With a full week of Boston College basketball in the books, we are more than back. And the return of hoops on the Heights also means the return of my Corner 3 column, where I’ll be taking a weekly look at the men’s basketball team over the course of the season. Similarly to last year, I’ll quickly review the previous weeks’ results before highlighting three trends or tendencies that stuck out to me. I’ll end with a quick look at the upcoming week’s matchups.
Last Week: Nov. 5th, W 69-60 vs. the Citadel; Nov. 8th, L 55-80 vs. VCU. After beating a bad Citadel squad by a closer margin than it should have been, the Eagles got blown out on a neutral court against A-10 favorites VCU.
1. Ball Screen Defense (or lack thereof).
We’ll start with taking a look at this because of 1. how bad the Eagles have been defending ball screens and 2. how poorly this reflects on Grant. The Eagles simply looked disorganized over the course of the first two games of the season; at times it was painful to watch. Early in the game against the Citadel, Venning was aggressively switching onto guards on the perimeter(!!). This is not a recipe for success — Venning has his strengths on the defensive side of the court (he’s got four blocks on the season so far) but asking a dude who’s almost 300 pounds to hang with guards is not going to consistently get stops, and this team needs all the stops it can get. Later in the game against the Citadel and against VCU as well, there were some blatant miscommunications on switches or lack thereof. Sometimes the Eagles would switch too aggressively, like with Venning, and then on other occasions BC’s guards would attempt to fight through a screen and get hopelessly blown by. Early in the second half against the Citadel, Roger McFarlane literally ran headlong into Jayden Hastings while the Citadel coasted for an easy layup. Basic communication was blatantly missing. What’s even worse is was the apparent lack of effort on some of these actions — I counted several deep 3s through both games on which BC defenders were late in contesting their man.
It’s early in the season, so I can excuse some rust with so many new faces and the fact that VCU is clearly much better than BC (how we can say that about an A-10 team compared to a P5 program is a whole other issues). The reason the poor ball screen defense was so aggravating was because it shows a clear lack of game planning. Let’s be very clear: ball screens and dribble handoffs are some of, if not the most, basic offensive actions in the game of basketball. You will see them in every single basketball game you watch. To not have a game plan for how to attack those actions defensively — drop coverage, switch everything, hedge, etc. — reflects poorly on the coaching staff and just shows a lack of basic preparedness. We knew coming into this season that BC was hit particularly hard by the transfer portal and as such lost a lot of talent and has to break in a ton of new faces. In my eyes, that doesn’t necessarily mean this team was/is doomed for failure from the start. What it does mean is that Grant will have to work a lot harder at forging an identity and putting his individual players in the best positions to find success. Asking Venning to consistently guard on the perimeter, or not having a cohesive or effective game plan for his backcourt, is not doing that.
2. Poor Shooting.
It’s early, and we only have a small sample size. But the returns so far suggest that whatever identity Grant is trying to form on the offensive side of the court is not clicking yet either. Elijah Strong is the only player on the roster to shoot 50%. Roger McFarlane is at 46.7%, while no one else can claim a respectable number. Leading scorer Donald Hand Jr. is at an unsightly 30.8%. Four players have hit a three; as a team, the Eagles shot 38.9% from the floor against the Citadel and then dropped to 29.3% against VCU. Again, the sample size is tiny. These averages will go up (right?). But after two games, I still think it is fair to say that once again, Grant is not putting his players in the best position to succeed. It is great to see Hand posting 20+, but he needs to start making his catch and shoot 3’s and he’s got to work on his finishing at the rack. BC needs his scoring desperately; he’s clearly got the green light and I want to see the efficiency improve. Dion Brown — perhaps the most important player to BC’s offensive success this season — also broke his nose two days before the season opener, which can’t help. As he heals (he started against VCU after coming off the bench against the Citadel) I think he will open up the floor as well. But one thing is clear: Grant needs to decide quickly how he wants to run his offense and implement it, because far too often it looks like the Eagles have no kind of gameplan to consistently create shots from structure.
3. The Backcourt has too many cooks in the kitchen.
Through two games, pretty much everyone on the roster outside of Nick Petronio and Kany Tchanda has seen significant minutes. In the backcourt, that means all of Chas Kelley, Hand, Brown, McFarlane, Josh Beadle, Luka Toews and Fred Payne are vying for minutes at two or three positions. Of those seven guys, only Payne has averaged less than 10 minutes through two games. Let me preface this by saying (again) the season is young — I think at least part of Grant’s deep rotation use can be attributed to him trying to work through his options to figure out who can be most successful in what position. We saw Josh Beadle get some run leading the second unit with mixed results, although I was encouraged by what I saw — he’s got a very quick first step and twitchiness when he attacks the rim, and he’s comfortable (sometimes too comfortable) with distributing the rock. Luka Toews also got some time handling the 1, while McFarlane was one of BC’s brighter spots on the wing against VCU. With that said, there are simply too many guys trying to play right now. After an offseason that saw Kelley assume a “leadership mantle,” after talking extensively about his growth, he is scoreless through two games. Brown was limited by his nose injury; when he gets back to full health the jam will get worse. Hand and McFarlane have played the most, and I think that will continue (along with Brown when he’s healthy). But how much run will Kelley get before he starts losing minutes? Will Toews still get 5-10 minutes per game? What about Beadle and Payne? There simply aren’t enough minutes to go around. This will be something to revisit in a week or two as Grant starts slimming down the rotation, so keep an eye on the backcourt very closely.
Next Week: Temple visits Conte Forum on Nov. 15th before Loyola Maryland comes to town on Nov. 19th. As always, roll Eags.