Since his arrival in Chestnut Hill, Boston College men’s basketball head coach Earl Grant’s mantra has been simple: “Gritty, not pretty.”
In the 2023–24 season, that mantra manifested in the form of a 20-win season and NIT run. To begin the 2024–25 season, however, the mantra has taken a far different form.
The Eagles’ (1–1) Friday night 80–55 beatdown at the hands of VCU (2–0) offered fans a glimpse of what could come this season in a performance best characterized as neither gritty nor pretty.
All night long, offensive stagnation plagued the Eagles, producing turnovers and inefficient looks. As a team, BC shot below 30 percent from the field, unable to find consistency in the half court or on the fastbreak.
“I think with a lot of new guys, yes,” Grant said, when asked whether his team is still searching for an identity. “[We’re] just trying to figure out the right rotations, the right combinations, who to put on the floor making sure we can execute the right way.”
Grant’s efforts to find a working formula were of no avail. Despite 11 Eagles seeing the floor, BC just couldn’t string buckets together.
“From the jump, they got on us,” Donald Hand Jr. said. “We didn’t execute well, so we got to get back to the drawing board.”
In a game the Rams never trailed, VCU jumped out to a 13–6 lead just over five minutes into the game on the back of a 7–0 run. Just minutes later, the Rams stitched together an 8–0 run, enough to establish a commanding 21–8 lead.
“Early in the game, I thought we did a pretty good job executing,” Grant said. “And then in the middle of the half, we were very uncharacteristic—just didn’t really have five guys moving as a unit, getting to their spots where they needed to be, so we could execute at the level we needed to execute at.”
The Eagles didn’t immediately fold, though. BC punched back with an 8–0 run to cut its deficit down to five points. Roger McFarlane fueled the run with a pair of jumpers, and finished the game with an 11-point, 11-rebound double-double.
“He gave us a good lift,” Grant said. “He played hard. Obviously, anytime a guy can get a double-double with 11 rebounds, that means he’s played with a lot of effort. So I thought he was really good for us, making good decisions and really going after balls. We got to build on that.”
That was just about as much as the Eagles could muster. The Rams finished the half on a 12–4 run and took a 33–20 lead into the locker room.
“They delivered a blow in the middle of the first half,” Grant said. “We didn’t respond, and the game got out of hand. I think we got down 18, and we had a group that came in and really fought for us, but we never could make up what had happened in that patch in the middle of the first half.”
Grant dipped deeper into his bench in the second half, with freshmen Kany Tchanda receiving his first collegiate minutes and Luka Toews recording his first career points. None of that could prevent BC’s deficit from ballooning to as much as 30 points.
VCU shot 43.3 percent from the field and 29.6 percent from three, and yet a breakthrough still eluded the Eagles.
“They were good tonight,” Grant said. “Obviously they capitalized on our mistakes, and a lot of mistakes were uncharacteristic.”
Only two games into the season, the Eagles have a long way to prove Friday’s outcome wasn’t just an anomaly. Grant, however, remains confident in his team going forward.
“I’m very encouraged,” Grant said. “I mean, the night wasn’t beautiful at all, obviously, but it’s the second game of the year, and we’re a lot better than what we showed.”
