Nick from WZBC's end of season MBB thoughts

The season is over, folks. With the sound of the buzzer in Vegas, the Eagles' season ends as UNLV defeats Boston College 79-70 in the second round of the NIT. This season was a roller coaster of expectations, disappointments, triumphs, and confusion. Many will see this season as a gigantic failure, with BC unable to make it into March Madness for the fifteenth straight year. Others will see this season as another stepping stone for a program building back to become a major player once again. For me, there is only one word that truly summarizes this whole season:

MID

It was not the best season in the world; anyone can tell you that. But it would be wrong to say this was a bad season. The team improved to a 20-16 record this year, recording 20 wins for the first time since the 2010-2011 season participating in the NIT for the first time since 2018. However, expectations were high this season. Many looked at the talent on the Eagles' roster and saw them as a possible NCAA Tournament team. Therefore, to not be in the conversation at all meant that the progress made this season was merely less than expected. For those reasons, it's fair to say that the Eagles' season falls between success and failure, meeting in the middle at MID.

EARL GRANT 

"They say we underdogs, I say we under God," may be one of the hardest bars ever said by a college basketball coach of all time. However, I believe Earl's ability to come up with these kinds of sayings demonstrates the true nature of the BC’s basketball coach, which might be difficult for some to hear. I like Earl Grant as a person. He is very active in the Boston College community, takes time to talk with the student body, and overall brings good energy to the athletics department. As far as I have heard, the players love him. He can motivate them at a high level, and they will run through a wall for him. Earl's actual "coaching" leaves much to be desired.

While Earl gets his players ready to play, once they get out there, he does not seem to help them much. It often feels like the team doesn’t have sets or plays on offense. So many times this season, especially during both ACC tournament and NIT games, there were periods where dumping the ball to Quinten Post on the block or running a pick and pop with him stopped working, and Earl did not have anything else to throw at the opposing defense. The only thing the boys were able to do was to run Claudell Harris isolations or dribble handoffs around the three-point line, hoping one of them would be able to beat their man off the dribble. The struggle to orchestrate an offense is summed up poignantly in one moment against Florida State University. With 5.8 seconds left in the game, the Eagles had the ball on the sideline down 63-62. The team came out of the huddle after Earl Grant diagrammed a play to try and get an open shot for the win. Or at least that is what we thought they were doing. Madson inbounded the ball to Post, who took two dribbles with his back to the basket and threw the ball to Jaeden Zackery, who immediately got doubled and threw up a bad shot. Right away, a viewer could tell something was wrong. There was no play. No one on the team ran anything. It was almost like they were freestyling out there after a timeout where the coach should be drawing a play. Post was quoted after the game saying, "Couldn't exactly tell you," when asked what the final play was supposed to be. To me, this is the greatest example of Earl's worst flaw. His inability to be creative offensively with a talent like Quiten Post and other good basketball players like Zackery, Harris, and McGlockton demonstrates a glaring problem for Grant's future at Boston College. However, and this is a big however, his gritty culture and defensiveness have made up for this problem on several occasions. For example, against UNLV in the last game of the season, Grant put the team in a zone that I had never seen them run all season, and it gave the Rebels problems down the stretch, allowing the Eagles to stay in it. Coach Grant will keep building this program, but I hope he spends his summer asking other coaches for sets to run. 

THE PLAYERS

I will only talk a little about the players specifically; you can read that on other websites or anywhere on BC Twitter, but I want to talk about the overall team and highlight a few guys. In general, this team was full of guys who wanted to win. It felt like every game, these guys were fighting for every loose ball and working hard for offensive rebounds. There were not many games this season where the Eagles were blown out of the gym, and I believe that is a testament to the attitude of this team, thanks to Coach Grant. I enjoyed this team and their underachievement makes me feel unsatisfied about what these guys could have been.

Quinten Post was the leader of this team and the best player on the floor for the Eagles all year. No one came close to Post's impact on this team. QP averaged a career-high in points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks this season, and that only gives you a taste of his effect. It felt like BC had a chance to win anytime Post was in the game, but anytime he was taken out, the team was fighting to stay close until he came back. The transfer from Mississippi State by way of the Netherlands made himself a home at BC, and he will be missed. I don't think he will go to the NBA, but there's always room for a 7-footer who can stretch the floor in professional ball.

Jaeden Zackery again showed what makes him the perfect Earl Grant basketball player. "Gritty not Pretty" describes the way JZ plays ball so well that he should have it tattooed on his arm. While there were times this season when shots were not falling for the Eagle's point guard, his defense was always on point, and his energy always helped keep this team in several games. From taking charges to picking the opposing point guard's pocket, Zackery gave it all on the defensive end. If this was his last year at BC, I hope he knows he will be missed.

Devin McGlockton is a winning basketball player. All he did for the Eagles this season was make winning plays. He feasted on the offensive glass all season and remained extremely efficient from the field. Defensively, he was terrific as a secondary shot blocker, taking some pressure off of Post. As well, McGlockton guarded guys who were both bigger and smaller than him at a high level. My biggest fear this offseason is that some bigger school will steal him away with a big NIL deal because they see what I see: this guy wins you games.

Oh, Prince. Expectations were so high for you this season. Sadly, he could not improve on a decent freshman year to become the four-star athlete we believed him to be. Prince's stats in almost every major category either went down or remained the same from last year. The biggest thing people hoped would improve on the season was his three-point shooting. Sadly, it only got worse, going from 27% from three to 15%. By the end of the year, he became a nothing on offense and was essentially doing cardio on the floor to give one of the starters a break. Prince is an extremely talented athlete and showed in glimpses this season that he can be a productive basketball player, but it will take him lots of work in the offseason.

FANS

To end this long article, I want to speak briefly about the BC basketball fans this season. It is plain to see that this basketball season did not excite the Boston College fanbase like the hockey season. In many games, the student section would almost be completely empty, with the first few rows behind the baseline being taken up by "The Sickos." These Sickos tried their best to bring life to a dead crowd at Conte Forum and gave energy to the players when they needed it. I think it would be wrong to blame the fans for not showing up for the team's performance as many on X have. However, a clear correlation exists between students showing up to games and the team playing better. You can look at the Notre Dame and Miami games as two examples where students came to Conte, brought energy, and the team fed off that energy to win the game. You could even look at the UNC game where Conte was packed, and the Eagles hung in there with one of the country's top teams for most of the game. So to the Sickos, thank you for bringing the energy. However, it made sense that an underperforming team could not bring in a crowd, and to expect fans to keep returning to a product that could have been better at times is reasonable. Hopefully, the fans will be packing the student section next season for Earl Grant's team as they improve on this 20-win season.