It seems everything there is to say about Boston College men’s basketball might have already been said. BC hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 2009, and 16 years of mediocrity is hard to make into a good story.
At least in the past, there were bright points. Times like advancing to the ACC Tournament quarterfinals last season and getting invited to the NIT for the first time since 2018, stunning No. 6 Virginia and BC students storming the court in February of 2023, and a 2017 win over the top-ranked team in the country in Duke.
The 2024–25 season didn’t have hidden surprises like those. In fact, very little about the season came as a surprise. And that’s exactly the problem.
As long as BC men’s hoops can pull off some big accomplishments that no one expected, fans can deal with overall mediocrity and missing out on seeing their team play in March. But when BC fails at every corner to prove any of the haters wrong—for lack of a better term—the haters are, well, right.
What’s wrong? Bad coaching? Underwhelming recruiting? Not enough funding directed toward the program? Probably a combination. But identifying the problem seems a little pointless if BC won’t take any steps toward fixing it.
Athletic director Blake James has reportedly announced that Earl Grant will be coming back next year. Does that mean BC fans are set up for another year of watching middling play that borders on just plain bad? That can’t be answered quite yet.
The criticism of Grant seems a little shallow at times.
If things were as simple as the coach calling more timeouts at opportune moments, every team in the nation could be good, so long as their head coach was trained in the art of the timeout.
A coach who knows how to make in-game adjustments is certainly important, but maybe that quality isn’t the be-all and end-all.
Perhaps that’s understating the value of a new coach, though.
Bringing in a new coach would, at the very least, show that the basketball program has moved away from the backburner to complement the football program’s fresh makeover and men’s hockey’s typical dominance.
What a new coach could realistically do is catalyze a total cultural shift. Buying out Grant’s contract would be a wake-up call to the existing program, potential recruits, the alumni network, and really the entire BC community: BC basketball is back, if the administration has anything to say about it.
Culture, more than anything, is what basketball is made of. Culture is how teams survive, thrive, and remain dominant over generations of coaches and players. It’s also what BC so obviously lacks.
Grant’s “gritty, not pretty” mantra is not the culture BC needs. Its offense could use some of that “pretty.” Its defense could use some more “gritty.” Both have their place.
The one thing that BC needs on both sides of the ball, in every moment of every game, is plain and simple: just a little bit of a winning culture. That’s it. Just win.
Win with gritty rebounding, win when you shoot a pretty 60 percent from three, and win when you have no chance of winning.
Don’t quit and get blown out by a middle-of-the-pack Pittsburgh team like the Eagles did in the last game of the season. Don’t let Duke smoke you in the second half when you showed in the first half that it could be a close game.
Stop playing like BC basketball is supposed to lose. Just win.
There’s really no saying what will happen in the next few years of BC basketball until Grant’s contract is up after the 2028–29 season. If BC lets him stay, there’s one crucial thing he has to make clear: BC cannot be the team it was this season ever again.
It’s embarrassing. It’s unacceptable. It’s losing fans, checks from alumni, and the students’ attention.
The way to make BC basketball relevant again is to do it little by little. Pull off a surprise recruit, then a surprise win, then perhaps a surprise ACC tournament run.
Maybe someday, in the near or far future, it won’t be surprising when the Eagles play into March.
Until then, even just a few brief moments of unexpected joy would probably suffice for an increasingly nonexistent fan base burdened by predictable mediocrity.
