Resume update: Blacksburg aftermath

Following BC’s crushing defeat to the Miami Hurricanes, I thought that was just about all she wrote. Bubble teams were starting to pick up crucial victories while the Eagles bent over at home for a team which had already punched their tickets for the living room sofa after Selection Sunday. The Eagles fought back towards the end of that game, but their effort was so lacking overall that one could not help but think the ride was coming to an end.

On Saturday, after their gut-punch at home, the Eagles went down to Charlottesville to play Virginia. They were not able to get to town until 2am for a game which began at noon, but the quality of the opponent more than offset BC’s travel scramble. The Eagles won that game by 19 points to get to 17 wins on the season.

Then came the game against Virginia Tech – you know, the team that had just played their way into the NCAA Tournament field by whacking #1 Duke a few days earlier, and the team that was having their Senior Night for Jeff Allen and Malcolm Delaney. Boston College was a 9-point underdog in a game that, barring a miracle run through the ACC Tournament, would probably wipe them off the bubble if they lost.

But they won, and big.

Not only did the win get BC to 18 victories on the season and give them a crucial sweep of the Hokies, it turned the remaining schedule in their favor. Next up is a game against Wake Forest, one of the worst ACC teams in recent memory. This will either be a taking-care-of-business win for #19 or it will be the mother of all “WTF losses,” one so noisome and appalling that it would make Tom O’Brien blush. The potential pitfall of the “easy game” is that, if the unthinkable happens and you lose, it is instant death to your tournament chances. I’m not horribly worried about it, however – Wake Forest got run out of their own gym by teams as illustrious and frightening as Stetson and NC State, and their only road win this year was Elon (whose RPI ranking is approximately 6.022 x 10^23 – or roughly about the same as Wake’s).

Then there is the matter of the first round of the ACC Tournament. It is virtually certain now that BC will be either the #5 or #6 team in the tournament, which means a date with either Georgia Tech or Wake Forest looms. Both teams are pushovers, and we know that BC has taken down the Yellow Jackets, but the only thing about possibly having to play Wake again is that when facing the same team in consecutive games, they might be able to make some adjustments from last time and complicate matters. Again, however, I wouldn’t be too terribly worried about that either, except for the fact that it would essentially be a Wake home game. Things still set up well for win #20 on the resume. From there, if the Eagles were fortunate enough to move on, they would face one of Florida State, Clemson, Virginia Tech, or whichever team was in their bracket path. On a neutral court, I think the Eagles could possibly beat any of them, though I would probably not want to draw the Hokies for a third time, especially seeing as how BC just laid the wood on them at home. BC is, however, not a particularly good matchup for them, as we’ve seen, and Seth Greenberg isn’t known for his big-game coaching. Florida State minus Singleton and Clemson outside of Littlejohn are both also beatable.

So, then, I implore you to look at the resume tracker, recently reactivated, to see where we are now. Suddenly, after that key win over the Hokies, the Eagles have a legitimate chance to play themselves into the NCAA Tournament in two weeks. BC just picked up another win against the RPI Top 100 while boasting an RPI in the top 40 and a SOS in the top 20. If the Eagles can avoid those black-hole losses in the next week and play well to end the regular season and ACC Tournament, their strong RPI and SOS will probably bring them home. What would probably ice the tournament would be defeating Wake Forest and winning two ACC Tournament games. Beating Wake and one ACC Tournament win means bubble but probably in, and anything short of that is a complete, unsalvageable disaster, since it means you took a very bad loss in either one of those games. See the fine line we walk?

Frankly, I think we should all be very pleased no matter how this season turns out. Boston College is playing meaningful games in March (outside of the ACC Tournament), which is a hell of a lot more than could be said for them at this point last season. Steve Donahue has done a good job getting them this far.

If you want a cliff notes version of this article, here it is:
•If BC wins no more games for the rest of the season: dead, finished, kaput, sayonara, and hellooooooooo NIT.
•If BC wins just one more game between here and Selection Sunday: nope, still dead.
•If BC wins two more: probably in the NCAA Tournament but a close call; perhaps a “First Four” team.
•If BC wins three or more games: in the tournament.

Every bubble game being played throughout Division I will be crucial now, because we are so close to the borderline, any sort of seismic shift could knock BC right back into the NIT ash-heap. Stay tuned, and buckle up.