John Cahill Returns to BC Basketball; What’s His Role?

Tonight, we learned from two sources, Dan Duggan and Eric Hoffses, that walk-on men’s basketball player John Cahill will return for a second and final season at Boston College. He returns as a graduate student with one year of eligibility remaining.

His initial plan was to be a graduate assistant, the same role held by BC basketball alum Tyler Roche last year. He had, however, been practicing with the team, and, according to Hoffses, the decision was made today to “re-activate” Cahill, if you will.

Cahill returns to a drastically-different team than the one he departed at the end of last season. Virtually all of his former teammates are gone and he is now amongst the oldest players on the team. What is even more important, however, is that he is a player with experience coming back to a team that needs it.

What I remember about Cahill’s game last year, first and foremost, was that he played tough. Cahill worked hard on the defensive side of the ball and, as we saw on a few occasions, was good for a situational three-pointer (or several). Here was a player, who had never partaken in an NCAA basketball game before, contributing enough during his play off the bench that Steve Donahue actually rewarded him with starts towards the end of the season. Cahill himself is an example to the young players on this team that if you play hard and play the game right, things will work out.

Cahill was one of the nicest surprises on last year’s team; with any luck for the Eagles, he can be the same kind of spark-plug for BC in 2011-2012 that he was in 2010-2011. I won’t make it out to be much more than it is, but his presence, if he’s putting out the same sort of effort he did last year, will make this young BC team a little better. He will probably get his fair share of minutes — how many, I’m not yet sure — and perhaps there will be some starts mixed in like last year. Hopefully, when he does get onto the court, he can continue to lead the freshmen by example.