The Opening Tip: UConn (Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Exhibition)

Boston College basketball was a perfect 11-0 when its final season in the Big East began conference play in early January, 2005. The Eagles had previously handed UCLA its first loss of the season when they traveled west for a December game at Anaheim's John Wooden Classic and returned home to survive overtime scares against both Holy Cross and Yale. Their 67-48 win at UMass flipped the New Year's calendar into a continuation of the good vibes that avoided a post-Christmas upset against Kent State, but the feeling around Chestnut Hill centered on the real year beginning with the Big East's proverbial gauntlet.

The Eagles were, of course, leaving the league at the end of the year, but the Big East wasn't keen on watching BC ascend into the top-25 after the legal battles created a divisive and bitter ending to a founding member's tenure. Heading to Connecticut's Gampel Pavilion for the first game of the league's 2004-2005 season only stoked those flames deeper, and the sold-out Hartford Civic Center was all too unwelcoming for the final regular season meeting between the two ancient New England powerhouses.

So when the No. 25 team entered the Constitution State and left with a 75-70 win over No. 10 UConn, the fires that simmered and burned suddenly erupted for the players wearing the road team's maroon and gold targets.

"Au revoir," said Craig Smith after the game. "There was a lot of talking, but I didn't hear them. I blocked them out. It was a good win. It was my first and last time being here, but hey, 'Bye.' It was fun while it lasted."

Nobody at the time knew that BC and UConn would almost never again play one another. They eventually finished first and second in the Big East after the Eagles won their second regular season championship in five years, but their first game of the postseason tournament ended with a 78-72 upset loss to eighth-seeded West Virginia. Having once been 20-0 and No. 5 in the nation, BC instead ended its Big East tenure with three losses in its final seven regular season games before dropping the game to West Virginia. Two games later, the year ended with a No. 4 seed's loss to the Horizon League champion UW-Milwaukee after a 20-point win over Ivy League champion Penn.

UConn was on the other side of the bracket after finishing second, but the No. 12 Huskies lost to third-seeded Syracuse as the No. 16 Orangemen capped a dramatic run through Madison Square Garden. They'd wind up coming to Massachusetts as part of Worcester's bid to host First Round and Second Round games, but they, too, lost in the Round of 32 after dropping a three-point upset to the Syracuse Regional's No. 10-seeded NC State.

When they finally met eight years later, it wasn't by design. It was a two-point game at Madison Square Garden and echoed ghosts of the past, but it required a UConn win over Boston University and a BC win over Florida Atlantic as part of the 2K Sports Classic.

"A new generation of fans was introduced to the rivalry when the 18th-ranked Huskies fought off an unrelenting BC squad to score a 72-70 victory in the semifinals of the 2K Sports classic," wrote Michael Vega in the next day's Boston Globe.

That BC and UConn are meeting one another in an exhibition game on Monday night leaves most of us to think that the karmic experience possibly brought them together for a destiny-based matchup in 2025. The parallels are unmistakable, at least, after BC and UConn faced one another at MSG in 2013 because the Eagles defeated an FAU team now representing the opening game of the 2025-2026 season. In 2013, UConn beat BU, which more naturally builds the Green Line Rivalry against the Eagles, and they later were denied a meet-up in 2014's San Juan Tipoff after BC lost to West Virginia - the same team that denied them a future possible meeting during the 2005 Big East Tournament in New York City.

It's more likely that the Basketball Hall of Fame Exhibition organizers recognize the value of pitting two of New England's largest college sports brands against one another on the back end of a doubleheader with the women's basketball programs, but it's fun to think about the past and an older time between the two teams that no longer have much in common.

Instead, it's worth looking at this game through the competitive lens of exactly what it is - an exhibition game that allows both teams to iron out their sheets ahead of their respective season openers. UConn is a ridiculously talented program, and BC is a plucky underdog looking to break out of its overlooked shell. Pitting them against one another, from a basketball perspective, is one great fit.

Here's what to watch for on Monday night:

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Exhibition Game Storylines (Red Auerbach Edition)

You win with the five who fit together best.

Hurley-coached teams historically play their best basketball when they combine a bruising interior presence with the kind of dribble-drive or pull-up shooters now dotting most of the elite college basketball teams. The 2024 national champions, for example, dominated their peers because they combined seven-foot Donovan Clingan with a six-foot, five-inch option shooter in Tristen Newton, but their near-perfection stemmed from how they incorporated Stephon Castle and Cam Spencer into more specific roles.

Losing everyone short of Alex Karaban and Hassan Diarra became the natural outcome of that success, but last year's UConn team fell short of a three-peat because it failed to build around transfer center Tarris Reed. His arrival from Michigan had given the Huskies a block machine capable of cleaning the window with aggressive rebounding, but Samson Johnson never totally took the jump after assimilating into the starting lineup.

This year's team won't have that issue. Silas Demary Jr. is a terrific transfer from Georgia, and Solo Ball is going to benefit from his addition and the recruitment of sharpshooter Braylon Mullins. Having Karaban therefore builds out the depth chart in the backcourt while Reed and Jaylin Stewart offer the kind of frontcourt presence that combines versatility with an interior nastiness.

Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.

BC notably lacks the known commodities to compete with UConn at a one-on-one level. Exhibitions, especially, offer moments for experimentation with different personnel groupings performing different approaches, so utilizing a variety of different looks at both ends of the floor is a great way for the Eagles to litmus test the available combinations ahead of the "real minutes" against Florida Atlantic.

"I was at church," said Donald Hand, Jr., "and the pastor said [that] the storm doesn't last forever. Last year, a lot of people saw it as a storm, but it wasn't a storm. It was [my], Fred [Payne's] and Jayden [Hastings'] first time in that position [of playing lead minutes]. Now that we know how it feels to be in big games and play in tight games, this year, it'll be a different outcome because we know how it feels. This is our breakout year."

Monday is mostly an opportunity for Earl Grant to continue building around that nucleus after facing down last year's combined adversities. Specifically looking at Hand, Payne and Hastings is a chance, at least defensively, to find positives in blending the different systems after they moved from man-to-man to zone to amoeba to pressure to half-court traps with an unspoken quickness throughout last season, but it's also unprecedented time to focus on playing longer stretches within those systems to see how players respond to the pressure of playing a time like UConn.

An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise.

Monday is not an official game and should not result in any overreaction or underreaction to the pictures of the upcoming season for Boston College, Connecticut, New England, national, Big East, ACC, or any other entity involved. That said, putting BC and UConn on the same court as one another inevitably yields an inherent passion and toughness embedded within two fan bases ultimately rooted in contempt for one another. There's just no way around it - even if it's the beautiful part of college basketball.

Syracuse infamously lost its exhibition game to Le Moyne ahead of its 2009-2010 Big East regular season championship and a subsequent run to the Sweet Sixteen after gaining the No. 1 seed in the West Regional of that year's NCAA Tournament. The 2018-2019 South Carolina Gamecocks likewise lost to Division II's Augusta College before finishing tied for fourth in the SEC after going 11-7 in conference play, and even last year, a Longwood loss to Division III's Greensboro College didn't stop the Lancers from winning 18 games.

"I think that everything that is good takes time," said Hastings. "We've had the time to work through the bumps and bruises, and I think that we know what we want from each other. We know what we want to achieve, and this is the breakout year, [so] this is the year that we can just put our head down and grind."

That won't stop anyone - myself included - from enjoying the ride through Monday's exhibition game, but it's important to put this one in the rearview mirror once the film is digested and broken down. Neither BC or UConn is winning a national championship at Mohegan Sun Arena - even if it would be nice to gain a measure of revenge against the other for reasons dating back through the decades.

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Question Box

How does Earl Grant deploy his frontcourt against UConn's stifling defense?

The Huskies enter the 2025-2026 season with KenPom's No. 13 adjusted efficiency defensive rating but expect to play with one of the lowest-rated adjusted tempos at the Division I level. Boston College is, in contrast, less efficient on the front end after entering the season with the No. 89 adjusted efficiency offensive ranking, but the Eagles are a faster tempo team trending closer to the Division I average.

BC's offense peaked last year when it used defensive turnovers and stops - bricks, as they were known internally - to transition into a faster-paced offense, but the Eagles also didn't attempt to run teams off of their respective floors. Given the overall lack of size on a team with one player pushing seven feet tall, expect the Eagles to deploy faster players when Boden Kapke is on the bench, and likewise expect traditional power forwards to supplant the swing center spot with a wing-based, mid-range shot game that would, in turn, negate UConn's dominating rebounders.

Does BC attempt to force UConn out of its dribble-drive offense?

Dan Hurley's teams loved playing through high ball screens and dribble drives that went off-side from the center's posting position, so expect the Eagles to employ plenty of complex switches and misdirections to isolate bigger bodies against the smaller driving guards. Kapke, especially, is the player who needs to free himself from clogging seven-footers, but both Hastings and Missouri transfer Aidan Shaw play much larger than a six-foot, nine-inch frame.

Their athleticism opens doors for outside crash positions, and their momentum in flying to the rim is where block parties and defensive window cleaners succeed against the faster and lower-to-the-ground guards. More specifically, if UConn - which is decidedly smaller as it trends to the backcourt - is going to use the high ball screen pass and the dribble-drive or outside-arc shooters, BC could shift either Shaw or Hastings into a midrange defensive position while the other stacks up closer to the glass. Switching them off then creates a host of new looks that inherently double-teams both the shooter and the weakside help.

Which highway is flooded for the ride out from Boston?

The first nor'easter of the fall season arrived in earnest on Sunday, and roads surrounding the Massachusetts coastline quickly realized that they weren't exactly stopping seawater from crashing into neighborhoods throughout border towns and communities. Highways throughout the Metrowest area likewise bubbled towards median strips and guardrails as pelting rains snarled from the southwest, and the northeasterly winds giving the storm its customary name ensured cloud cover lasted through the overnight hours of Monday morning.

Had this been snow, we'd all be digging out of a buried Massachusetts wonderland. Instead, we're all left to hope that the runoffs from the Mass Pike and I-395 did their job. Personally, I'm looking forward to that first hydroplaning and immediate freakout that leaves me wondering how I'm always bamboozled into buying a car over an SUV.

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UConn-BC X Factor

In all the research you do as a coach, studying other coaches and championship-type situations, you find that all those teams combined talent with great defense. You've got to stop other teams to win. -Pat Riley

Basketball's defensive rating statistic is one of those numbers that's become significantly more applicable to the college game than its professional counterpart. The number quantifies the number of points allowed against a 100-possession sample size against any given opponent, so it doesn't totally differentiate NBA teams from their overall per-game allowances when the average professional team registered around 99 possessions per game. Basically, the points per game allowed number became the defensive rating, which is the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder posted approximately 107 points per game allowed against a defensive rating of 105.7.

College teams, in contrast, averaged around 70 possessions per game, with the sheer volume of Division I teams making the defensive rating more critical to measuring a one-to-one comparison. Last year's UConn team, for example, ranked No. 46 in points per game compared to No. 187 Georgia Tech, but both teams were comparable in their defensive rating because the Yellow Jackets averaged a significantly faster pace and tempo at both ends of the floor.

Looking specifically at Boston College from last year, the Eagles were at their absolute worst when their defensive efficiency cratered to a number greater than 115 points per-100 possessions. In the vast majority of those games, lowering the defensive efficiency number by even five or six points would have flipped five different results, which in turn would have pushed the Eagles to 17 wins and an outside chance at an NIT berth. Within that grouping, the Dartmouth loss very obviously looms large, but games against North Carolina, Notre Dame, Syracuse and Stanford would have allowed BC to compete within the ACC Tournament from near or at the No. 9 seed - which would have meant a bye to the Second Round and a game against Georgia Tech, Syracuse or Stanford

Butterfly effect aside, Monday is about sustaining defensive possessions together to create those momentum-altering stretches. The offense, after all, was remarkably consistent throughout much of the season, so expecting a step in any direction all but points to a necessary eradication of inefficient defensive outputs.

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This Random Day In History

The American League of baseball franchises formed in 1901 as a response to the National League's decision to contract by four teams at the turn of the century, and after two years of raiding each other's rosters, a number of exhibition series between the charter clubs of both leagues led the creation of a full-time cross-league series between the two league champions. In 1903, the pennant winners from Boston and Pittsburgh met one another in a nine-game series that's now regarded as the first-ever World Series, though it's interesting that the two teams agreed to play one another because their ownership contacted one another and scheduled a best-of-nine series. In fact, they weren't destined to play one another as a rite of passage for winning their respective leagues, and there was no formal agreement until the presidents of the leagues established the event after New York Giants manager John McGraw contemptuously refused to play the Boston Americans in 1904.

That first World Series enjoyed a best-of-nine format that was eventually switched to a best-of-seven series in 1905 before turning back to best-of-nine in 1919 and again, one last time, to best-of-seven 1922, and in a massive upset at the time, the Boston Americans rallied from a 3-1 series deficit to win four straight games and claim the first series victory.

Somewhat surprisingly, the American lost two of the first three games played at the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds before winning three straight in front of overflow crowds at Exposition Park, and that last Game Eight victory ended when Honus Wagner struck out against Bill Dineen, who would later umpire the first-ever All Star Game in 1933.

That last game victory, though, was on October 13 and claimed top headlines in the next day's newspapers with the simple lede reading, "Hats off to the world's champions."

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Pregame Quote and Final Thoughts

Now what are you guys doing? This is supposed to be an exhibition! Do you hear me? An exhibition! - Tony "Duke" Evers, Rocky IV

It's an exhibition game. It doesn't mean anything to either team's record. UConn most certainly has to focus on the Big East, and Boston College's road to its own Atlantic Coast Conference supremacy won't tangle with the Huskies unless they each find their way into the postseason field of 64 national tournament teams. The fact that it's a regionally-televised game being played in one of Connecticut's best neutral site environments is an additive to sit back and enjoy some basketball.

Then again, it's UConn and BC.

Boston College and Connecticut will tip-off at 7 p.m. on Monday night in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Exhibition from Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut. Television coverage is slotted for NBC Sports Boston with tickets available through Ticketmaster and the Mohegan Sun box office.

The Opening Tip: UConn (Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Exhibition)

Players Mentioned

Boden Kapke

Aidan Shaw

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