024
January 18, 2024 | Men's Basketball, #ForBoston Files
The hardening truth from Clemson allowed BC to muscle past Notre Dame on home court
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- The college basketball world didn't wait very long to grab the low-hanging fruit of Boston College's pregame plight against Clemson when an illness ripped through the Eagles and ruled three players, including starters Quinten Post and Prince Aligbe, out of last Saturday's game. Almost immediately, the jokes started rolling with conjured memories of an ill-fated loss to UMass-Lowell during the 2015-16 season after an ill-fated team meal (from a national burrito chain that shall remain nameless with an outpost at Cleveland Circle)Â and the comments and smirks gave everyone a good laugh or two at remembering a bad week in BC basketball history.
The plight made Saturday look like a pregame run-through for the Tigers, but BC's ability to quickly turn the page displayed the lengths at which the team's overall toughness now reaches. Despite its ACC record, Clemson is still highly-regarded team in the analytics, but the three losses mired the team near the bottom of the ACC after preseason predictions held them near the top of the league's table. Losing to a pesky BC team capable of experiencing success on the Littlejohn Coliseum floor would have devastated those metrics, so it fit more comfortably to predict a blowout after the Eagles lost backup center Armani Mighty alongside two of the team's top options.
That mindset failed to recognize the danger of a team more closely forged together by the purpose of playing with nothing to lose, and the 10-point loss felt much sturdier compared to the equal-deficit loss at Syracuse. BC didn't have Post, Aligbe or Mighty, but players like Elijah Strong stepped into the starting lineup with a double-digit performance while Jaeden Zackery rediscovered the stroke that evaded him during the trip to the JMA Wireless Dome. They then fed a defensive effort built on trust and communication against which nobody outside of PJ Hall and Syracuse transfer Joseph Girard III, two players capable of getting theirs in any game, enjoyed a breakthrough.
The Clemson game was still a loss, but opening the avenues feeding the subsequent game against Notre Dame fed the idea that even undergunned BC teams could rely on game-defining toughness. All three players returned for the Holy War matchup, but they stepped into a team with a rebuilt depth chart that maybe wouldn't have happened if the Eagles avoided the overnight patchwork associated with the trip to South Carolina. The assertiveness and casual swagger that Grant and his charges knew existed had been enhanced, and the victory over the Irish reflected an evident and deepening trust on the floor.
Zackery again enjoyed the biggest breakout, but Post surged through the second half with 15 points on 5-for-10 shooting. His late-game heroics - including a one-man 12-0 run late - awoke the All-ACC big man with open looks beyond the arc that subsequently revamped the BC offense and shell-shocked the Irish defense.
"We can call them role players," said Grant, "but against Clemson, they had to play 30 minutes because we only had seven guys. So I think a game like that helped guys who hadn't had an opportunity to play as much. That gives them confidence. We have a really good bench and we're not clicking on all cylinders yet. If 10Â is the highest number we can go, we're not at a 10 yet, which I'm thankful for because it means this team hasn't reached its maximum capacity. Once we get everyone going in the same direction at the highest level, we'll have a special opportunity to do something."
BC split its games after losing to Syracuse but now enter a weekend in advantageous position within the even-keeled ACC. Fourth-ranked North Carolina awaits, but the Eagles are within striking distance of the two-loss and three-loss teams trailing the Tar Heels, NC State, Florida State and Duke. A nationally-televised audience awaits with an opponent harboring national championship aspirations, but there's a hardened belief that upsets aren't on the horizon - even if the public wants to smile at the possibility.
Here's a deeper dive into how BC split the week and more specifically beat the Irish:
1) Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod night ym tup I
Somewhere in a parallel time warp, a teenage Dan Rubin sits on a bus to a Malden Catholic High School event with no idea that his world would implode 20 years later when he finally found out that the unintelligible part of Missy Elliott's "Work It" was actually her saying, "I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it" … in reverse.Â
Finding that out on Wednesday afternoon rewrote three decades' worth of listening to hip hop and rap, and even my wife, a noted Missy Elliott fan who had her CD taken away by her mother because of explicit lyrics (you young'ins have no idea what I just said), apparently knew it before I did. I'm still not over this.
None of this has anything to do with BC, but let's take a step back to the second half of the Notre Dame game and analyze exactly what happened with an offense built around the center position. It's been relatively well-known that the Eagles installed a version of the offense used by the NBA's Sacramento Kings, a team that, like BC, has a front court forward in Damontas Sabonis who is capable of facilitating passes in addition to scoring.Â
The Kings do a phenomenal job of using Sabonis to that extent, but he leads the team in assists and rebounds because point guard De'Aaron Fox knows how to move the ball in and out of the point. Fox averages around six assists per game but leads the team with just under 30 points per game because the ball movement moves from the guard to the high key before a dribble-drive hand-off or dish-out. The unwritten chemistry between the two is built on a trust of following one another through an unlimited number of options, to which defenses have to figure out how to stop their two-man game while simultaneously paying attention to Keegan Murray, Harrison Barnes and others.
"When you drive to the basket, the defense is going to contract," said Grant about driving the basket. "So you want it to contract at least two times per possession, and if you get to the rim, that means it probably isn't contracting. Good teams, if it contracts, get the ball out and get a shot or a long close-out that moves the ball and tries to do it again."
For BC, that system relies on chemistry-based movement between Post and Zackery, and the second half of the Notre Dame illustrated exactly how the duo dissects and dismantles defenses with their own brand of the dribble-drive. Either can start the offense, but needing to defend Post when he has the ball at the top of the paint requires a contraction that allows Zackery to run around the end. If the defense stays spread, a drive from the interior exists for either Post or a backdoor cut from Prince Aligbe or Devin McGlockton, but if there's a secondary contraction, Claudell Harris or Mason Madsen stands outside for a three-point shot. Post is likewise able to flex out of the high post, at which point Zackery can dribble-drive and dish low to a secondary pass which leads to a kick-out three to the big man.
"That's what happened to us in the second half," said Grant. "Claudell Harris was getting down in there, and JZ was getting down [into the paint], which made them contract. When they contracted, we kicked it out and they had to balloon out, which helped us get some open looks on the drives."
2) InforrrrMAH, yougdkjdsglkjsadglkjasglkjasdgdsg aaayoooo
Anyone under 30 years old doesn't understand the challenge and thrill of using unintelligible sounds to sing Snow's "Informer," and I'm pretty sure that 10 percent of the readership just used Google to figure out what exactly I'm talking about. I'd argue that the world's greatest search engine still gets the lyrics incorrect, but we're all using the disposable resources available to figure out the right words.
Using every resource to correct a past mistake is exactly how Zackery produced the above performance against both Clemson and Notre Dame. The Syracuse game was always an aberration, but the breakout against the Tigers fed directly into a 12-point first half that allowed Post, who still wasn't quite right after missing the Clemson game, to get himself physically back into the swing of a full basketball game. His 4-for-5 shooting before halftime then paced an 8-for-10 day, but the outcome landed second to a process that started long before the plane left for South Carolina.
"I feel like I hadn't been playing my best recently," Zackery said, "so I felt like I had to take that next step and stay in the gym a lot more…I could tell that it had an impact on the team because QP told me before one of the games the other day that I wasn't shooting or being aggressive, and it wasn't helping us. So I had it in my mind, and he brought it into practice."
Players always endure ebbs and flows throughout a season, but Zackery's 38 points over the past two games brought him back to a performance that started with 20 points in December's overtime loss to NC State. It had been, at that point, the second straight game in double figures, but he finished the 2023 calendar with 18 points against Holy Cross and an additional 14 and 13 against St. John's and Lehigh. His assist numbers remained consistent through those games opposite his ability to crash board and produce steals, but he fell out of sync as Harris and Madsen found more ways to contribute offensively.
The trust in his game didn't erode, but Post, Grant and the rest of the Eagles knew he just needed to trust the process. Handed the ball in critical moments over the last two games illustrated that trust, and even where BC failed to beat Clemson, the close-out against Notre Dame offered more results than process.
"I thought Jaeden Zackery and Quinten Post led us," Grant said of Notre Dame. "Other guys had some critical moments during the game, but Jaeden Zackery had 20 points on 8-for-10 shooting while doing a really good job defensively against their point guard in the second half. I thought that was big."
3) No, no limits. We'll reach for the sky. No valley too deep, no mountain too high.
I probably listened to 2 Unlimited more than any rational person, at least compared to back in the day, but in keeping with my line of childhood ruinations, I watched the music video for the first time this week. It was, well, weird. Everyone was doing a pinball thing. Literally. They were on the pinball machine. Were they pinballs? Were they the flippers? Why pinball? I have so many questions and not enough answers. Either way, it's still a great jam.
Okay, I promise I'm done with my music references for the week, but looking at the past week really made me feel like we saw Quinten Post's inner character. It wasn't lost on anybody that PJ Hall enjoyed an easier day on Saturday because he didn't have to bang against another seven-foot player, and the early-game struggles against Notre Dame could have easily derailed any player dealing with the frustration of a physical limitation. Post instead rallied and settled himself into an offense built for his success, and he rotated out of that paint perfectly to drain back-breaking threes that ended Notre Dame's overall threat.
"There are a lot of reads," Post said, "and I think that after practice, I always stay to shoot extra with Devin McGlockton. We got up a lot of extra shots, and then besides that, I just watched a lot of practice. I watch a lot of film on practice and games, and I think that just helps make those reads, whether it's being open for shots or driving and getting to the rim."
Vision is an incredibly underrated skill on the basketball court, but Post's NBA-level development is now constructed around seeing plays before they happen. Going back to the dribble-drive, he now knows exactly how to punish a defense before he ever touches the ball, and he uses intelligence to beat opponents who try to physically overmatch anyone who enters the paint. BC is, in general, a calculating team, but Post had three rebounds in the first half of Monday night before shifting into a block machine in the second half while McGlockton, who had four boards in the first half, remained on the rim.
"I don't want to be known as the comeback kids," Grant joked, "but we have great fortitude and character. I'm happy that we have an experienced team. There was a time in the first half where [Notre Dame] made it hard for us to get good shots, and it forced us into some tough shots because we didn't get the position we needed if we didn't score. I think we made the adjustment in the second half."
Post-Game Huddle: These guys are still there?!
The NIL and transfer portal era made it impossible for a large subsection of college basketball players to remain at one school for longer than a couple of years, but North Carolina center Armando Bacot is a unicorn who nobody is likely to ever again witness on a college basketball court. A sophomore during the COVID year of 2020-2021, he returned to the Tar Heels for a fifth season this year after spending the last four years in a full-time patrol of the not-quite Keaney blue paint.
He likely could have gone to the NBA after last season, but bringing him back to Chapel Hill was a major coup for a program that enjoyed his double-double average over the past two seasons. He's practically never missed a game, and while the number of players reaching 150 games is increasing due to the COVID waiver, Saturday marks the more rare occasion of a player reaching 150 career games with the same program.
Bacot scored in double figures this year in all but four of 19 games, and he rattled 19 points and seven rebounds off of Louisville in a 16-point win on Wednesday night. He previously recorded a double-double against Syracuse during the 103-67 win at home over the Orange, and his 14-point, 16-board night over 34 hard-fought minutes led the Tar Heels past a road game at Clemson at the start of the month.
He's a centerpiece for any team, but this UNC team is built around both him and fourth-year starter RJ Davis, who enters Saturday with 20 points per game with just under four assists. They've led the Tar Heels to a 14-3 overall record by simply committing to Hubert Davis' overall system, and having each of them for four years allowed the program to seamlessly transition between Roy Williams and his longtime assistant. Having been an NBA-style coach helps the pro style offense isolate weak spots in the defense, but the age and experience factor is arguably the most critical to a team bidding for a No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
"[Our crowd] made a difference [against Notre Dame]," Grant said. "It was loud when they were announcing the players at the beginning of the game, and they were making a lot of noise. We've had great crowds, and I really appreciate them because they make the difference."
BC and UNC will help kick off the ACC's inaugural season on The CW network on Saturday afternoon when the Eagles host the Tar Heels at 2 p.m. The game can be seen on national television with radio coverage available through the Boston College Sports Network from Learfield.
The plight made Saturday look like a pregame run-through for the Tigers, but BC's ability to quickly turn the page displayed the lengths at which the team's overall toughness now reaches. Despite its ACC record, Clemson is still highly-regarded team in the analytics, but the three losses mired the team near the bottom of the ACC after preseason predictions held them near the top of the league's table. Losing to a pesky BC team capable of experiencing success on the Littlejohn Coliseum floor would have devastated those metrics, so it fit more comfortably to predict a blowout after the Eagles lost backup center Armani Mighty alongside two of the team's top options.
That mindset failed to recognize the danger of a team more closely forged together by the purpose of playing with nothing to lose, and the 10-point loss felt much sturdier compared to the equal-deficit loss at Syracuse. BC didn't have Post, Aligbe or Mighty, but players like Elijah Strong stepped into the starting lineup with a double-digit performance while Jaeden Zackery rediscovered the stroke that evaded him during the trip to the JMA Wireless Dome. They then fed a defensive effort built on trust and communication against which nobody outside of PJ Hall and Syracuse transfer Joseph Girard III, two players capable of getting theirs in any game, enjoyed a breakthrough.
The Clemson game was still a loss, but opening the avenues feeding the subsequent game against Notre Dame fed the idea that even undergunned BC teams could rely on game-defining toughness. All three players returned for the Holy War matchup, but they stepped into a team with a rebuilt depth chart that maybe wouldn't have happened if the Eagles avoided the overnight patchwork associated with the trip to South Carolina. The assertiveness and casual swagger that Grant and his charges knew existed had been enhanced, and the victory over the Irish reflected an evident and deepening trust on the floor.
Zackery again enjoyed the biggest breakout, but Post surged through the second half with 15 points on 5-for-10 shooting. His late-game heroics - including a one-man 12-0 run late - awoke the All-ACC big man with open looks beyond the arc that subsequently revamped the BC offense and shell-shocked the Irish defense.
"We can call them role players," said Grant, "but against Clemson, they had to play 30 minutes because we only had seven guys. So I think a game like that helped guys who hadn't had an opportunity to play as much. That gives them confidence. We have a really good bench and we're not clicking on all cylinders yet. If 10Â is the highest number we can go, we're not at a 10 yet, which I'm thankful for because it means this team hasn't reached its maximum capacity. Once we get everyone going in the same direction at the highest level, we'll have a special opportunity to do something."
BC split its games after losing to Syracuse but now enter a weekend in advantageous position within the even-keeled ACC. Fourth-ranked North Carolina awaits, but the Eagles are within striking distance of the two-loss and three-loss teams trailing the Tar Heels, NC State, Florida State and Duke. A nationally-televised audience awaits with an opponent harboring national championship aspirations, but there's a hardened belief that upsets aren't on the horizon - even if the public wants to smile at the possibility.
Here's a deeper dive into how BC split the week and more specifically beat the Irish:
1) Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod night ym tup I
Somewhere in a parallel time warp, a teenage Dan Rubin sits on a bus to a Malden Catholic High School event with no idea that his world would implode 20 years later when he finally found out that the unintelligible part of Missy Elliott's "Work It" was actually her saying, "I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it" … in reverse.Â
Finding that out on Wednesday afternoon rewrote three decades' worth of listening to hip hop and rap, and even my wife, a noted Missy Elliott fan who had her CD taken away by her mother because of explicit lyrics (you young'ins have no idea what I just said), apparently knew it before I did. I'm still not over this.
None of this has anything to do with BC, but let's take a step back to the second half of the Notre Dame game and analyze exactly what happened with an offense built around the center position. It's been relatively well-known that the Eagles installed a version of the offense used by the NBA's Sacramento Kings, a team that, like BC, has a front court forward in Damontas Sabonis who is capable of facilitating passes in addition to scoring.Â
The Kings do a phenomenal job of using Sabonis to that extent, but he leads the team in assists and rebounds because point guard De'Aaron Fox knows how to move the ball in and out of the point. Fox averages around six assists per game but leads the team with just under 30 points per game because the ball movement moves from the guard to the high key before a dribble-drive hand-off or dish-out. The unwritten chemistry between the two is built on a trust of following one another through an unlimited number of options, to which defenses have to figure out how to stop their two-man game while simultaneously paying attention to Keegan Murray, Harrison Barnes and others.
"When you drive to the basket, the defense is going to contract," said Grant about driving the basket. "So you want it to contract at least two times per possession, and if you get to the rim, that means it probably isn't contracting. Good teams, if it contracts, get the ball out and get a shot or a long close-out that moves the ball and tries to do it again."
For BC, that system relies on chemistry-based movement between Post and Zackery, and the second half of the Notre Dame illustrated exactly how the duo dissects and dismantles defenses with their own brand of the dribble-drive. Either can start the offense, but needing to defend Post when he has the ball at the top of the paint requires a contraction that allows Zackery to run around the end. If the defense stays spread, a drive from the interior exists for either Post or a backdoor cut from Prince Aligbe or Devin McGlockton, but if there's a secondary contraction, Claudell Harris or Mason Madsen stands outside for a three-point shot. Post is likewise able to flex out of the high post, at which point Zackery can dribble-drive and dish low to a secondary pass which leads to a kick-out three to the big man.
"That's what happened to us in the second half," said Grant. "Claudell Harris was getting down in there, and JZ was getting down [into the paint], which made them contract. When they contracted, we kicked it out and they had to balloon out, which helped us get some open looks on the drives."
2) InforrrrMAH, yougdkjdsglkjsadglkjasglkjasdgdsg aaayoooo
Anyone under 30 years old doesn't understand the challenge and thrill of using unintelligible sounds to sing Snow's "Informer," and I'm pretty sure that 10 percent of the readership just used Google to figure out what exactly I'm talking about. I'd argue that the world's greatest search engine still gets the lyrics incorrect, but we're all using the disposable resources available to figure out the right words.
Using every resource to correct a past mistake is exactly how Zackery produced the above performance against both Clemson and Notre Dame. The Syracuse game was always an aberration, but the breakout against the Tigers fed directly into a 12-point first half that allowed Post, who still wasn't quite right after missing the Clemson game, to get himself physically back into the swing of a full basketball game. His 4-for-5 shooting before halftime then paced an 8-for-10 day, but the outcome landed second to a process that started long before the plane left for South Carolina.
"I feel like I hadn't been playing my best recently," Zackery said, "so I felt like I had to take that next step and stay in the gym a lot more…I could tell that it had an impact on the team because QP told me before one of the games the other day that I wasn't shooting or being aggressive, and it wasn't helping us. So I had it in my mind, and he brought it into practice."
Players always endure ebbs and flows throughout a season, but Zackery's 38 points over the past two games brought him back to a performance that started with 20 points in December's overtime loss to NC State. It had been, at that point, the second straight game in double figures, but he finished the 2023 calendar with 18 points against Holy Cross and an additional 14 and 13 against St. John's and Lehigh. His assist numbers remained consistent through those games opposite his ability to crash board and produce steals, but he fell out of sync as Harris and Madsen found more ways to contribute offensively.
The trust in his game didn't erode, but Post, Grant and the rest of the Eagles knew he just needed to trust the process. Handed the ball in critical moments over the last two games illustrated that trust, and even where BC failed to beat Clemson, the close-out against Notre Dame offered more results than process.
"I thought Jaeden Zackery and Quinten Post led us," Grant said of Notre Dame. "Other guys had some critical moments during the game, but Jaeden Zackery had 20 points on 8-for-10 shooting while doing a really good job defensively against their point guard in the second half. I thought that was big."
3) No, no limits. We'll reach for the sky. No valley too deep, no mountain too high.
I probably listened to 2 Unlimited more than any rational person, at least compared to back in the day, but in keeping with my line of childhood ruinations, I watched the music video for the first time this week. It was, well, weird. Everyone was doing a pinball thing. Literally. They were on the pinball machine. Were they pinballs? Were they the flippers? Why pinball? I have so many questions and not enough answers. Either way, it's still a great jam.
Okay, I promise I'm done with my music references for the week, but looking at the past week really made me feel like we saw Quinten Post's inner character. It wasn't lost on anybody that PJ Hall enjoyed an easier day on Saturday because he didn't have to bang against another seven-foot player, and the early-game struggles against Notre Dame could have easily derailed any player dealing with the frustration of a physical limitation. Post instead rallied and settled himself into an offense built for his success, and he rotated out of that paint perfectly to drain back-breaking threes that ended Notre Dame's overall threat.
"There are a lot of reads," Post said, "and I think that after practice, I always stay to shoot extra with Devin McGlockton. We got up a lot of extra shots, and then besides that, I just watched a lot of practice. I watch a lot of film on practice and games, and I think that just helps make those reads, whether it's being open for shots or driving and getting to the rim."
Vision is an incredibly underrated skill on the basketball court, but Post's NBA-level development is now constructed around seeing plays before they happen. Going back to the dribble-drive, he now knows exactly how to punish a defense before he ever touches the ball, and he uses intelligence to beat opponents who try to physically overmatch anyone who enters the paint. BC is, in general, a calculating team, but Post had three rebounds in the first half of Monday night before shifting into a block machine in the second half while McGlockton, who had four boards in the first half, remained on the rim.
"I don't want to be known as the comeback kids," Grant joked, "but we have great fortitude and character. I'm happy that we have an experienced team. There was a time in the first half where [Notre Dame] made it hard for us to get good shots, and it forced us into some tough shots because we didn't get the position we needed if we didn't score. I think we made the adjustment in the second half."
Post-Game Huddle: These guys are still there?!
The NIL and transfer portal era made it impossible for a large subsection of college basketball players to remain at one school for longer than a couple of years, but North Carolina center Armando Bacot is a unicorn who nobody is likely to ever again witness on a college basketball court. A sophomore during the COVID year of 2020-2021, he returned to the Tar Heels for a fifth season this year after spending the last four years in a full-time patrol of the not-quite Keaney blue paint.
He likely could have gone to the NBA after last season, but bringing him back to Chapel Hill was a major coup for a program that enjoyed his double-double average over the past two seasons. He's practically never missed a game, and while the number of players reaching 150 games is increasing due to the COVID waiver, Saturday marks the more rare occasion of a player reaching 150 career games with the same program.
Bacot scored in double figures this year in all but four of 19 games, and he rattled 19 points and seven rebounds off of Louisville in a 16-point win on Wednesday night. He previously recorded a double-double against Syracuse during the 103-67 win at home over the Orange, and his 14-point, 16-board night over 34 hard-fought minutes led the Tar Heels past a road game at Clemson at the start of the month.
He's a centerpiece for any team, but this UNC team is built around both him and fourth-year starter RJ Davis, who enters Saturday with 20 points per game with just under four assists. They've led the Tar Heels to a 14-3 overall record by simply committing to Hubert Davis' overall system, and having each of them for four years allowed the program to seamlessly transition between Roy Williams and his longtime assistant. Having been an NBA-style coach helps the pro style offense isolate weak spots in the defense, but the age and experience factor is arguably the most critical to a team bidding for a No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
"[Our crowd] made a difference [against Notre Dame]," Grant said. "It was loud when they were announcing the players at the beginning of the game, and they were making a lot of noise. We've had great crowds, and I really appreciate them because they make the difference."
BC and UNC will help kick off the ACC's inaugural season on The CW network on Saturday afternoon when the Eagles host the Tar Heels at 2 p.m. The game can be seen on national television with radio coverage available through the Boston College Sports Network from Learfield.
Players Mentioned
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/ Men's Basketball
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/ Men's Basketball
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/ Men's Basketball
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/ Men's Basketball
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