The rafters of every basketball arena tell a story.
Go to TD Garden and you’ll see a legacy built by decades of dominance. Go to Cameron Indoor Stadium and you’ll see the remains of endless ACC championships and Final Four appearances.
Believe it or not, it’s not all that different at Conte Forum.
Go to Conte Forum and you’ll see the name of Troy Bell, a two-time Big East Player of the Year and Boston Celtics first-round draft choice.
You’ll see eight conference championships and a number of deep NCAA Tournament runs. And that doesn’t even include the stories the building’s rafters won’t tell you about, like stars Jared Dudley or Reggie Jackson.
It’s no blue blood, but Boston College men’s basketball is a program built upon decades of grit and tradition. The Eagles have been led by Hall of Famers like Bob Cousy, Chuck Daly, and Gary Williams—not to mention their most successful head coach Al Skinner, who helped author seven NCAA Tournament appearances before getting fired in 2010.
To BC’s current students, however, all this storied history is just that: history, buried deep under years of irrelevancy.
And I can’t blame them for their apathy—that irrelevancy is all they know.
The Eagles could very well end up the nation’s worst high-major program this season. They haven’t sniffed an NCAA Tournament appearance in what’s soon to be 16 years, and if not for DePaul, they would own the nation’s longest tournament drought among power-conference teams. At this point, BC isn’t even the best team in its own state.
Through nearly four seasons alongside this team—both in the student section and media row—I’ve grown accustomed to seeing thin crowds at Conte Forum, aside from a loyal few. It’s hard to overstate how utterly detached the average BC student is from its men’s basketball program these days.
For many students, their only interactions with the program come through swiping a free T-shirt and leaving before tipoff. And even when fans and students do show up—like against Duke—opposing fan bases often end up drowning us out.
Never mind a source of pride, most students see their men’s basketball program as little more than a complete laughingstock. As I enter my last months at BC, I can’t help but feel a hint of sadness about that reality.
This isn’t a column just calling for head coach Earl Grant’s job, whose seat is—and should be—scorching hot. It’s not a column naming and blaming all those responsible, because that list would end up far too long.
Rather, it’s a column mourning what’s become of this once-proud program.
It’s bad enough the current student body hardly knows what this program used to be. But, more concerningly, does the athletic department even remember? Is mediocrity officially the standard in Chestnut Hill?
After three-and-a-half seasons of “climbing a mountain,” Grant’s Eagles are right back at square one: a bottom-tier ACC program. In all fairness, some of that was to be expected, given the offseason’s wholesale roster turnover. Navigating the transfer portal and reconstructing a roster on the fly isn’t a challenge unique to BC.
But regardless of the decent recruiting class coming in next season, does anyone really expect a Grant-led BC to return to regular postseason contention in the foreseeable future? Given the way Grant and co. largely squandered last year’s talent, it’s just hard to see that happening.
Even with this year’s patchwork roster, there’s no justifying the home loss to Dartmouth or that squeaker over Stonehill, among other 2024–25 letdowns. After the Eagles’ blowout home loss to South Carolina, I asked Grant to try explaining BC’s inconsistencies.
“I’m not sure,” he said before citing the pace of their recent schedule.
As frustrating of a response as that was, he’s not the only one without answers. This problem runs far deeper than just Grant. This problem is systemic.
If this season is Grant’s last in Chestnut Hill, does anyone really expect BC’s athletic department to nail its next men’s basketball head-coaching hire? Maybe Blake James, fresh off reinvigorating the football program, can do the same to men’s basketball. But given how the program has cycled through coaches since the Skinner years, I’m not optimistic on that front either.
Sure, this program has provided some nice memories over the past decade. From stars like Jerome Robinson and Quinten Post to upsets like 2017’s over No. 1 Duke and 2023’s over No. 6 Virginia, the program hasn’t necessarily always been in the gutter.
None of these moments, however, have amounted to much more than a fleeting mirage, a sliver of this program’s potential. Sustained success—the kind that can write new stories in Conte’s rafters—has eluded BC for far too long now.
Hiring a new head coach isn’t enough. Simply throwing money at the problem isn’t the main solution either, given Grant’s reported 2023–24 salary is on par with those of other ACC coaches like Georgia Tech’s Damon Stoudamire and Wake Forest’s Steve Forbes.
If this program wants any chance of reclaiming its old glory, BC’s athletic department needs to fundamentally rethink the way it approaches basketball.
Yes, that means a new head coach. But that also means no more undeserving coaches overstaying their welcome. That means a top-to-bottom cultural reboot. Above all, that means restoring some semblance of urgency and pride within the program.
In a rare media appearance prior to the Pinstripe Bowl, University President Rev. William P. Leahy, S.J., said he wants “Boston College to have a significant role in whatever happens” in today’s rapidly changing world of collegiate athletics.
Assuming he’s serious, it’s time for everyone—starting with Leahy and working its way down—to take a long look in the mirror. Is this the best the University can do with its men’s basketball program? This visionless, rudderless ship?
I’m certainly not the first student to express such sentiments, and unfortunately, I know I won’t be the last. Nor will I pretend to have all the answers. But it’s clear that whatever BC Athletics has tried in the many years since Skinner’s firing has failed—and failed miserably.
I say none of this to bash the program for its own sake. As a college basketball fan, I want to see my school represented in one of the world’s greatest sporting events. As a BC student, I want my classmates to see the program as more than a source of free shirts.
But as I wrap up my time at BC, it’s clear that neither of those goals could be any further away.
Leave a Reply