The Opening Tip: Pittsburgh

Chestnut Hill awoke on Monday and Tuesday with a little extra spring in its basketball step. The glow from the 81-73 overtime win over Syracuse hadn't diminished, and it didn't quite feel like just another win or just another game along BC's season-long progression or journey. A mood flip, the kind that drew excitement from every corner of the 2025-2026 college basketball season, was very much present at the Hoag Basketball Pavilion attached to Conte Forum, and the "what ifs" that looked to the past mistakes or past missteps appeared more like the "why not" chatter of a hopeful buzz. For the first time in weeks, conversation about Boston College men's basketball included a grin instead of a grimace, and the one win - while nothing more than a single game along the uphill journey within the Atlantic Coast Conference - sparked more optimism than the usual weekly start.

Maybe it centered around success finally baked into BC's lack of flash. The season certainly hadn't lacked confidence-building performances at the individual level, but winning stretches or hitting shots at the singular level didn't match the tone-setting urgency required to post wins into the team's overall record. Getting back to basics therefore produced defensive stops against the Orange while concurrently slashing and prodding through a Syracuse roster vying for its first NCAA Tournament berth in five years.

"We wanted to attack the paint," said head coach Earl Grant, "and we tried to start by getting to the paint instead of dribbling or post-feeding a pass. We wanted to attack and then let the paint contract the defense, which gave us some open rhythm threes. The paint contracted, and we got some lobs at the rim. Fred [Payne] delivered a couple of big plays to Jayden Hastings over the top."

Setting aside the tones established by the victory and the ensuing backlash reverberating through the ACC does little to diminish the impact of the game's embedded basketball spectrum. Syracuse was a top-75 team and previously defeated Tennessee with near-misses against both Houston and Clemson. An 11-point win over Pittsburgh prevented any kind of precipitous drop out of a team situated in the top-100 of the nation's most effective field goal shooting teams, and expectations predicted an Orange resurgence capable of reaching for the national tournament for the first time since the No. 11 seed in the Midwest Regional reached the Sweet Sixteen of the pandemic-impacted 2021 tournament.

Beating that team's media darling front court presence pushed BC back into the ACC's overall conscience after the Eagles struggled to a 53-point output against Georgia Tech. Payne scored 26 points for his fourth straight 20-plus performance after he went 1-for-13 against the Yellow Jackets, and his six assists in the overtime victory added a distributive dynamic that hadn't existed since the season-opener against Florida Atlantic. A willingness to sacrifice at the rim subsequently boosted Hastings to five offensive rebounds as part of a 10-point, 13-board double-double, and anywhere from five-to-six players within an eight-man rotation played more efficiently than any of the Orange's players that weren't Nate Kingz.

"Jayden was everywhere," said Grant. "He was a big time rim protector. He was rebounding everything, and even the shots that he couldn't block, he was altering shots at the rim. His presence was unbelievable. Forty minutes is a career high for him, and he typically doesn't play those many minutes, but he was just so good. He scored it, he rebounded it, he protected the rim. I was really proud of him. That was a big step in the right direction."

The three postgame days left BC with a serious Syracuse afterglow that still hasn't diminished. The generated momentum didn't exist prior to that game but appeared more reminiscent of the NIT-level team that once carried the Eagles into postseason play. Being able to turn that attitude forward now becomes the key as a resilient Pittsburgh team arrives in Chestnut Hill with the next classic Big East challenge.

On with the preview:

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Pittsburgh Storylines (Steve Prefontaine Edition)

It's not who's the best - it's who can take the most pain.

The University of Pittsburgh entered the Big East in 1982 as a nationally relevant program that hadn't achieved the overall dominance associated with the conference. Its identity lagged behind its football prominence at a time when the rest of the league's basketball programs had bigger and more recognizable championship pedigrees, and even the dueling regular season championships of the late-1980s occurred opposite the more prominent Final Four runs of both Syracuse and Providence.

The league's football-based expansion eventually led to a divisional split that benefited Pittsburgh, but the Panthers still failed to match the heights of their relative peers. In 2004, for example, the No. 7-ranked Big East regular season champions lost to Connecticut in the Big East Tournament and watched the Huskies win the national championship after their elimination by Oklahoma State in the Sweet Sixteen. Five years later, the No. 4 team in the nation defended a Cinderella conference tournament championship by winning 31 games, but arguably the best team in program history lost to West Virginia in the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament after earning a double-bye. UConn and Villanova then advanced to the Final Four while the Panthers fell one game short with a loss to the Wildcats in the East Regional final in Boston.

Like BC, those days are increasingly in the rearview mirror thanks to a growing Atlantic Coast Conference that's easily among the three best basketball conferences in the country. Having moved from Jamie Dixon to a two-year stint under Kevin Stallings produced a winless year in 2017-2018, but former VCU and Oklahoma head coach Jeff Capel was able to reclaim a little bit of magic when the Panthers finished third and fourth over a two-year span. A second backslide to ninth led to the decision to decline all postseason play after last year's 17-15 season, but that's kind of why Pitt sits on the same teetering balance beam as BC.

Did you ever run behind a slow pack? You get a trailing wind and a lot of body odor.

It's really impossible to define the perception of Wednesday's game because the deep context changes the perception of the head-to-head matchup. At a surface level, BC's win established an equal footing with a Pitt team that's also 1-4 in the league, and both teams hold an 8-10 overall record that's littered with games that damage either team's long-term and postseason resumes. A BC loss to Central Connecticut State getting paired with close wins against Fairleigh Dickinson and Le Moyne, for example, aren't as comparable as Pitt's loss to Quinnipiac pairs with wins over Youngstown State, Longwood, Bucknell and Binghamton. An upset win over Ohio State around Thanksgiving is also a major quality boost, though a secondary loss to Hofstra compounded quality game losses to Texas A&M and Villanova in the aftermath of the win over the Buckeyes.

Even in conference, losses to Miami, Clemson and Syracuse aren't exactly bad losses, and the 100-59 blowout against Louisville was the stereotypical bad day at the office after the Panthers started slow against an ultra-talented and top-ranked team.

"You've got to flush it," said Capel during the weekly ACC press conference. "You've got to move on. It was one game, and [it's] just like how we get [players] to flush it when you play well. We played really well against Georgia Tech last Wednesday. By the time we got off the plane and got back together the next day, we talked about moving on and flushing."

BC likewise can't get too caught up in the momentary win over Syracuse. Though it's impossible to understate how the victory altered the perception of Wednesday's game against the Panthers, focus centered more on how the team created a decisive turnover advantage while simultaneously creating offensive rebound advantages without overdoing the fouls. A player like Donnie Freeman, for example, scored 19 points with 14 rebounds on the defensive window, but his seven turnovers matched Naithan George on a team that produced 18 giveaways against BC's eight. Adding five blocks and 11 steals into the mix, and BC needs to reiterate its basics without losing too much oversight.

"We practice against a team that's called the 'Green Team,'" said Donald Hand, Jr. "We really focused on how we played against the Green Team [because that's] how we wanted to play against Syracuse, and what we did against the Green Team forced turnovers over the past couple of days of practice."

No one will ever win a 5,000-meter by running an easy two miles. Not against me.

Even in a world where both teams sport identical overall and conference records, Pitt's identity is vastly different from BC and is built more into a consistent approach. The Panthers average a quarter more assists-to-turnovers by producing approximately two extra assists and one extra bench point per game, and embedding those numbers in a program's culture is very different from playing a Syracuse team that attempted to redefine its own identity within the overtime loss to the Eagles.

"I thought we put up some of our best offensive numbers as far as shooting percentages and making some threes during that three-game winning streak," said Syracuse head coach Adrian Autry during the weekly Zoom. "But I thought our defense took a hit, kind of traded one for the other."

Syracuse unquestionably attempted to outrun BC with its offensive output, and the Orange couldn't sustain their defense after the offense ran into problems against a grittier and more physical team. Pitt, on the other hand, is built to run a slower and more methodical offense while simultaneously gaining eight points per game on the fast break. If this game boils down to a three-possession make-or-miss type of game, those are the numbers that Syracuse simply didn't possess.

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Question Box

Where is Pitt's defense in relation to BC?

Pitt's 103-63 win over Binghamton represented the kind of outlier that skews numbers for the better part of a month, but the 100-59 loss to Louisville sent those statistics right back into lockstep with the team's overall performance. At a baseline level, the team that shot 62 percent from the floor and 65 percent on two-point shots in a 40-point win produced a 38 percent field goal percentage in the 41-point loss. Perhaps most alarming, Pitt shot poorly from outside after spending most of its season in the top-150 of three-point shooting teams.

BC, meanwhile, remained one of the nation's best defensive teams after Syracuse shot 38 percent from outside, so determining the advantage isn't necessarily based on which team works the ball or shoots more efficiently from outside. Instead, it's better to identify how both teams choose to deploy outside defenders while further analyzing how that impacts the interior.

Should I open the garage door for the true barn workout?

Living in my house with two kids quickly turned my garage into the kind of storage unit that I'd normally have to pay to rent. It serves as a landscaping storage shed while simultaneously providing me with a place to leave my snow shovels, and my snowblower is perilously parked next to an oil storage tank while my daughters' bicycles and outdoor toys are off to the opposite side. I've got an air mattress sitting on a shelf with my toolbox.

I didn't bargain for it to eventually become my gym, though. About three years ago, I picked up a treadmill from my in-laws after they had to clean their basement to move, and I initially moved it into a room that doubled as my office. Fast forward about a year, and the birth of my second daughter forced me to move both the treadmill and my beloved boxing equipment into the garage after we constructed the room around her nursery.

I'm now working out in a windowless and soulless garage that lacks ventilation and heat. It's searingly hot in the summertime, but I'm at the point where running on a treadmill or hitting a heavy bag is akin to working out in a meat locker. I might as well turn into a full blown popsicle during some of these nights, and I'm usually layered up to avoid any of those ill effects that I've read about.

Now that said, I'm debating shifting my tone a bit as the temperature keeps dropping. Instead of running from the cold, I'm thinking about leaning into the whole experience. If I'm going to freeze, I might as well go all the way with it and smash the heavy bag like I was Rocky Balboa on a winter morning. The sun will come up, my breath will hang in the air, and my fists will pound away as if I'm training for a Christmas night fight in Moscow.

Or maybe not. But it'd be fun to think about, right?

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BC-Pittsburgh X Factor

The moment you give up is the moment that you let someone else win. -Kobe Bryant

Cameron Corhen is arguably one of the ACC's most reliable big men and one of the more talented two-way players currently gracing a college basketball court. Within the numbers, his 12.7 points per game and 7.8 rebounds per game averages put him on a short list of players with those numbers, but his 34 minutes on the court make him one of the league's most used players.

He's scored in double figures in 13-of-18 games this year and has 15 different performances with six rebounds. His 17-point, 11-rebound game against Central Florida preceded the 18 points and 10 rebounds against Ohio State, and he enters Wednesday with top-10 numbers among ACC minutes played, double-doubles, defensive rebounds and overall boards per game.

Neither Aidan Shaw nor Jayden Hastings has the physical attributes to compete head-to-head against that type of player, but both are producing numbers by understanding how to use their own bodies against bigger or taller centers. Grant pointed towards collapsing the paint as an option within the team-based game, but I'd expect to watch Hastings and Shaw frame their timing and intelligence around getting Corhen off-balance and out of his rhythm.

Boden Kapke's skill as an outside shooter won't hurt BC in this instance, but the more direct line of attack requires Shaw and Hastings to remain out of foul trouble while they're battling Corhen. Louisville defended him by preventing him from getting a high number of shots at the rim while Georgia Tech failed to contain him in an 89-66 win for the Panthers. On both ends of the spectrum, containing him and not allowing him to run wild stood supreme as the storyline.

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Scoreboard Watching

Boston College's win over Syracuse pulled the Eagles to within a one-game margin of qualifying for the ACC Tournament's 15-team field. Their 1-4 overall record notably tied Pittsburgh and Notre Dame after the Fighting Irish lost to Virginia Tech and simultaneously gained a game advantage over a Florida State team still seeking its first conference win. Ahead of BC, Cal and Georgia Tech both have an extra win while SMU, North Carolina and Wake Forest are a full game ahead of BC.

The teams that qualify for the postseason tournament still slot into the same format, so wins are at a premium for avoiding the opening day's three games. The teams seeded fifth through ninth earn byes to the second round while the top four teams earn coveted double byes into the quarterfinal round, so even BC's history of upsetting teams in the conference tournament requires more headway than simply trusting the long road out of the first round.

The one-game margin between BC and the three teams currently seeded tenth through 12th essentially puts the Eagles within striking range of that first round bye. In UNC's case, not even getting nationally ranked is therefore helpful after the Tar Heels lost both ends of the West Coast road trip to Stanford and Cal ahead of Wednesday's home game against Notre Dame. The fact that the Golden Bears haven't won a road game this year likewise isn't helpful to a team that doesn't host an ACC opponent until February, though the three-game road trip that's beginning over the weekend is starting with a game at Stanford.

Just two games separate BC from the fifth place teams at NC State and Syracuse, and the Eagles now hold a head-to-head win over the Orange. From a logistical standpoint, the season is very much still alive even as the games are going to get tougher and tougher.

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This Random Day In History

The Rock and Hall of Fame inducted its second class on January 21, 1987 in a ceremony that celebrated the institution's greater mission of honoring architects capable of lending their voice to the swagger and emotional depth of the music industry. A class that brought together a roster ranging from Aretha Franklin to Marvin Gaye to B.B. King to Muddy Waters to Roy Orbison to Smokey Robinson and Bo Diddley included trailblazers like Bill Haley, Carl Perkins, Ricky Nelson and Big Joe Turner, and they collectively and individually represented the mid-20th century music that brought regional dialects to the international masses.

On a personal level, this was a class that spoke to some of my deepest musical loves. I obviously grew up in a different era, but my wife and I still listen to Marvin Gaye and B.B. King because of their ability to speak to humanity's deepest tones. In Marvin's case, there's a sense that every word is chosen with intent, and listening to his songs takes us on a personal journey that reconnects us with his soul. In other words, we're dancing and grooving in our kitchen whenever we're listening to him.

To this day, Marvin's national anthem performance at the 1983 NBA All Star Game is probably my favorite version because it dared to influence the country through his style. He abandoned the bombastic tradition associated with horn-like singing and delivered the anthem with a slow and minimalist tempo that stretched the Star Spangled Banner into a gospel hymn. I dare anyone to listen to it without a head bob and a gentle "mmm" or two when he hits particular notes.

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Pregame Quote and Final Thoughts

I've never played for a draw in my life. -Sir Alec Ferguson

Pittsburgh is a program that was overlooked by the Big East's glamorous programs in New York City, Philadelphia and the DMV, and its trip to the ACC left it in a league that's more in tune with Tobacco Road and the Southern outposts from North Carolina to Florida. Even now, the city is lost to the outliers from California and Texas, Kentucky and Indiana.

That type of thinking is dangerous with the overall tournament pedigree that Jeff Capel resurrected in the post-pandemic era. This is a very good basketball team that's capable of paying multiple styles. An old Big East game, for sure, but one that'll leave everyone black and blue either with or without continuing momentum for another day.

Boston College and Pittsburgh tip off at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday from Conte Forum in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. National television coverage is available on ACC Network with radio coverage available through the Boston College Sports Network, locally in Boston on WEEI 850 AM.

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Jayden Hastings

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