The Eagles lose a lot but there is some cautious optimism.
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We’ve talked a lot about admiring the culture that Earl Grant has built at Boston College. His teams are tough-minded and always play hard. He just hasn’t gotten players who can always compete at the ACC level, or at least not enough of them.
Last year he had Quinten Post. He became an imposing center with deep range but he’s out of time in college. Several transfers out - Claudell Harris is at Mississippi State, Jaeden Zackery continues the bizarre BC-Clemson transfer pipeline (it occurs to us that Brad Brownell values many of the same traits in players that Grant does), Devin McGlockton is at Vanderbilt, Mason Madsen reunites with twin brother Gabe at Utah, Prince Aligbe is at Seton Hall and the equally magnificently named Armani Mighty is now a Central Michigan Chippewa.
Donald Hand (6-5) is back and he’s a red-shirt sophomore. Hopefully his knee injury is behind him. Chas Kelley (6-3 junior), Elijah Strong (6-8 sophomore), Fred Payne (6-2 sophomore) and Jayden Hastings 6-9/225 redshirt freshman) are back.
Transfers include 6-3 junior Dion Brown (UMBC), 6-5 grad student Roger McFarlane (SE Louisiana), 6-10/255 grad student Chad Venning who previously played for former Blue Devil Greg Paulus at Niagara and Clemson’s Josh Beadle, who is kind of a trade for Zackery.
Brown was a significant factor at UMBC, averaging 19 points, 7.6 rebounds, and 2.6 assists per game. If he can produce at the ACC level, he’s a great pickup.
McFarlane is a surprisingly good rebounder, having grabbed almost 9 a game. He averaged 15 ppg as well. Unfortunately,he didn’t shoot very well, hitting just 41.7 percent overall and an acceptable 34.1 percent from behind the line.
At Niagara, Venning averaged a shade under 14 points. He also got 5 rebounds, and 1.7 blocks per game. He’s a good presence in the lane defensively. He’s a very different center than Post, more of a burly inside presence than a guy who stretches defenses.
Beadle is the other part of this year’s Clemson-B.C. movement. He didn’t have a huge season last year, but he’s at least a decent reserve. We’re really big on Brownell’s player development skills and Grant is good there too. We’ll see how Beadle works out.
The freshmen include 6-1 Luka Toews from Tokyo, 6-9 Kany Tchanda from Kinshasa and 6-3 Nick Petronio from Needham, Mass.
Toews, whose mother is Japanese, will become one of the relatively few players of Asian descent to compete in the ACC. We haven’t thought about this, but the only other current ACC player with Asian ancestry we can think of right now is Virginia’s Ishan Sharma.
Toews comes from an athletic family. His father played and coached overseas, his brother Kai did well as UNC-W’s point guard and played for Japan in the Olympics, while his cousin Jonathan won three Stanley Cups with the Chicago Blackhawks.
We don’t know how good Luka is, but we’re pretty sure he’ll play hard. Seems to run in his family.
Tchanda played at Sunrise Christian, which has produced some good players lately, including Mark Mitchell, Gradey Dick, Matas Bezels, Buddy Hield and Kennedy Chandler.
Tchanda can apparently shoot well but it won’t be a surprise if he takes a year or two to flesh out his game. He’s said to be athletic but at 210 he’s still a bit thin. That said, he could certainly carve out a role early in his career, although it may be out of necessity. Remember when Amile Jefferson was forced to play as a freshmen for Duke before he was ready?
It happens.
Petronio is an excellent shooter but he had a season-ending knee injury as a senior so we’ll have to see where he is. He could help if he’s fully recovered. Three point shooting can mask a lot of problems.
At first glance, it might seem that B.C.’s losses are just too much, but the Eagles have some good pieces. Guard play should be acceptable and there should be enough inside to compete with most ACC teams and as we said, three point shooting, if they have it, can cover up a lot of flaws. Still, there are many questions for this group.
If you want an analog for Grant’s career, Gary Williams should be close. When Williams arrived at Maryland, he recruited big-time prospects but after missing on Rudy Gay - he felt strongly that UConn had cheated to get Gay, though that was never proven - he soured on that approach and focused on getting some underappreciated dogs. He recruited imperfect but very hungry players and made Maryland into a ferocious power. We didn’t much like Gary, largely because of his anger issues, but it’s impossible not to respect that he annually took a bunch of lightly regarded guys with chips on their shoulders and made them great as a unit.
Grant has the potential to build something similar at Boston College and in the short term, that’s probably his only path. Aside from is ACC rivals, he has to deal with UConn’s ascent under Danny Hurley.
Later, when more people believe in Grant, he might get better players and you may have notice that a bunch of New Englanders have excelled recently. B.C. can and should get more of those.
Grant’s record has improved every year, going from 13-20 to 16-17 to last year’s 20-16. If he’s gathered enough talent, the Eagles will continue to rise, but there’s a chance this year is a step back. Even if that’s the case, he has built a solid culture. Boston College will play hard and compete as long as Grant is there.
