Boston College Athletics
Photo by: Meg Kelly
Thursday Three-Pointer: Nov. 21, 2024
November 21, 2024 | Men's Basketball, #ForBoston Files
Back-to-back in the win column with a trip to Grand Cayman awaiting
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- I wish writing a column accurately captured my wide-mouthed gape when I first heard about Boston College's limited history against Temple.
The Northeast basketball culture didn't fit the narrative of seldom facing the Owls. Boston and Philadelphia held two stronghold along the Northeast's basketball corridor dotting along I-95, and the City of Brotherly Love's Big Five program particularly carried historical data towards a solid potential rivalry. I remember watching John Chaney scream at John Calipari during an era of near-annual tournament berths at Temple, and even current head coach Adam Fisher inherited a program narrowly within postseason range after 2022's fourth place finish in the American Athletic Conference.
BC not playing one of the incontrovertible Atlantic 10 powerhouses - with three dozen NCAA Tournament berths to its name - didn't make much sense, but sure enough, the lower truth surrounding Fisher's second season in Philly underscored how little the Owls and Eagles played one another on the hardwood. They might've been one time football rivals in the old Big East, but the Eagles and Owls had not matched up on the hardwood since 2003.
It seemed wrong, but the history book didn't lie. BC had never beaten the program that produced Mark Macon, Eddie Jones, Rick Brunson, and Tim Perry, and Temple hadn't even visited Chestnut Hill since Chaney's 1992-93 tournament team beat BC to start its season. I remember watching that team barely lose to UMass in the A-10 Tournament before earning the No. 7 seed in the West Regional, and it's still pretty wild to think about how a five-point difference nearly prevented Chris Webber from ever calling his ill-fated timeout two games after eliminating the Owls in the Elite Eight.
It was right there in the stone cold factbook because even the 2003 meeting took place in the National Invitation Tournament. Al Skinner never faced Temple during the regular season at BC and neither did Steve Donahue or Jim Christian. Jim O'Brien went four straight years at the end of his time in Chestnut Hill without playing the Owls. BC played Northwestern, Wisconsin, Michigan and Michigan State more frequently. Hartford is a school that's one year away from fully classifying itself to Division III, but the Hawks have more head-to-head matchups against the Eagles. Yale, Maine, Brown, Army … all more than Temple.
Maybe I'm a sucker for the northeast, but I think that's why last weekend's win was made sweeter. It wasn't quite Larry Bird choking out Julius Erving or Jayson Tatum eliminating Joel Embiid once again from a postseason series, but Boston beating Philadelphia?
Nothing better.
Here's more from BC's two-win week against Temple and Loyola:
1) It's time you and me played. -Shep, "Above The Rim"
Straight up: Above the Rim never shows up on my list of favorite basketball movies, but it really needs to start making its way onto the list. I'm pretty sure it aged terribly from its 1994 release date, but my best friend and I synced up watching the movie on Starz or something during the early days of Covid and texted each other with observations about how Birdie's style would never fly in the modern NBA. This was a real thing that happened.
Shep, meanwhile, belongs in the middle of every team's lineup with his ability to navigate to the rim.
Back to BC, though, because the Temple win illustrated how the Eagles are a fearsome team capable of shifting through any style of play. They led by as many as 14 points before holding onto a three-point win, but it felt like a breakout particularly because the VCU game released tension into palpable disappointment. Rallying for a win with Elijah Strong's career-best night placed the sophomore in range for ACC Player of the Week consideration because the team looked like something altogether different from the individualistic, one-on-one style from the loss to VCU.
"I told the guys that the quicker that we can embrace that we're not the team from last year, we're not the program that they played for last year, we can come together and work towards a oneness," said head coach Earl Grant after the win. "We will act as one, move as a unit, embrace each other, embrace the challenges that having so many new guys present in terms of group dynamics and trust level, and we will understand the system and terminology."
Last year's team operated within a uniqueness that centered the floor around the frontcourt at both ends, and it opened long-range shots by sending the ball into the big man position with a host of options. Quinten Post was such a unicorn at his position that he opened flow towards the wing position, but his ability to abandon the post for an outside jump shot or three-point look required both lockdown power forwards around the rim and rebounding guards who could create their own shots from the perimeter.
Everyone ran the floor, but BC generated the bulk of its offense by looking outside-in from three-point range. The team didn't need to load the basket with high percentage shots because analytics drove its ability to nail down threes and annihilate deficits. That's not necessarily this year's team's identity, but having the three-pointer loom as a threat - such as the 11-for-21 percentage against Loyola - further enables the team to remain nimble around its newfound identity.
2) Cooperation - with all levels of your coworkers. Listen if you want to be heard. Be interested in finding the best way, not in having your own way. -John Wooden's Pyramid of Success
Let's take that understanding of BC's adaptation a step further because each of the two games illustrated exactly how natural roster turnover combined with the offseason decomposition of the team's makeup from last season forced Grant to remain nimble on the fly with the current roster constitution. More specifically, it's worth looking at how the coach analyzed and addressed the team's inability to play consistent basketball in the aftermath of the VCU loss.
The shot percentage from the win over The Citadel cratered to under 30 percent from the floor and under 20 percent on threes against VCU, but shifting to Temple didn't exactly push BC into greener pastures. The Torvik rankings particularly loved the Owls compared to the rest of the nation, but the move from the third-ranked Ram defense to the 40th-best defense according to the analytic rankings included a very different look across three-point and adjusted efficiencies.
"There's a lot of new terminology," admitted Grant, "so I'm learning a lot about myself because we have seven out of 12 players that are new. But that's now what I'm finding my joy, trying to help them become a team."
The goal was never to outrun Temple on a road to 100 points, so Grant knew BC needed to limit more opportunities in the second half. Indeed, dropping the Owls to 9-for-27 in the second half helped overlap how the Eagle offense ran into a strong defensive wall, but honing on top scorer Jamal Mashburn Jr. pushed Temple into worse situations because the offense couldn't quite evolve around its personnel.
"He's a 2,000-point scorer," Grant said of the New Mexico transfer. "He's scored a lot of points in college and we knew he was going to be a challenge. Averaging 25 points after three games, we wanted to keep him under his average and make things hard for him. We knew multiple guys would need to defend him, but he was really talented. I'm just glad we slowed him down a little bit."
Mashburn finished with 11 points in the second half but failed to hit shots with the regularity of his first half outburst. From an efficiency standpoint, the biggest issue then swapped to BC's ability to score its own offense, but understanding exactly how the Eagles targeted a particular performance essentially explained how the team didn't want to shoot the lights out when it knew it faced a strong opposing defense.
"We played 28 great minutes of basketball," Grant said, "and there were 12 minutes where we weren't playing the best basketball. It's also the third game of the season. We have to...keep building and getting better as we go."
3) You have to play together and play the right way. -Brad Stevens
Now let's shift the story to the win over Loyola for a minute because BC's 21-point win essentially combined the two elements into a runaway in the second half. The Eagles didn't necessarily do anything spectacular after halftime aside from executing on a game plan, but the 14-point differential in the second period found its rooting because, once again, the defense found its groove against a team that shot well in the first half.
Take Jordan Stiemke's performance comparative to each half. He played 11 minutes in the first half but recorded seven points on 3-of-5 shooting with five rebounds, an assist, a block and a steal. He played another 11 minutes in the second half, but defensive execution took his numbers down to five points on 1-for-5 shooting, and his rebound numbers fell apart without nary a block or steal to be found.
As his production failed, Jacob Theosdosiou began posting fine numbers, but his eight points after halftime followed a three-point first half with three turnovers. Not being able to post solid numbers across two halves therefore meant nobody could combine their numbers with one another, which is why the Greyhounds simply couldn't produce more than equal points across either halves while BC racked its way to an 80-plus point night.
Layup Line: Don't forget to pack the sunblock.
Voodoo obeah is against the law in the Cayman Islands (I actually Googled it to make sure I was right), but next week's Cayman Islands Classic multi-team event tournament produced mystical powers for its champion and potential postseason tournament play. The eight-team tournament runs very similar to the Battle 4 Atlantis and the Maui Invitational with its multi-layered bracket, but all but one of its champions qualified for a postseason tournament since its inception in 2017.
Nearly every team in the tournament carries a basketball tradition and resume. Three of its teams went to the NCAA Tournament last season with a fourth - High Point - advancing to the College Basketball Invitational championship after winning the Big South's regular season championship. Duquesne memorably defeated Brigham Young as an underdog in the first round after winning the Atlantic 10 Conference, and Old Dominion won 19 games during its first year in the Sun Belt Conference before slipping to a 7-25 record last year.
The John Gray Gymnasium, meanwhile, is a pristine floor located within a smaller high school arena in George Town. It's relatively new after the building underwent significant delays in its construction, but its current status is unchallenged as the premier campus on the British Overseas Territory's capital city.
As for the schedule, the Eagles are slated for the last game of Sunday's first round with an expected tip-off slotted for 7:30 p.m. Win or lose, BC will play either Missouri State or High Point on Monday with tip-off scheduled for 5 p.m. or 7:30 p.m. based on consolation and championship bracket entries. Tuesday's game is yet to be determined for timing.
All games are broadcast on FloCollege, which is a subscription-only service through the FloSports app.
The Northeast basketball culture didn't fit the narrative of seldom facing the Owls. Boston and Philadelphia held two stronghold along the Northeast's basketball corridor dotting along I-95, and the City of Brotherly Love's Big Five program particularly carried historical data towards a solid potential rivalry. I remember watching John Chaney scream at John Calipari during an era of near-annual tournament berths at Temple, and even current head coach Adam Fisher inherited a program narrowly within postseason range after 2022's fourth place finish in the American Athletic Conference.
BC not playing one of the incontrovertible Atlantic 10 powerhouses - with three dozen NCAA Tournament berths to its name - didn't make much sense, but sure enough, the lower truth surrounding Fisher's second season in Philly underscored how little the Owls and Eagles played one another on the hardwood. They might've been one time football rivals in the old Big East, but the Eagles and Owls had not matched up on the hardwood since 2003.
It seemed wrong, but the history book didn't lie. BC had never beaten the program that produced Mark Macon, Eddie Jones, Rick Brunson, and Tim Perry, and Temple hadn't even visited Chestnut Hill since Chaney's 1992-93 tournament team beat BC to start its season. I remember watching that team barely lose to UMass in the A-10 Tournament before earning the No. 7 seed in the West Regional, and it's still pretty wild to think about how a five-point difference nearly prevented Chris Webber from ever calling his ill-fated timeout two games after eliminating the Owls in the Elite Eight.
It was right there in the stone cold factbook because even the 2003 meeting took place in the National Invitation Tournament. Al Skinner never faced Temple during the regular season at BC and neither did Steve Donahue or Jim Christian. Jim O'Brien went four straight years at the end of his time in Chestnut Hill without playing the Owls. BC played Northwestern, Wisconsin, Michigan and Michigan State more frequently. Hartford is a school that's one year away from fully classifying itself to Division III, but the Hawks have more head-to-head matchups against the Eagles. Yale, Maine, Brown, Army … all more than Temple.
Maybe I'm a sucker for the northeast, but I think that's why last weekend's win was made sweeter. It wasn't quite Larry Bird choking out Julius Erving or Jayson Tatum eliminating Joel Embiid once again from a postseason series, but Boston beating Philadelphia?
Nothing better.
Here's more from BC's two-win week against Temple and Loyola:
1) It's time you and me played. -Shep, "Above The Rim"
Straight up: Above the Rim never shows up on my list of favorite basketball movies, but it really needs to start making its way onto the list. I'm pretty sure it aged terribly from its 1994 release date, but my best friend and I synced up watching the movie on Starz or something during the early days of Covid and texted each other with observations about how Birdie's style would never fly in the modern NBA. This was a real thing that happened.
Shep, meanwhile, belongs in the middle of every team's lineup with his ability to navigate to the rim.
Back to BC, though, because the Temple win illustrated how the Eagles are a fearsome team capable of shifting through any style of play. They led by as many as 14 points before holding onto a three-point win, but it felt like a breakout particularly because the VCU game released tension into palpable disappointment. Rallying for a win with Elijah Strong's career-best night placed the sophomore in range for ACC Player of the Week consideration because the team looked like something altogether different from the individualistic, one-on-one style from the loss to VCU.
"I told the guys that the quicker that we can embrace that we're not the team from last year, we're not the program that they played for last year, we can come together and work towards a oneness," said head coach Earl Grant after the win. "We will act as one, move as a unit, embrace each other, embrace the challenges that having so many new guys present in terms of group dynamics and trust level, and we will understand the system and terminology."
Last year's team operated within a uniqueness that centered the floor around the frontcourt at both ends, and it opened long-range shots by sending the ball into the big man position with a host of options. Quinten Post was such a unicorn at his position that he opened flow towards the wing position, but his ability to abandon the post for an outside jump shot or three-point look required both lockdown power forwards around the rim and rebounding guards who could create their own shots from the perimeter.
Everyone ran the floor, but BC generated the bulk of its offense by looking outside-in from three-point range. The team didn't need to load the basket with high percentage shots because analytics drove its ability to nail down threes and annihilate deficits. That's not necessarily this year's team's identity, but having the three-pointer loom as a threat - such as the 11-for-21 percentage against Loyola - further enables the team to remain nimble around its newfound identity.
2) Cooperation - with all levels of your coworkers. Listen if you want to be heard. Be interested in finding the best way, not in having your own way. -John Wooden's Pyramid of Success
Let's take that understanding of BC's adaptation a step further because each of the two games illustrated exactly how natural roster turnover combined with the offseason decomposition of the team's makeup from last season forced Grant to remain nimble on the fly with the current roster constitution. More specifically, it's worth looking at how the coach analyzed and addressed the team's inability to play consistent basketball in the aftermath of the VCU loss.
The shot percentage from the win over The Citadel cratered to under 30 percent from the floor and under 20 percent on threes against VCU, but shifting to Temple didn't exactly push BC into greener pastures. The Torvik rankings particularly loved the Owls compared to the rest of the nation, but the move from the third-ranked Ram defense to the 40th-best defense according to the analytic rankings included a very different look across three-point and adjusted efficiencies.
"There's a lot of new terminology," admitted Grant, "so I'm learning a lot about myself because we have seven out of 12 players that are new. But that's now what I'm finding my joy, trying to help them become a team."
The goal was never to outrun Temple on a road to 100 points, so Grant knew BC needed to limit more opportunities in the second half. Indeed, dropping the Owls to 9-for-27 in the second half helped overlap how the Eagle offense ran into a strong defensive wall, but honing on top scorer Jamal Mashburn Jr. pushed Temple into worse situations because the offense couldn't quite evolve around its personnel.
"He's a 2,000-point scorer," Grant said of the New Mexico transfer. "He's scored a lot of points in college and we knew he was going to be a challenge. Averaging 25 points after three games, we wanted to keep him under his average and make things hard for him. We knew multiple guys would need to defend him, but he was really talented. I'm just glad we slowed him down a little bit."
Mashburn finished with 11 points in the second half but failed to hit shots with the regularity of his first half outburst. From an efficiency standpoint, the biggest issue then swapped to BC's ability to score its own offense, but understanding exactly how the Eagles targeted a particular performance essentially explained how the team didn't want to shoot the lights out when it knew it faced a strong opposing defense.
"We played 28 great minutes of basketball," Grant said, "and there were 12 minutes where we weren't playing the best basketball. It's also the third game of the season. We have to...keep building and getting better as we go."
3) You have to play together and play the right way. -Brad Stevens
Now let's shift the story to the win over Loyola for a minute because BC's 21-point win essentially combined the two elements into a runaway in the second half. The Eagles didn't necessarily do anything spectacular after halftime aside from executing on a game plan, but the 14-point differential in the second period found its rooting because, once again, the defense found its groove against a team that shot well in the first half.
Take Jordan Stiemke's performance comparative to each half. He played 11 minutes in the first half but recorded seven points on 3-of-5 shooting with five rebounds, an assist, a block and a steal. He played another 11 minutes in the second half, but defensive execution took his numbers down to five points on 1-for-5 shooting, and his rebound numbers fell apart without nary a block or steal to be found.
As his production failed, Jacob Theosdosiou began posting fine numbers, but his eight points after halftime followed a three-point first half with three turnovers. Not being able to post solid numbers across two halves therefore meant nobody could combine their numbers with one another, which is why the Greyhounds simply couldn't produce more than equal points across either halves while BC racked its way to an 80-plus point night.
Layup Line: Don't forget to pack the sunblock.
Voodoo obeah is against the law in the Cayman Islands (I actually Googled it to make sure I was right), but next week's Cayman Islands Classic multi-team event tournament produced mystical powers for its champion and potential postseason tournament play. The eight-team tournament runs very similar to the Battle 4 Atlantis and the Maui Invitational with its multi-layered bracket, but all but one of its champions qualified for a postseason tournament since its inception in 2017.
Nearly every team in the tournament carries a basketball tradition and resume. Three of its teams went to the NCAA Tournament last season with a fourth - High Point - advancing to the College Basketball Invitational championship after winning the Big South's regular season championship. Duquesne memorably defeated Brigham Young as an underdog in the first round after winning the Atlantic 10 Conference, and Old Dominion won 19 games during its first year in the Sun Belt Conference before slipping to a 7-25 record last year.
The John Gray Gymnasium, meanwhile, is a pristine floor located within a smaller high school arena in George Town. It's relatively new after the building underwent significant delays in its construction, but its current status is unchallenged as the premier campus on the British Overseas Territory's capital city.
As for the schedule, the Eagles are slated for the last game of Sunday's first round with an expected tip-off slotted for 7:30 p.m. Win or lose, BC will play either Missouri State or High Point on Monday with tip-off scheduled for 5 p.m. or 7:30 p.m. based on consolation and championship bracket entries. Tuesday's game is yet to be determined for timing.
All games are broadcast on FloCollege, which is a subscription-only service through the FloSports app.
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