2011-2012 Boston College Men’s Basketball Team Preview

Team composition and skills

This team may be younger, but they’re not smaller. On average, the 2011-2012 Eagles are a little less than half an inch taller than the senior-laden 2010-2011 Eagles, even with 5-foot-8 Jordan Daniels factored in. They are, however, about five pounds lighter, which is to be expected when you’ve got a bunch of eighteeen year olds in there. Now, this plus five bucks will get you a venti coffee at Starbucks, but these are big kids, and I don’t think they’ll be pushed around so easily.

As stated in the first of the freshman player previews (Ryan Anderson), at the time of that writing, 80% of this roster has never played a Boston College basketball game before. This was, of course, before graduate assistant John Cahill was inserted back onto the active roster. The only leftovers from the 21-win 2010-2011 season aside from Cahill are Danny Rubin, Gabe Moton, and Peter Rehnquist. Everyone else is either an incoming freshman recruit or a transfer.

They aren’t reactivating Cahill for his final year of eligibility just so he can look nice in his jersey on the bench; they’re going to play him, and probably start him. Joining him will most likely be Patrick Heckmann, Dennis Clifford, Ryan Anderson, and Matt Humphrey.

If you’ve read all of the new player previews over the last two weeks, and I’m sure you have, there is one thing you will notice about just about all of them: many of these players have been heralded for their good shooting, their quickness, and their ability to create separation and get good looks at the basket. This, folks, is what you call “Steve Donahue getting his kind of players here.” Donahue did a good job last year with a team that, quite frankly, wasn’t great at shooting and had mostly been playing in Al Skinner’s completely different flex offense (and they didn’t always do great in that, anyway). Now, because of the near-universal turnover, there are a lot of hand-picked Donahue guys and they fit his style of play. It’s quite rare for a second-year coach to have a team all be his guys, but that’s where BC is right now. Peter Rehnquist is the only Al Skinner player remaining on the Eagles.

Then there’s defense. This is something that high school scouting reports tend to gloss over, and until I see these guys actually attempt it, I won’t know how they do at it. Suffice it to say that BC did not play great defense last year, and that has been a knock on the coach. It is something that is going to have to improve, but this year, you might not see much in the way of it and this is where the Eagles will probably lose a lot of their games, aside from in the turnover department. One cannot reasonably expect BC to turn it over 20 or more times a game, every game, for the entire season. If it’s anything like what we saw in the exhibition, however, they may err themselves out of games.

This whole area is a big “incomplete,” for obvious reasons. Based upon what I know of these players, they’re good shooters and will have nights where they’re red hot and nights where they aren’t. The defense is the wild card, and if they do better at it than expected and hold some other teams down, they may win a few more games than people expect. There is no way to know, however, until we see it. The exhibition game against AIC was a nice quasi-glimpse into the season, but by no means did it tell us everything we need to know, nor can it be treated as an iron-clad preview of how the rest of the season will go.

My expectation is that Heckmann may end up being the Eagles’ best all-around player this season. After the conclusion of the 2010-11 season, it was assumed by all that junior Matt Humphrey would be the leader of and best player on this team by default. I do not necessarily think this is the case anymore. For one thing, immediately following BC’s season-ender, Heckmann wasn’t committed here yet. Second, we’ve had a whole summer and fall to hear practice reports and even see an exhibition game. All accounts seem to be that Heckmann, having played European-level basketball prior to coming here, is going to be pretty good right out of the gate. Don’t interpret this as a knock on Humphrey, Clifford, Anderson, or any of the other players we have on the team, however.

Humphrey will be relied upon more than he has been in the past (which begs me to point out that he was a bench player at Oregon before transferring here), and to some extent, so will John Cahill. Their prior experience in college basketball will come in handy as the young guys look for leadership.

The player we need to watch is Ryan Anderson. That isn’t to say we don’t need to watch anyone else like Heckmann, Humphrey, Clifford, etc., but remember, Anderson was the highest-rated recruit we got. He’s a four-star, ESPNU 100 guy and has been praised for his talent. It’s all raw talent now, but if he ever starts putting it all together, he can be a dangerous player. I will be curious to track his development as the season goes forward.