Taking Stock of BC Basketball’s Nearly-Complete Season

Men’s Basketball Disappointments

• Poor record in non-conference play. I did not think too many ACC wins were in the cards (at least two) but I had a feeling the Eagles, though young, will still be able to put forth a representative effort outside the ACC. Simply put, they didn’t. BC went 5-9 in non-conference games, including some completely embarrassing defeats to UMass and Holy Cross early in the season.

The team that got creamed by Duke this past weekend is better than the team that got whacked by the Minutemen, but the OOC games are the gimmies for ACC teams. You’re not going to win every one of them, but the Eagles took some very bad losses to teams that would ordinarily be considered inferior.

• Heckmann trailing off and being lost to illness. It’s not his fault, but I had high hopes for Patrick Heckmann this season, as I knew him to be a talented player before arriving. He started his Boston College career very well, but soon, after his first injury, he started making more and more mistakes, then saw his minutes disappear, and now me may or may not see him again this year. Heckmann may rebound in the future and have a very productive time in Boston, but it is truly disappointing that his freshman year seems to have been a wasted one.

• Overall fan support. This does not apply to the team itself or the dedicated few such as Donahue’s Disciples and those in the student and general public who make a concerted effort to attend games. I was hoping for some more consistent student support this season, even in spite of the fact that the team has had a rough year.

These are your four years at college, and you are fortunate enough to attend a school which plays in one of the best conferences in the country. So many times I watch college basketball games on TV at other schools — some of which are much smaller potatoes than an ACC school — and their student sections are overfull. Meanwhile, there were a few games where you could count on both hands the number of students in a section at a BC game. Now, granted, I don’t think issues like ticket policies and fan friendliness have been approached well, but all of our teams deserve student support. Don’t take it from me, though: take it from Reggie Jackson.

We can’t make every BC student care about sports, but we can make a few hundred for every basketball game, can’t we? The Duke game had a great atmosphere, because the building was full of energy. Guess what: BC plays many more teams than Duke, and Conte can be a fun place when there is an energized crowd.

Expect more on this issue during the offseason, as well as some theories on how to fix it.