Boston College Basketball at USC: The Long Road

Mark L. Baer-USA TODAY Sports

Boston College Eagles basketball has done what the football team did in September: travel to Los Angeles to face the USC Trojans in their home stadium.

That game in the early Fall went disastrously for the Eagles, who suffered one of their few blowouts of the season at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Most would agree that the year ended up A-OK for Boston College in that sport, anyway, as they left that game 2-1 and ended up with a 7-5 record. As for Boston College basketball, the picture is a lot less rosy.

These Eagles aren’t just a long way from home today: they’re a long way from relevance, and it’s nobody’s fault but their own. Sitting at 3-5, Boston College basketball is coming off of its worst performance of the season to date against Purdue on Wednesday. Of the eight games in which they have played, seven were no better than mediocre (with a few being straight-up pathetic) and precisely zero featured good defense. It is fair to say, therefore, that the Eagles are desperate for a win as they prepare to take on the Trojans.

USC enters the contest as very modest two-point favorites, not being a particularly amazing team themselves but still owning a 5-3 record. This Trojans team recently lost to Wake Forest, followed by a win against Xavier. Otherwise, USC’s resume is about as thin as the Eagles’, with no other wins of note appearing.

Boston College’s problems are well-documented: rebounding (see: lack of), Charmin 2-ply soft defense, and streaky shooting, amongst other things. So far, the formula for the Eagles winning games has included one or both of the following: a) play a team worse than you and b) get one or two players insanely hot. That does not lend itself towards long-term success, clearly. USC is probably not worse than the Eagles, so in order to win, assuming they do not suddenly discover how to play competent defense, they will need hot shooting.

Will they get it? If they don’t, at possibly 3-6, things will get even uglier and Steve Donahue’s seat a little hotter.