Boston College Athletics
Photo by: Meg Kelly
February 15, 2024 | Men's Basketball, #ForBoston Files
The late-night win over Louisville puts BC in position to keep its postseason hopes alive.
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- My halcyon days before becoming a father were filled with late night basketball. I routinely worked various events at 7 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights, so I'd return home and avoid sleeping because of the adrenaline juice pumping through my body. My then-girlfriend, later-fiancee, and now-wife would be fast asleep when I walked in the door, but the quiet and serene living room allowed me to feast on her leftovers while watching Kobe Bryant's Los Angeles Lakers demolish some unsuspecting team in the late night hours.
I never really required much sleep, but the arrival of my two children destroyed the body clock that once enabled me to fall asleep after my wife and wake up well before the house was ever moving. Gone were the days of eating chicken parm with Tim Duncan or Steph Curry, replaced instead by some Marvel Cinematic Universe movie capable of keeping me awake after a midnight or 4 a.m. bottle feeding.
Because I love my children, I don't exactly miss those days, but there are times when a man pushing 40 years old isn't afraid to reach back into his bag of tricks for one last round of vintage Rubin magic. In the words of the late Toby Keith, I'm not as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was, and thanks to the magic of national television, I dipped into that old satchel for a late night at Conte Forum on Tuesday night.
I'm pretty happy that I did it because I otherwise would have fallen asleep on the couch during the time when Boston College defeated Louisville. The 89-77 victory rang through the halls of Conte Forum by sounding the bells of basketball's bare-knuckle brawls, and no amount of slumber would have triggered the adrenaline rush wrought by the resurgent Eagles and their ability to send the Cardinals back to Kentucky with a bloodied nose and a few well-placed bruises.
"The first half was really physical," said head coach Earl Grant. "Louisville tried to throw it inside, they were making shots at the basket and getting offensive rebounds, and it took us a while to really realize that it was a physical game that allowed them to rebound the ball well. It took us some time, but once we adjusted, I thought we were really good with our defensive rebound percentage, and we had everybody doing their job. It was just the first eight or ten minutes where we were giving them too many opportunities."
Turning the game into a street fight was the primary objective of a Louisville team that started to turn its own corner over the past couple of weeks, and the pace and tempo to the overall feel forced BC to reach into its own value menu during a game in which both teams produced three flagrant fouls. The sweat equity remained quick, but allowing the players to toe the line between physical and brawling enabled defenders to freely hand-check ball-handlers and shooters. Bodies and elbows were commonly found against anyone trying to gain an edge, and dribblers had to switch to off-hand movements because their primary strong side was being used to push from those same defenders.
Quinten Post helped lead that charge for BC by ably pushing Brandon Hunter-Hatfield into switches, but a continued defensive alignment built around Mason Madsen cut into Louisville's overall depth. The Cardinal center went for 21 points on 9-of-13 shooting after Grant placed Madsen in the center position of the defense, but the switch out kept both him and Post in position to limit Mike James and Ty-Laur Johnson to under 50 percent shooting. Removing the depth then wounded Louisville in the second half when BC started rolling, and a 20-1 run virtually ended the threat by confusing a team that couldn't find its own space because of what the Eagles were doing.
"I think it's all about the feel for the game," said BC guard Claudell Harris, Jr. "Some games are where you can't be as touchy, and the refs are calling a lot more [fouls] when it comes to touching, hand checking and bodying up. This game was pretty physical, so we knew that we could adjust, and once we adjusted, we started moving."
Winning Tuesday night's game meant BC added a bit of padding and separation to the bottom three or four spots in the ACC, but it further allowed the Eagles to gain a game on Miami, which lost to Clemson for its third straight defeat. The fact that the Hurricanes slipped added storm clouds to Saturday's horizon game, and postseason hopes continued to flicker on a team that's starting to position for a potential run at one of March's tournaments.
Here are some more takeaways from the win over the Cardinals:
1) We've all got a long way to run. -Collective Soul, "Run"
Kids these days can't appreciate what it meant when Jon Moxon led the West Canaan Coyotes to a district championship without autocratic coach Bud Kilmer, and they'll never know the importance of learning the new Tweeder End Zone Dance appropriately named…New Tweeder End Zone Dance. They probably won't recognize that MTV-level branding produced a soundtrack capable of bettering the overall movie or that their parents came of age with a group of high school football kids in a movie featuring AC/DC, the Foo Fighters and the above mentioned Collective Soul song.
Now that I've yelled at the clouds enough to go watch a movie that just turned 25 years old, I guess I'll get to the important stuff…
The true turning point of Tuesday's matchup occurred early in the second half. Louisville's basket was one of those oval carnival games that prevented anyone from winning the giant stuffed bear, to which not hitting a shot over a seven-minute span allowed the Eagles to turn a double-digit first half deficit into a commanding second half lead. By the time the next basket went through the hole, a 20-1 lead pressured the Cardinals into a foregone conclusion stemming from the shellshock associated with watching BC run the floor.
"It was a combination of things," Grant explained. "A big part of it was defense. You're going to be alright if the other team doesn't score for a long period of time, and that's really our DNA. That's where we want to be. That's what we want to do. I think what happens is that because of [the stops], you get out in transition and fast break by running the floor. You play a little bit more free when you don't have to take the ball out from under the basket every time."
BC forced Louisville to play faster than it wanted or expected, and keeping the Cardinals off-balance further allowed ball rotation to involve several different players. The defensive stops converted into offensive opportunities for virtually anyone who touched the ball, and what started with Devin McGlockton transitioned into a three-pointer by Claudell Harris. Quinten Post squared up for a three of his own, to which the paint opened for Jaeden Zackery to run the baseline with McGlockton coming down Broadway. Donald Hand eventually got his chance at running six or seven straight points against the Louisville defense, and nothing the Cardinals did to stop the shooter worked - not even a double-down or double-team that extended the five on the floor.Â
"The first thing a defense tries is to get set," Grant said, "so if we're jogging it up, it's harder to get set. I think that our defense really allowed us to propel off of that, and that's what we went over. It became contagious, and we really worked for good shots."
"The main emphasis heading into the second half was our defense," McGlockton agreed. "Coach Grant pointed out to us that [Louisville] scored 47 points in the first half, and we like to keep our opponents around 30. So that was what we focused on, going into the second half."
2) But we're never gonna survive, unless we get a little crazy. -Seal, "Crazy"
It's impossible for me to hear a song by Seal and not immediately think of either George Clooney's Batman or Michael Jordan's basketball hops with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, the latter of which is the reason why the greatest player in the history of the sport returned to the Chicago Bulls after that baseball-retirement phase.
Back to BC, though.
I mentioned how Jaeden Zackery drove the ball on the baseline against Louisville. That was a bit different from BC's traditional dribble-drive down the lane. In a traditional setting, the center in the post operated out of a high-low option with the point guard. They each have options on where to move the ball or shoot, but the biggest idea centers around getting it into the hands of one or the other for a ball screen, kick-out, or dribble-drive.Â
Moving Zackery to the baseline took Louisville's defense completely out of its set formation. BC moved quick enough to prevent the Cardinals from setting their alignment in a way that kept strong backcourt defenders away from the point guard position, but switching him down low opened options whenever the man-to-man defense lost track of other players. The point guard defender that had to move its way to the low block instead wound up colliding in a position with a power forward or center, and Zackery's vision, talent, and overall toughness would open up those options for players like McGlockton, Harris, or Hand.
"He's just physical," Grant said. "The big part was that we were in the bonus, so we put the ball in his hand and gave him that side of the floor by telling him to get to the basket and make a good decision for his teammates. He scored it a couple of times, and he hit Mason for a couple of three-pointers. Three or four times, we did an action, but we knew we'd have something good with the bonus, so we went out and were physical to take care of the ball."
Zackery finished with six assists while scoring 10 points on 4-of-6 shooting, but his ability to disrupt Louisville at both ends of the floor added four steals and kept the Eagles in a transition game that was faster than the half-court set pieces. He only had one turnover while playing the full 30 minutes, and when the frustrated Cardinals finally pushed on him, his four fouls didn't offer too much of an impact to BC's overall defensive structure.
3) They said you have to use your five best players, but I found you win with the five who fit together the best. -Red Auerbach
I always found it difficult to reconcile Boston's progressive identity with a racist past that treated men and women of color like second-class citizens for the majority of my parents' childhood. I grew up in a diverse urban setting and was always taught to value people for their actions over their ethnic backgrounds, but I also recognize that it's difficult to identify how institutional racism or color barriers existed in a society where you can't physically see the divisions.
The Boston Celtics' organization was an exception to that rule, and I vividly remember learning how Red Auerbach looked beyond race to form one of basketball's greatest dynasties. He drafted the first African-American NBA player in 1950 when he selected Chuck Cooper in the second round, and the starting five of Sam Jones, KC Jones, Bill Russell, Satch Sanders and Willie Naulls was the first all-Black starting lineup in league history. Russell later became the first Black head coach in NBA history, and their success contrasts with a complicated, sordid history built around a time of social upheaval.
I feel unqualified to talk about race - especially in Boston - but it being Black History Month means it's worth a conversation about what I'll never know or understand. Boston College's posthumous retirement of John Austin's jersey on Saturday allows us to have that conversation, and we'll do it while honoring the player who scored 49 points against Georgetown before playing for the Baltimore Bullets and New Jersey Americans.
There is much more meat on the bone in this conversation, but Saturday gives us all an opportunity to honor trailblazers within the Boston College community and their continued impact at a time when we're all in need of a time to break down walls and link arms in a drive for equality.
Post-Game Huddle: Check-In Time
A little under one month remains until the ACC descends on Washington, D.C. for its conference tournament, but the league's race for seeding is somehow both cementing its spots and opening the gates for a wide-open, frenetic finish. As of Friday morning, North Carolina, Duke and Virginia comfortably have the inside track to the coveted double-bye, but the Cavaliers' loss to Pittsburgh opened the door for the entire middle group to potentially force its way into the conversation.
Wake Forest remains one game behind the 'Hoos in the loss column, but the Panthers' win edged them into a four-way tie for fifth place with Clemson, NC State and Florida State. Syracuse sits a half-game behind each of them with a seventh league loss, and Virginia Tech's 6-7 record is a half-game behind the Orange.
Having 15 teams in the league means the bottom six teams play on the first day of the conference tournament, but BC's win over Louisville opened a path for the Eagles to escape one of those opening round games. Sitting in 12th place with a 5-8 record in the league means BC, which is 9-4 at home, can jump as high as 10th place this weekend with a win over the Hurricanes and a Virginia Tech loss in Chapel Hill. Syracuse, meanwhile, draws Georgia Tech, which lost its last four games, while the four-pack ahead of the Orange features a head-to-head meeting between NC State and Clemson.
BC would still need to catch at least the Orange while collecting head-to-head numbers over the pack of four teams trying to catch the top four, but the Eagles still very much control their own destiny. If Florida State loses at home to Duke, a win over the Hurricanes would allow them to move within a game of the Seminoles for the No. 9 seed while inching closer to either Clemson or NC State for the No. 8 seed. The fact that a game remains against the Wolfpack also means that this whole situation is within this team's overall control.
At 14-10, the thought of a 19-win season then puts the NIT back into play for the Eagles with a separate run assuring them of outer bubble status for the NCAA Tournament. In a world where Earl Grant wants his team to play its best basketball in March, that means the Eagles, who ultimately cost themselves a shot at postseason play by losing to Tarleton State, Maine and New Hampshire last year, are still in the hunt for their ultimate goal if they're able to prove their coach prophetic.
I never really required much sleep, but the arrival of my two children destroyed the body clock that once enabled me to fall asleep after my wife and wake up well before the house was ever moving. Gone were the days of eating chicken parm with Tim Duncan or Steph Curry, replaced instead by some Marvel Cinematic Universe movie capable of keeping me awake after a midnight or 4 a.m. bottle feeding.
Because I love my children, I don't exactly miss those days, but there are times when a man pushing 40 years old isn't afraid to reach back into his bag of tricks for one last round of vintage Rubin magic. In the words of the late Toby Keith, I'm not as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was, and thanks to the magic of national television, I dipped into that old satchel for a late night at Conte Forum on Tuesday night.
I'm pretty happy that I did it because I otherwise would have fallen asleep on the couch during the time when Boston College defeated Louisville. The 89-77 victory rang through the halls of Conte Forum by sounding the bells of basketball's bare-knuckle brawls, and no amount of slumber would have triggered the adrenaline rush wrought by the resurgent Eagles and their ability to send the Cardinals back to Kentucky with a bloodied nose and a few well-placed bruises.
"The first half was really physical," said head coach Earl Grant. "Louisville tried to throw it inside, they were making shots at the basket and getting offensive rebounds, and it took us a while to really realize that it was a physical game that allowed them to rebound the ball well. It took us some time, but once we adjusted, I thought we were really good with our defensive rebound percentage, and we had everybody doing their job. It was just the first eight or ten minutes where we were giving them too many opportunities."
Turning the game into a street fight was the primary objective of a Louisville team that started to turn its own corner over the past couple of weeks, and the pace and tempo to the overall feel forced BC to reach into its own value menu during a game in which both teams produced three flagrant fouls. The sweat equity remained quick, but allowing the players to toe the line between physical and brawling enabled defenders to freely hand-check ball-handlers and shooters. Bodies and elbows were commonly found against anyone trying to gain an edge, and dribblers had to switch to off-hand movements because their primary strong side was being used to push from those same defenders.
Quinten Post helped lead that charge for BC by ably pushing Brandon Hunter-Hatfield into switches, but a continued defensive alignment built around Mason Madsen cut into Louisville's overall depth. The Cardinal center went for 21 points on 9-of-13 shooting after Grant placed Madsen in the center position of the defense, but the switch out kept both him and Post in position to limit Mike James and Ty-Laur Johnson to under 50 percent shooting. Removing the depth then wounded Louisville in the second half when BC started rolling, and a 20-1 run virtually ended the threat by confusing a team that couldn't find its own space because of what the Eagles were doing.
"I think it's all about the feel for the game," said BC guard Claudell Harris, Jr. "Some games are where you can't be as touchy, and the refs are calling a lot more [fouls] when it comes to touching, hand checking and bodying up. This game was pretty physical, so we knew that we could adjust, and once we adjusted, we started moving."
Winning Tuesday night's game meant BC added a bit of padding and separation to the bottom three or four spots in the ACC, but it further allowed the Eagles to gain a game on Miami, which lost to Clemson for its third straight defeat. The fact that the Hurricanes slipped added storm clouds to Saturday's horizon game, and postseason hopes continued to flicker on a team that's starting to position for a potential run at one of March's tournaments.
Here are some more takeaways from the win over the Cardinals:
1) We've all got a long way to run. -Collective Soul, "Run"
Kids these days can't appreciate what it meant when Jon Moxon led the West Canaan Coyotes to a district championship without autocratic coach Bud Kilmer, and they'll never know the importance of learning the new Tweeder End Zone Dance appropriately named…New Tweeder End Zone Dance. They probably won't recognize that MTV-level branding produced a soundtrack capable of bettering the overall movie or that their parents came of age with a group of high school football kids in a movie featuring AC/DC, the Foo Fighters and the above mentioned Collective Soul song.
Now that I've yelled at the clouds enough to go watch a movie that just turned 25 years old, I guess I'll get to the important stuff…
The true turning point of Tuesday's matchup occurred early in the second half. Louisville's basket was one of those oval carnival games that prevented anyone from winning the giant stuffed bear, to which not hitting a shot over a seven-minute span allowed the Eagles to turn a double-digit first half deficit into a commanding second half lead. By the time the next basket went through the hole, a 20-1 lead pressured the Cardinals into a foregone conclusion stemming from the shellshock associated with watching BC run the floor.
"It was a combination of things," Grant explained. "A big part of it was defense. You're going to be alright if the other team doesn't score for a long period of time, and that's really our DNA. That's where we want to be. That's what we want to do. I think what happens is that because of [the stops], you get out in transition and fast break by running the floor. You play a little bit more free when you don't have to take the ball out from under the basket every time."
BC forced Louisville to play faster than it wanted or expected, and keeping the Cardinals off-balance further allowed ball rotation to involve several different players. The defensive stops converted into offensive opportunities for virtually anyone who touched the ball, and what started with Devin McGlockton transitioned into a three-pointer by Claudell Harris. Quinten Post squared up for a three of his own, to which the paint opened for Jaeden Zackery to run the baseline with McGlockton coming down Broadway. Donald Hand eventually got his chance at running six or seven straight points against the Louisville defense, and nothing the Cardinals did to stop the shooter worked - not even a double-down or double-team that extended the five on the floor.Â
"The first thing a defense tries is to get set," Grant said, "so if we're jogging it up, it's harder to get set. I think that our defense really allowed us to propel off of that, and that's what we went over. It became contagious, and we really worked for good shots."
"The main emphasis heading into the second half was our defense," McGlockton agreed. "Coach Grant pointed out to us that [Louisville] scored 47 points in the first half, and we like to keep our opponents around 30. So that was what we focused on, going into the second half."
2) But we're never gonna survive, unless we get a little crazy. -Seal, "Crazy"
It's impossible for me to hear a song by Seal and not immediately think of either George Clooney's Batman or Michael Jordan's basketball hops with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, the latter of which is the reason why the greatest player in the history of the sport returned to the Chicago Bulls after that baseball-retirement phase.
Back to BC, though.
I mentioned how Jaeden Zackery drove the ball on the baseline against Louisville. That was a bit different from BC's traditional dribble-drive down the lane. In a traditional setting, the center in the post operated out of a high-low option with the point guard. They each have options on where to move the ball or shoot, but the biggest idea centers around getting it into the hands of one or the other for a ball screen, kick-out, or dribble-drive.Â
Moving Zackery to the baseline took Louisville's defense completely out of its set formation. BC moved quick enough to prevent the Cardinals from setting their alignment in a way that kept strong backcourt defenders away from the point guard position, but switching him down low opened options whenever the man-to-man defense lost track of other players. The point guard defender that had to move its way to the low block instead wound up colliding in a position with a power forward or center, and Zackery's vision, talent, and overall toughness would open up those options for players like McGlockton, Harris, or Hand.
"He's just physical," Grant said. "The big part was that we were in the bonus, so we put the ball in his hand and gave him that side of the floor by telling him to get to the basket and make a good decision for his teammates. He scored it a couple of times, and he hit Mason for a couple of three-pointers. Three or four times, we did an action, but we knew we'd have something good with the bonus, so we went out and were physical to take care of the ball."
Zackery finished with six assists while scoring 10 points on 4-of-6 shooting, but his ability to disrupt Louisville at both ends of the floor added four steals and kept the Eagles in a transition game that was faster than the half-court set pieces. He only had one turnover while playing the full 30 minutes, and when the frustrated Cardinals finally pushed on him, his four fouls didn't offer too much of an impact to BC's overall defensive structure.
3) They said you have to use your five best players, but I found you win with the five who fit together the best. -Red Auerbach
I always found it difficult to reconcile Boston's progressive identity with a racist past that treated men and women of color like second-class citizens for the majority of my parents' childhood. I grew up in a diverse urban setting and was always taught to value people for their actions over their ethnic backgrounds, but I also recognize that it's difficult to identify how institutional racism or color barriers existed in a society where you can't physically see the divisions.
The Boston Celtics' organization was an exception to that rule, and I vividly remember learning how Red Auerbach looked beyond race to form one of basketball's greatest dynasties. He drafted the first African-American NBA player in 1950 when he selected Chuck Cooper in the second round, and the starting five of Sam Jones, KC Jones, Bill Russell, Satch Sanders and Willie Naulls was the first all-Black starting lineup in league history. Russell later became the first Black head coach in NBA history, and their success contrasts with a complicated, sordid history built around a time of social upheaval.
I feel unqualified to talk about race - especially in Boston - but it being Black History Month means it's worth a conversation about what I'll never know or understand. Boston College's posthumous retirement of John Austin's jersey on Saturday allows us to have that conversation, and we'll do it while honoring the player who scored 49 points against Georgetown before playing for the Baltimore Bullets and New Jersey Americans.
There is much more meat on the bone in this conversation, but Saturday gives us all an opportunity to honor trailblazers within the Boston College community and their continued impact at a time when we're all in need of a time to break down walls and link arms in a drive for equality.
Post-Game Huddle: Check-In Time
A little under one month remains until the ACC descends on Washington, D.C. for its conference tournament, but the league's race for seeding is somehow both cementing its spots and opening the gates for a wide-open, frenetic finish. As of Friday morning, North Carolina, Duke and Virginia comfortably have the inside track to the coveted double-bye, but the Cavaliers' loss to Pittsburgh opened the door for the entire middle group to potentially force its way into the conversation.
Wake Forest remains one game behind the 'Hoos in the loss column, but the Panthers' win edged them into a four-way tie for fifth place with Clemson, NC State and Florida State. Syracuse sits a half-game behind each of them with a seventh league loss, and Virginia Tech's 6-7 record is a half-game behind the Orange.
Having 15 teams in the league means the bottom six teams play on the first day of the conference tournament, but BC's win over Louisville opened a path for the Eagles to escape one of those opening round games. Sitting in 12th place with a 5-8 record in the league means BC, which is 9-4 at home, can jump as high as 10th place this weekend with a win over the Hurricanes and a Virginia Tech loss in Chapel Hill. Syracuse, meanwhile, draws Georgia Tech, which lost its last four games, while the four-pack ahead of the Orange features a head-to-head meeting between NC State and Clemson.
BC would still need to catch at least the Orange while collecting head-to-head numbers over the pack of four teams trying to catch the top four, but the Eagles still very much control their own destiny. If Florida State loses at home to Duke, a win over the Hurricanes would allow them to move within a game of the Seminoles for the No. 9 seed while inching closer to either Clemson or NC State for the No. 8 seed. The fact that a game remains against the Wolfpack also means that this whole situation is within this team's overall control.
At 14-10, the thought of a 19-win season then puts the NIT back into play for the Eagles with a separate run assuring them of outer bubble status for the NCAA Tournament. In a world where Earl Grant wants his team to play its best basketball in March, that means the Eagles, who ultimately cost themselves a shot at postseason play by losing to Tarleton State, Maine and New Hampshire last year, are still in the hunt for their ultimate goal if they're able to prove their coach prophetic.
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