Photo by: Joe Sullivan
Thursday Three-Pointer: November 7, 2024
November 07, 2024 | Men's Basketball, #ForBoston Files
Game One to the Birds after BC's victory over The Citadel
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- Earl Grant didn't intend to pull the wrong color suit out of his closet on Monday, but walking out to the court for Boston College's season opener against The Citadel revealed an incidental error in his wardrobe judgment. His golf shirts and casual wear didn't force him to consider color schemes, but moving back to a more formal sideline attire last season brought his suit game to the forefront of a conversation once reserved for the dapper head coaches like Villanova's Jay Wright.
He didn't even notice his jacket color when he peeled back the garment bag, but as he walked out of the tunnel, the former Citadel assistant coach heard the good-natured catcall towards his attire. He thought his jacket was green, but looking down, Grant smiled because the blue on his back matched the opponents on the other bench.
Whoops.
Clothing conversations aside, Boston College looked well-dressed in its 69-60 victory over the Bulldogs. The player roster assembled through recruiting and the transfer portal constructed a 40-minute performance that didn't lack grit or dirt in the face of a hungry opponent. For two halves, the Eagles faced a Citadel team likewise built by transfers who hadn't played a game as a collective unit, but they emerged without any added questions in the first game for both sides.
"We had scrimmaged a couple of times," said Grant in his postgame remarks. "Half of our team hadn't played in Conte Forum, so we were happy that we were able to win the game and get that under our belt. We really defended well, but we need to be more sound. You take away the free throws and the foul trouble, and we played a really good defensive game. So we can build on that. There are opportunities out there on offense that require us to have more sound decision-making, but it was what I expected for a new group. It was a good start for us."
Not knowing much about BC's complexion added a bit of nervous energy towards the first minutes of Monday's game, but doubling down on gelling the team created different combinations capable of playing different types of games. The lineup that played two big men in the low defensive block for a large chunk of the first half shifted into a smaller lineup featuring a swing small forward in the center position for the chance to break the offense out of a wider defensive set.
Each set area produced limited results towards BC's overall season, but the end numbers at least pulled the curtain back on Grant's overall intention with this year's roster. Guard Donald Hand Jr. found himself recording a double-double with 22 points and 10 rebounds after going 11-for-11 at the free throw line, and both St. Bonaventure transfer Chad Venning and returning forward Elijah Strong pushed double-figure scoring through a basket blockaded by a smaller Citadel frontcourt.
"He's (Hand) kind of paid his dues. He's been loyal and been around the program, kind of like an elder statesman at this point," noted Grant. "And even though he's a third-year player, he's only second-year on the court and really hadn't had the opportunity to [gain] playing time. Now he's in a new role, and he stepped up by playing good basketball."
Nothing from BC's performance likely alters the questions facing the team ahead of the season, but the win avoided some type of opening game cataclysm that illustrated the worst case scenario. It's hard to judge what the ideal ending would have been, but a win to improve to 1-0 was good enough for a team now headed to a neutral site matchup against a VCU team that won 24 games and advanced to the NIT Quarterfinals last season.
Here's more from the opening round salvo on Monday night:
1) Lights out, party's over, cake's on the griddle, and you're already greased. -House Party
A bit more on Chad Venning in a second, but first, let me remind everyone that House Party is a gem with one of the most iconic dance sequences in movie history. Don't come at me over this until you've yelled, "FULL FORCE GET HYPED" at the top of your lungs while stuck in traffic or at least attempted to do the dance at a wedding before you split your suit pants. I'm not saying I did that, but I'm also not saying I didn't do that.
Back to Venning..the St. Bonaventure graduate transfer entered Boston College's program with Brooklyn's reputation for hard-nosed basketball after starting his career at Morgan State. The starting center against Howard during the first NBA HBCU Classic at the 2022 NBA All Star Game likewise started at the first Boost Mobile Chris Paul Classic one year earlier before transferring to the Bonnies for his third year. Over the next two seasons, he developed into one of the most feared interior presences in the Atlantic 10 Conference, and despite leading the team to a 20-13 record with an appearance in the A-10 semifinals last year, he entered the portal without ever playing in a national tournament.
What he offered BC on Monday night scraped the top of the iceberg from those performances. The Citadel entered Conte Forum with a bit of a smaller lineup relative to Venning's overall size in the paint, so the Bulldogs played a five-out strategy built around the motion offense - a system and style utilized more frequently at the NBA level by teams willing to bomb the net from three-point land. Venning operated in the paint as a true center, but The Citadel's San Antonio option-type bend around the perimeter drew him into the corner and out towards the elbow on several different occasions. Watching for the passing lanes, he patrolled from his spot as a collapsing spider-type defense where he burst out towards the arc before moving back inside the paint to defend slashers.
"The coaches really emphasize defending when the five-man catches," Venning said. "We really want to pressure him to he can't get his dribble hand up easily. Once the dribble handle is more difficult, the guard that comes off is in a scramble mode already, and either myself or Jayden [Hastings] can take the guard, which makes it difficult for him to go downhill."
Grant alternated Venning into pairings with Hastings and Elijah Strong, and all three finished Monday night with stop percentages well over 50 percent. Venning in particular gained five individual stops against The Citadel's offense, and he topped BC's defensive analytics with block percentages generally around four or five percent for plays resulting in retained possession and turnovers, respectively.
2) All seven and we'll watch them fall. They stand in the way of love, and we will smoke them all. With an intellect and a savoir faire. -Prince and the New Power Generation
Venning pointed to one of Grant's statements when referencing BC's overall defensive strategy when he mentioned "EGB," or Energy-Giving Behaviors. Per both the player and the coach, the letters stand for the type of plays stemming solely from controllable behaviors, but they're responsible for tilting and tipping momentum against an opponent. The letters especially rang true for Venning since he finished with a block and two steals to form a plus-9 rating against The Citadel's overall offense.
"It's about blocked shots, loose balls, offense rebounds," explained Grant. "Those guys, they were flying around, and I was proud of their effort. For people who watch and wonder how this team is going to be, we're going to get caught up in the process of becoming the best team that we can be during the season."
Grant introduced Bricks to the Boston College stat sheet by noting three consecutive stops as a momentum-changing behavior. EGBs are the next wave of that explanation by turning chartable numbers into drillable parts of a game. From an analytics standpoint, it's probably not the savviest or newest number, but keeping things simple was a big part of BC's ability to earn its first win of the season.
3) When the party's over and it's time to make that move, somebody gotta win, somebody gotta lose. -Guy, "New Jack City"
Grant admitted to keeping his defensive strategy on the vanilla side for a team that hadn't played together, but the five-out strategy against The Citadel morphed slowly into more complex concepts as the game advanced through its later minutes. The aforementioned spider defense collapsed towards the free throw line whenever the Bulldogs attempted to drive downhill through the lane, but communication reached its zenith when the guards began switching against The Citadel's offensive movement around the perimeter.
BC's defense wasn't complicated, but it prevented the Bulldogs from shooting the three-ball that would have otherwise kept them in the game. A team that went 2-for-13 from outside in the first half finished on a 1-for-11 clip that contained the offense from breaking out, and stress-of-game mistakes pushed 22 fouls across The Citadel's stat sheet. Forward John Adams specifically struggled to contain his assignment when Hastings and Strong were on the court, which is why he fouled out in the second half after recording three whistles after halftime. Cam Glover and Sola Adebisi likewise fell into foul trouble in the first half, which in turn left Brody Fox to play a one-man game in the second half after the Bulldogs failed to capture momentum.
"We've been practicing since June 4," said Hand, "so to get out there against another opponent, with fans in the stands, felt really good."
Post-Game Huddle: We sleep in May.
Oh, college basketball, how I missed you.
I left Conte Forum on Monday night with enough time to catch the Baylor-Gonzaga game that tipped off just before midnight. I watched it from cover-to-cover, which meant that I successfully watched 15 hours of basketball after starting my day with IU-Indy's win over NAIA's IU-Columbus. Keeping an eye on games throughout the afternoon, I made sure to tune into Xavier's win over Texas Southern and Vermont's squeaker against UAB while singling out Seton Hall-Saint Peter's for the Luther Vandross in my soul. Like everyone else, I found myself shocked by Texas A&M's loss to Central Florida, and that game with the Zags was an absolute blowout I don't think anyone saw coming.
Simply put, college basketball returned to my life, and with it came the hours of fight songs and chants from campus gyms across the country. Rice's win over Florida International paused Election Night coverage long enough to kill time ahead of Washington's sneak-by win over Cal-Davis, and UT-Rio Grande Valley made me smile with its upstart performance against nationally-ranked Creighton on Wednesday.
The running joke coined by national basketball pundit Jon Rothstein is that we "sleep in May" when the season ends, but it still warmed my heart to watch bright lights reflecting off of the hardwoods. Basketball is a beautiful sport enabling coaches to build contenders with players perceived as cast-offs or spare parts because systems exist to push them through to the next level. Harnessing a player's strengths and weaknesses within a complementary system creates Cinderella stories on an annual basis. Nearly everyone carries question marks at this time of year, but the drama exists because we're not quite sure how teams expect to answer.
Basketball is back, and come Friday, a game against VCU ups the ante for a BC team that survived its first test. A trip to Annapolis for the Veterans Classic moves the Eagles through the Atlantic 10 Conference before next week's matchup against Temple.
We sleep in May.
BC and VCU tip-off on Friday at 6 p.m. from the Veterans Classic at Alumni Hall, the home court for the Naval Academy. The game can be seen on national television via CBS Sports Network and precedes an 8:30 p.m. tip-off between the Midshipmen and Harvard.
He didn't even notice his jacket color when he peeled back the garment bag, but as he walked out of the tunnel, the former Citadel assistant coach heard the good-natured catcall towards his attire. He thought his jacket was green, but looking down, Grant smiled because the blue on his back matched the opponents on the other bench.
Whoops.
Clothing conversations aside, Boston College looked well-dressed in its 69-60 victory over the Bulldogs. The player roster assembled through recruiting and the transfer portal constructed a 40-minute performance that didn't lack grit or dirt in the face of a hungry opponent. For two halves, the Eagles faced a Citadel team likewise built by transfers who hadn't played a game as a collective unit, but they emerged without any added questions in the first game for both sides.
"We had scrimmaged a couple of times," said Grant in his postgame remarks. "Half of our team hadn't played in Conte Forum, so we were happy that we were able to win the game and get that under our belt. We really defended well, but we need to be more sound. You take away the free throws and the foul trouble, and we played a really good defensive game. So we can build on that. There are opportunities out there on offense that require us to have more sound decision-making, but it was what I expected for a new group. It was a good start for us."
Not knowing much about BC's complexion added a bit of nervous energy towards the first minutes of Monday's game, but doubling down on gelling the team created different combinations capable of playing different types of games. The lineup that played two big men in the low defensive block for a large chunk of the first half shifted into a smaller lineup featuring a swing small forward in the center position for the chance to break the offense out of a wider defensive set.
Each set area produced limited results towards BC's overall season, but the end numbers at least pulled the curtain back on Grant's overall intention with this year's roster. Guard Donald Hand Jr. found himself recording a double-double with 22 points and 10 rebounds after going 11-for-11 at the free throw line, and both St. Bonaventure transfer Chad Venning and returning forward Elijah Strong pushed double-figure scoring through a basket blockaded by a smaller Citadel frontcourt.
"He's (Hand) kind of paid his dues. He's been loyal and been around the program, kind of like an elder statesman at this point," noted Grant. "And even though he's a third-year player, he's only second-year on the court and really hadn't had the opportunity to [gain] playing time. Now he's in a new role, and he stepped up by playing good basketball."
Nothing from BC's performance likely alters the questions facing the team ahead of the season, but the win avoided some type of opening game cataclysm that illustrated the worst case scenario. It's hard to judge what the ideal ending would have been, but a win to improve to 1-0 was good enough for a team now headed to a neutral site matchup against a VCU team that won 24 games and advanced to the NIT Quarterfinals last season.
Here's more from the opening round salvo on Monday night:
1) Lights out, party's over, cake's on the griddle, and you're already greased. -House Party
A bit more on Chad Venning in a second, but first, let me remind everyone that House Party is a gem with one of the most iconic dance sequences in movie history. Don't come at me over this until you've yelled, "FULL FORCE GET HYPED" at the top of your lungs while stuck in traffic or at least attempted to do the dance at a wedding before you split your suit pants. I'm not saying I did that, but I'm also not saying I didn't do that.
Back to Venning..the St. Bonaventure graduate transfer entered Boston College's program with Brooklyn's reputation for hard-nosed basketball after starting his career at Morgan State. The starting center against Howard during the first NBA HBCU Classic at the 2022 NBA All Star Game likewise started at the first Boost Mobile Chris Paul Classic one year earlier before transferring to the Bonnies for his third year. Over the next two seasons, he developed into one of the most feared interior presences in the Atlantic 10 Conference, and despite leading the team to a 20-13 record with an appearance in the A-10 semifinals last year, he entered the portal without ever playing in a national tournament.
What he offered BC on Monday night scraped the top of the iceberg from those performances. The Citadel entered Conte Forum with a bit of a smaller lineup relative to Venning's overall size in the paint, so the Bulldogs played a five-out strategy built around the motion offense - a system and style utilized more frequently at the NBA level by teams willing to bomb the net from three-point land. Venning operated in the paint as a true center, but The Citadel's San Antonio option-type bend around the perimeter drew him into the corner and out towards the elbow on several different occasions. Watching for the passing lanes, he patrolled from his spot as a collapsing spider-type defense where he burst out towards the arc before moving back inside the paint to defend slashers.
"The coaches really emphasize defending when the five-man catches," Venning said. "We really want to pressure him to he can't get his dribble hand up easily. Once the dribble handle is more difficult, the guard that comes off is in a scramble mode already, and either myself or Jayden [Hastings] can take the guard, which makes it difficult for him to go downhill."
Grant alternated Venning into pairings with Hastings and Elijah Strong, and all three finished Monday night with stop percentages well over 50 percent. Venning in particular gained five individual stops against The Citadel's offense, and he topped BC's defensive analytics with block percentages generally around four or five percent for plays resulting in retained possession and turnovers, respectively.
2) All seven and we'll watch them fall. They stand in the way of love, and we will smoke them all. With an intellect and a savoir faire. -Prince and the New Power Generation
Venning pointed to one of Grant's statements when referencing BC's overall defensive strategy when he mentioned "EGB," or Energy-Giving Behaviors. Per both the player and the coach, the letters stand for the type of plays stemming solely from controllable behaviors, but they're responsible for tilting and tipping momentum against an opponent. The letters especially rang true for Venning since he finished with a block and two steals to form a plus-9 rating against The Citadel's overall offense.
"It's about blocked shots, loose balls, offense rebounds," explained Grant. "Those guys, they were flying around, and I was proud of their effort. For people who watch and wonder how this team is going to be, we're going to get caught up in the process of becoming the best team that we can be during the season."
Grant introduced Bricks to the Boston College stat sheet by noting three consecutive stops as a momentum-changing behavior. EGBs are the next wave of that explanation by turning chartable numbers into drillable parts of a game. From an analytics standpoint, it's probably not the savviest or newest number, but keeping things simple was a big part of BC's ability to earn its first win of the season.
3) When the party's over and it's time to make that move, somebody gotta win, somebody gotta lose. -Guy, "New Jack City"
Grant admitted to keeping his defensive strategy on the vanilla side for a team that hadn't played together, but the five-out strategy against The Citadel morphed slowly into more complex concepts as the game advanced through its later minutes. The aforementioned spider defense collapsed towards the free throw line whenever the Bulldogs attempted to drive downhill through the lane, but communication reached its zenith when the guards began switching against The Citadel's offensive movement around the perimeter.
BC's defense wasn't complicated, but it prevented the Bulldogs from shooting the three-ball that would have otherwise kept them in the game. A team that went 2-for-13 from outside in the first half finished on a 1-for-11 clip that contained the offense from breaking out, and stress-of-game mistakes pushed 22 fouls across The Citadel's stat sheet. Forward John Adams specifically struggled to contain his assignment when Hastings and Strong were on the court, which is why he fouled out in the second half after recording three whistles after halftime. Cam Glover and Sola Adebisi likewise fell into foul trouble in the first half, which in turn left Brody Fox to play a one-man game in the second half after the Bulldogs failed to capture momentum.
"We've been practicing since June 4," said Hand, "so to get out there against another opponent, with fans in the stands, felt really good."
Post-Game Huddle: We sleep in May.
Oh, college basketball, how I missed you.
I left Conte Forum on Monday night with enough time to catch the Baylor-Gonzaga game that tipped off just before midnight. I watched it from cover-to-cover, which meant that I successfully watched 15 hours of basketball after starting my day with IU-Indy's win over NAIA's IU-Columbus. Keeping an eye on games throughout the afternoon, I made sure to tune into Xavier's win over Texas Southern and Vermont's squeaker against UAB while singling out Seton Hall-Saint Peter's for the Luther Vandross in my soul. Like everyone else, I found myself shocked by Texas A&M's loss to Central Florida, and that game with the Zags was an absolute blowout I don't think anyone saw coming.
Simply put, college basketball returned to my life, and with it came the hours of fight songs and chants from campus gyms across the country. Rice's win over Florida International paused Election Night coverage long enough to kill time ahead of Washington's sneak-by win over Cal-Davis, and UT-Rio Grande Valley made me smile with its upstart performance against nationally-ranked Creighton on Wednesday.
The running joke coined by national basketball pundit Jon Rothstein is that we "sleep in May" when the season ends, but it still warmed my heart to watch bright lights reflecting off of the hardwoods. Basketball is a beautiful sport enabling coaches to build contenders with players perceived as cast-offs or spare parts because systems exist to push them through to the next level. Harnessing a player's strengths and weaknesses within a complementary system creates Cinderella stories on an annual basis. Nearly everyone carries question marks at this time of year, but the drama exists because we're not quite sure how teams expect to answer.
Basketball is back, and come Friday, a game against VCU ups the ante for a BC team that survived its first test. A trip to Annapolis for the Veterans Classic moves the Eagles through the Atlantic 10 Conference before next week's matchup against Temple.
We sleep in May.
BC and VCU tip-off on Friday at 6 p.m. from the Veterans Classic at Alumni Hall, the home court for the Naval Academy. The game can be seen on national television via CBS Sports Network and precedes an 8:30 p.m. tip-off between the Midshipmen and Harvard.
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