Thursday Three-Pointer: Dec. 5, 2024

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- The end of Thanksgiving weekend meant my wife and I began our annual argument about what constitutes a "Christmas movie." Ever the traditionalist, she started the conversation by revolving her entire debate around the central Christmas storylines and values. In the span of a week, we watched all three versions of "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" and topped it with standard music playlists and a steady diet of Bing Crosby. She hung the stockings over the fireplace and began readying the living room for a real pine tree, which was delayed because one of our kids unexpectedly got sick.

I don't quite align with that mentality. Maybe it's because growing up in a fully-Jewish household limited my Christmas exposure until we started dating, but I'm all-in on the holiday theme if there's a wreath or Santa mentioned anywhere in the plot line. To me, "Die Hard" and "Trading Places" are quintessential Christmas movies, and disagreeing parties need to look for exit signs.

We eventually found common ground by explaining that people celebrate holidays with different traditions. It doesn't really matter how someone chooses to enjoy their Christmas time cheer as long as they're celebrating according to their own values, and problems don't exist unless the methodology consistently produces disappointment and frustration - at which point I think everyone can decode where I'm heading because this leads me back to Boston College's dueling losses to Dartmouth and South Carolina.

Neither team compared well to one another. Each operated on the opposite end of the college hardwood spectrum during their respective trips to Conte Forum, but the losses conspired to damage BC's computer rankings and analytics after last week's Cayman Islands Classic victory. While those three wins virtually erased the VCU loss that sent the Eagles tumbling down both the KenPom and Bart Torvik ratings, losing to the top-100 Gamecocks and a Big Green team situated in the lower-50 averaged BC into a problematic situation.

"You never want to lose in games where you feel like you have more size and opportunity to win," said head coach Earl Grant after the Dartmouth loss, "but what we have to do now is figure out what happened, look inward, watch the film to learn from it, and then figure out how to get ready for the next game. It's a journey. It's a long season. You're going to experience a lot of different things - some triumphs, some defeats. But all you can do at this point is steer it and right it and try to get better."

Dartmouth and South Carolina offered two very different styles against a BC team well-equipped to impose a tough and rugged style, but each persevered by exploiting single-edged matchups in the early goings of their respective games. The Big Green shot anomalous 3-pointers in the early first half tilted a defense that never truly had to defend its inside while simultaneously rippling an offensive attack that probably should have moved more towards the interior with longer possessions, but the same track meet never truly materialized against a South Carolina team designed to keep scoring more towards the low end.

"Being down 17 points in the first half disrupted our offense," said Grant after BC's loss to the Gamecocks. "They pushed us out and used their length to force us into tough shots, and then defensively, we broke down. We weren't as connected as we needed to be, and we hang our hat on our defense. But you have to go give them credit; they were the better team and played a better brand of basketball, and they took us on a lot of our stuff."

Simply put, the two losses were problematic, but it's worth balancing the five-game week ahead of the first ACC game of the season. Here's more from BC's performances ahead of the Wake Forest opening round:

1) Because you can't shoot fours. -Antoine Walker

Growing up in the Boston area during the late-1990s and early-2000s offered me a much different perspective on arguably the greatest dynasty in basketball history. I was born during the height of Larry Bird's rivalry with Magic Johnson but entered my formative sports-watching years after the Big Three broke down and retired. Replaced by the M.L. Carr and Rick Pitino eras, I knew that the Boston Celtics hung more NBA championships than any other franchise, but I'd never witnessed excitement aside from watching lottery balls miss the opportunity to draft Tim Duncan.

The Celtics selected Walker with the sixth overall pick one year earlier, but missing on Duncan stung pretty badly until his pairing with the No. 10 pick from the 1998 draft - some guy named Paul Pierce from Kansas - gave Boston a legitimate high-end competition. Their postseason runs with head coach Jim O'Brien offered a three-year run that produced a conference finals appearance and the greatest comeback in NBA Playoff history.

Even with Pierce, Walker was the face of the franchise at the time, but his propensity for launching 3-pointers frustrated and amused virtually anyone with a ticket to the then-named FleetCenter. Let's put it this way: nobody shot 15 3-pointers per game in those days.

His infamous line about shooting three-pointers "because you can't shoot fours" is one of my favorite indicators of his performances in those days, so he probably would have loved watching Dartmouth ball out for a 54 percent 3-point shooting performance that was a full 10 percent better than the national leaders' average from beyond the arc.

"We've seen the 3-point shooting in multiple games already this year," said Grant, "and we were a lot better in those games. We executed the details better, but it wasn't something that we haven't seen. We played against good teams that tested our principles and we were really good. We were locked in and able to hold them down, so this wasn't a unique situation that we haven't encountered. They were just really sharp, really fresh, and made shots."

Dartmouth's 88-83 win over BC marked the Ivy League's first win over the Eagles in 11 years and snapped an eight-game winning streak over the Big Green, but the numbers indicated a wilder anomaly against a team that shot just under 52 percent from the field. The game was virtually never tied, but the 25 minutes led by Dartmouth revolved around seven different lead changes. BC led the Big Green in free throws, points off turnovers, second-chance points, bench points and points in the paint, and the Eagles further outrebounded the Big Green by a plus-six margin with six less fouls.

The only metric that leaned towards Dartmouth occurred on those 3-pointers, where the Big Green shot 17-for-31 by maintaining a remarkable consistency. There really wasn't a hot streak for a team that split each half into 8-for-15 and 7-for-16 clips, and it contributed to the most points scored against the BC defense since last year's loss to Pittsburgh.

Despite all of that, Dartmouth was slotted 347th in the KenPom rankings and remains No. 332 after narrowly defeating in-state rival New Hampshire.

2) The beautiful thing about when you go through a slide is that you learn from it. Not just saying that you learn from it but applying the things that you have learned. -Kevin Garnett

Leading away from the Dartmouth game, South Carolina always represented a significant step-up in competition because of the SEC's strength relative to the rest of the country. Adding Oklahoma and Texas added two national tournament caliber teams after the Sooners went to the NIT and the Longhorns narrowly missed a Sweet Sixteen appearance after earning a No. 7 seed in last year's bracket, but South Carolina, a No. 6 seed that lost to eleventh-seeded Oregon in last year's tournament, looked especially difficult after loading its early-season schedule with non-conference games against Indiana, Xavier and Virginia Tech.

Losses to Indiana and Xavier largely showed where the Gamecocks displayed vulnerabilities, but BC was unable to capitalize against a team that won the game by winning the first half. Lifting the interior shooting from the Indiana game was negated when nobody other than Chad Venning scored more than one field goal in half where BC shot 28 percent and 1-for-8 from outside, and the rebounding margin from Xavier likewise never materialized after Carolina won the first half boards battle.

All of that shifted in the second half, but it wasn't enough to overcome the early-game deficit against a top-70 SEC contender. Adjusting at halftime to the physicality on the wings, Grant chose to send his guards downhill off ball screens and dribble drives with a simplified offense that worked while simultaneously decoying Venning. An improved offense moved to 38 percent from the floor, but South Carolina held BC away from the ball by shooting 7-for-9 from outside against another 1-for-8 half performance for the Eagles.

"The first half was very uncharacteristic," Grant said. "A lot of positives for what the scheme that South Carolina was doing was very uncharacteristic to the way that we were playing. We scored really well all year, so in the second half, we simplified a little bit and tried to get our guards to go downhill a little more. They made decisions once they got into the paint, and the game loosened up. They stopped our system for the first six minutes of the game, but the game loosened up, and we were a lot better in the second."

3) Everything I know now, the pitfalls, the highs and lows, everything, it taught me and made me stronger. -Ray Allen

I feel like two major factors are balancing the malaise and frustration with the Dartmouth and South Carolina losses. First, Dartmouth was a loss, and dropping a game to a team in the low-300s of any analytics rankings is a pothole full of bad feelings. Not finishing that game carried fallout in the national rankings, but it's important to note how the Big Green played the perfect game at the perfect time in the perfect scenario against a BC team that staggered a bit into a mid-afternoon start on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Losing to South Carolina is a little more understandable, but the Gamecocks offered a unique style that hadn't yet punched BC in the proverbial mouth. The Eagles played on equal footing on the scoreboard once they got their legs under them, but the first half was too much to overcome. From that end, there's a need to play the full 40 minutes, but it's a little encouraging that the game rolled down its final minutes without seeing BC lose its drive to slash into its deficit.

Beyond everything, the glass wasn't exactly half-full for the rest of the ACC after the SEC pounded it into submission winning nine of 10 games through Tuesday night's Challenge slate. Clemson was the only team that won a game after beating No. 4 Kentucky, but Notre Dame, Syracuse and Louisville all lost by significant margins. Miami and Cal lost close games, and Florida State, Wake Forest and Louisville all simply lost. Wednesday didn't prove much better for the ACC, going 1-5 with the lone winner being Duke on its home court over No. 2 Auburn.

Layup Line: Facing down those Demon…Deacons.

That leads us back to the upcoming schedule and a Saturday road trip to BC's ACC-opening matchup against Wake Forest. Those of us who sat at Conte Forum last year conceivably remember Boopie Miller's 17-point/7-assist performance in the six-point win in Conte Forum, but his transfer to SMU, along with Andrew Carr's departure for Kentucky, changes a bit about how to view Steve Forbes' new crew.

One thing that doesn't change is the requirement of strong guard play on a team built around Hunter Sallis and Cameron Hildreth. Already this year, Sallis is averaging 17 points per game - a number that practically matched last year's total - but his foul and turnover numbers are up while his 3-point shooting percentage is cut by a factor of about one-and-a-half. His free throws are up, but he's also being asked to play a different game on a team that likely needs to gel with newcomer Davin Cosby in the frontcourt.

In the new ACC, this is the only matchup with the Demon Deacons in a schedule largely built around one-off games against each of the 17 other teams, though two games are still cemented against Syracuse and Notre Dame with a second home-and-home against Georgia Tech.

The game can be seen on Saturday at noon with television coverage on the ACC Network. It's the lone game of the week with BC readying for its exam break game against Stonehill on December 15 at 4 p.m.

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