2010-2011 BC Year in Review, Part II: Men’s basketball

(Part I: Football)

Time for Part II of the year-in-review: the men’s basketball season. The best way to sum it all up before even beginning is that this was kind of an odd year, and while not entirely disappointing, it wasn’t as good as it could have been, either.

The 2010-2011 season began with a new coach at the helm: Steve Donahue. Hired from the Cornell Big Red, our new coach came into the program and began his overhaul. Out was the tight flex offense run by Al Skinner, and in was a motion offense that is incumbent upon hot shooting and lots of attempts from beyond the arc. We knew, from previous experience, that the roster we had assembled simply wasn’t very good at it.

We also knew that there were going to be some turnover issues on said roster, given that a new regime often chases some folks away. Rakim Sanders, Evan Ravenel, and all three of the incoming recruits, Kevin Noreen, Brady Heslip, and Papa Samba Ndao, took their services elsewhere shortly after Donahue came to power in Chestnut Hill. With those kinds of defections, before this ’10-11 team even took the court, we knew that our coach would need to find some warm bodies to put in uniform, and fast.

Eventually, he did, by bringing in Danny Rubin and Gabe Moton, as well as walk-on John Cahill. Donahue also added Oregon transfer Matt Humphrey to the bench, though he was not able to play under NCAA rules. By the time the season began, the Eagles had a vague semblance of a team and fans were eager to see what the new offense would look like.

In Boston College’s first game of the season, a 30-point victory over St. Francis of New York, the Eagles went bombs-away from behind the arc, shooting the three a total of 21 times (but only making four of them). What we saw on the court that day was a very different approach from the days of old, but as Eagles fans would shortly learn, the offense would very much be feast or famine.

Less than a week after beating the Terriers to go 1-0 on the brand-new season, the Eagles laid one of their trademark eggs against an Ivy League team at home. Boston College, in a 3-19 three-point shooting disaster, lost to the Yale Bulldogs by eight points. The shooting on BC’s end wasn’t even the main problem, because a new one had emerged: defense, or lack thereof. Yale shot 50% from the floor for the game, including 57% from beyond the arc. Hell, they even outrebounded the Eagles, 28-27. It was an indescribable trainwreck, and one Boston College would repeat.

Sure, BC got back on track after that, winning some more games and placing third at the Old Spice Classic in November. Their signature win in that tournament (and, as it would turn out, their entire season) was Texas A&M. In fact, following a second-round loss to Wisconsin in said tournament, the Eagles rolled off seven wins in a row. Amongst them was a notable win in Maryland for Coach Donahue’s first ACC victory. Unfortunately, following a very narrow victory over Bucknell (in which the Bison tied a Conte Forum record with 15 three-pointers), the Eagles would hit a pothole.

The seven-game win streak was halted on a trip to Kingston, Rhode Island just days before the end of 2010. The Eagles outshot the Rams, outrebounded the Rams, and made more of their three-point attempts. So why, you may ask, did Boston College lose? It was because of a problem which did not manifest itself much early on in the season, but would become a major issue later on: turnovers. The Eagles coughed it up 18 times, while Rhody did the same thing only 8 times.

Unfortunately, the news didn’t get any better. After beating the stuffing out of South Carolina (on the road) on New Year’s Day, Boston College did the unthinkable: they lost to Harvard for the third-straight season. Granted, the 2010-2011 Crimson were a legitimate team by Ivy League standards, but the repeated losses to inferior Ivy teams like Yale and Harvard remained a continuing, and alarming, trend. At this point, Eagles fans knew that while the potential was there to win conference games, making the NCAA Tournament would be a very difficult task.

As the ACC schedule picked up in earnest, Boston College started out with a surprising 3-0 record. They had a chance to push it to 4-0, but they lost at Miami in a very frustrating game which, to be perfectly honest, they should have won (but for the turnovers – BC forked it over only 10 times, but it felt like 20). After a tight home win over Virginia, in which the Eagles experienced some more problems with defense and the three-point game going cold, BC began a stretch where they lost six out of eight games. The most embarrassing of those defeats were a 32-point loss to North Carolina at home and another home loss to Miami, who led by 21 points at the half.

The Eagles would recover somewhat, winning their last three games of the regular season to go 9-7 in the ACC. In the ACC Tournament, they faced lowly Wake Forest for the second time in less than a week, and beat them a second time. Then, however, it came down to another date with the Clemson Tigers. Clemson had previously beaten BC at home by eight, and had looked beatable going into the tournament. The Eagles’ momentum completely flattened out, though, and within the first five minutes of the quarterfinal game, BC’s season was essentially over. They couldn’t shoot, they couldn’t play defense, they couldn’t rebound, and they couldn’t hold onto the ball. It was a total mismatch.

Boston College may or may not have qualified for the NCAA Tournament if they had beaten Clemson and would have been a hard sell if they lost close, but losing by 23 points to the Tigers blasted them clear off the bubble and into the unfriendly confines of the NIT. As one of that tournament’s top seeds, there was hope that perhaps they could advance to Madison Square Garden. After passing on having the first game at home against McNeese State (which is still strange to me several months later), BC came back for the second round against Northwestern and promptly got nuked from orbit. The Wildcats also tied a Conte Forum record with 15 three-pointers.

Following the season, the mass exodus began. In addition to the eight graduating seniors, star junior Reggie Jackson announced he would be leaving for the NBA Draft, while junior bench player Dallas Elmore also said he would leave the program. For those who wanted to see a team in which Donahue “gets his own players in there,” they will have their wish next season. Outside of walk-on Peter Rehnquist, there is not one other player left on this roster who was brought in by Al Skinner.

The 2010-2011 season gave us some thrills, but came up just short of its main goal, which was to get to the NCAA Tournament. There’s no doubt that they were better than their 2009-2010 incarnation, which was arguably one of the worst BC basketball teams of the past decade, but this past year’s Eagles had a number of flaws. When they were making their three-pointers, they were a very dangerous team to play. When they weren’t, a CYO team could beat them. Their almost-sole reliance on deep jumpers made this team at times very hard to watch. Granted, some of the guys on the team improved their shooting game through lots of practicing as mandated by the coach, but this team was lacking in too many other areas.

Defense was as big of a problem as the streaky shooting, if not bigger. This team had no inside presence, for one thing. I don’t mean to scapegoat a guy like Josh Southern, whose Boston College career started with some reasonable expectations, but his overall lack of contributions this year (and all years) was just part of the problem. The ’10-11 Eagles were near the bottom of Division I in rebounding, and that is partially Southern, but also the fact that there weren’t other guys crashing the boards, either. They were also dead last in the ACC in blocked shots and steals, and were second to last in FG% allowed, only raising more issues with their defense. It could be that Coach Donahue’s system is not one that stresses defense (which I don’t believe); I didn’t watch much of his team at Cornell, but it is something we will have to investigate in future seasons. Since it was his first season, I will give him the benefit of the doubt, however.

The 2010-2011 Boston College Eagles basketball team was an okay team, not a good one. Unfortunately, given the large amount of turnover we’re going to have next season, I think we’d all be quite pleased to see “okay.”

Part III is hockey tomorrow.