A Two-Game Snapshot of the Eagles

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- Older generations hate when basketball teams go bombs away on 3-pointers. They prefer what they know from the years when physicality ruled the paint and three-pointers were a novelty over a requirement. They recognize when fouls weren't easily earned or called, and their years are built around how the Bad Boy Pistons regularly deployed body-to-body contact ahead of Michael Jordan's dynasties. Gradually, as basketball morphed into a defensive style during the championship runs of the Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs, the people who remember seeing Larry Bird and Magic Johnson entrenched the idea of moving to the rim.

It's not to say that fundamentals are long gone, but the advent of analytics and the Stephen Curry-era forever changed how basketball teams viewed the 3-point shot. The idea of building a team around an interior offense became passe, and the old world of winning championships with big centers who never shot a basket from above the break became archaic and draconian. Two distinct styles, two distinct eras, and some might say, two distinctly different games. The Eagles saw the new style on display over the past two games, with two distinct results.

With every season, more teams are relying on more 3-pointers and it's common practice at the NBA level to watch teams shoot in excess of 30 or 40 three-point shots per game. They've made comebacks more interesting and turned close games into blowouts with more regularity, but they still feel like something of a unicorn. From a localized basketball perspective, the anomaly came home to roost last weekend when Boston College lost to a Pittsburgh team that splashed 16 threes during a 90-point outburst and a 25-point victory over the Eagles on their Senior Day.

"The way Pittsburgh approached the game and the way they shot the ball, they made seven of their first eight attempts that were all threes," said BC head coach Earl Grant. "They played really well. When I go back and watch the game, there are things that we could have done better. There are things that could have been executed better, offensively and defensively, but the way they came out in the game and shot the ball was very hard to deal with. I give my guys credit that they weathered the storm, and it was a two-point game with seven minutes to get to the locker room, but I give credit to Pitt [because] going back and watching the film, they were really good."

You couldn't help but get flashbacks to that game last night in Coral Gables, as Miami drilled its first three shots from long-range - a calling card of the high octane offense that has helped them to the Elite Eight and Final Four during the previous two seasons.  It's easy to use the box score to make assumptions about Pitt's dominance on Saturday, but contextualizing a 25-point loss is almost required reading when it's becoming more and more common to see teams average nearly three-dozen 3-point attempts. Even by itself, the two-dozen points within the scoreboard differential is both happening more regularly even as it remains an outlier.  From the BC perspective, there hadn't been a 20-point loss since BC lost to NC State by 30 last season and the all-time series against Pitt didn't feature a 20-point loss since BC's last Big East matchup against the Panthers during the closing weeks of the 2004-05 season.

So entering the final week of the season with four straight losses and two consecutive road games, the tensions were understandably high. As BC's trend of early game struggles against opponents, as well as its near-the-bottom-of-the-league 3-point percentage defensive mark, the Eagles' yielded the first nine points to Miami from beyond the arc. After defensive adjustments were made, BC held Miami to only two of its next 17 in the first half and only 1-of-10 over the final 20:00 of play - a far cry from the shooting gallery Pitt put forth a game earlier.

"We had a handful of games that came down to one, two or three possessions within the last five minutes," Grant said during the weekly ACC coaches zoom. "Then that game against Pittsburgh, I thought it was that we could have played better, but Pittsburgh played some of the best basketball than anybody we played this year."

"We've been trying all year to be a good defensive team. That's part of our DNA," Grant said after last night's 67-57 win over Miami - the first win for Boston College in Coral Gables since January 2010.

The loss against Pitt and the win at Miami are examples of the feast or famine the Eagles have shown throughout the ACC slate. Pitt played a high-risk, high-reward style playing to the percentages now permeating through the game of basketball. Miami tried to put their eggs in one basket but saw them crack, one after the other, shot after shot.  Two games aren't always the snapshot of a season, but with the third act of the 2023-24 campaign almost upon us, there isn't the luxury of looking through a two-game lens. Mid-March and beyond morphs into series of momentum-fueled one game seasons.

"Today was a big start for us in terms fo trying propel ourselves into the ACC Tournament. We've got one game left and we want to try to prepare the best we can, so we give ourselves the best chance to be successful," Grant said.  "I'm not worried about exactly what the record is now, I worry about behavior. We have to try to make sure guys understand that. If you play in these games, you have to fight for this chance, so we have to have winning behaviors."

As Grant and his BC squad worked to right some of the wrongs displayed against Pitt, the "fruits of their labor" - as the head coach is fond of referring - were plentiful versus Miami. If the Eagles continue to execute on both ends of the floor and play to Grant's standards, then the overall feelings heading to District of Columbia have to be high. Which is much different than three days ago. Two distinctly different games, two distinctly different results.

Related Videos