Boston College MBB - Previewing the Holy Cross Crusaders

The Earl Grant era is off to a great start after the Eagles were able to secure a dominant win against Dartmouth in their season opener on Monday night. There were certainly a lot of new faces in the Maroon and Gold and the matchup against Dartmouth was a great opportunity for Eagles Faithful to get their first glimpse of how Grant is looking to run this team, as well as which players are going to be the standouts throughout the season.

The Langford brothers looked to be the cream of the crop but there were a lot of pleasant surprises from Quinten Post and Kanye Jones who both stood out on the offensive and defensive fronts.

After securing their first win of the season, the Eagles look to host the Holy Cross Crusaders who will make the arduous 45 minute trip on I-90 East to play some hoops in Conte Forum Friday night.

Let’s be frank here. Holy Cross is not a good team in the slightest. They are coming off a very rocky short 2020-21 season where they finished 5-11 and only played Patriot League opponents due to COVID. They could only seem to secure their wins against two opponents: Army and Boston University. Everything else seemed to go poorly for the Crusaders leading to a projected finish of 9th in the Patriot League this season. Overall, this is going to be one of the Eagles’ easiest opponents that they will face all season and they should have no problem attacking the Crusaders from all sides of the floor.

With that being said, Holy Cross is coming off a pretty significant victory of their own as they opened their season with a blowout win against Division 3 opponent Regis College, 98-51. Take that information as you will, but this was a pretty momentous win for the Crusaders as the last time they played a Division 3 opponent, UMass-Boston, they ended up on the wrong side of the scoreboard. Judson Martindale led all scorers with 24 points and he was complemented nicely by Bo Montgomery who finished with 19 points of his own. It looks as though Holy Cross chose to play small ball to start the game where they sent out four guards and one forward to start the matchup and gradually rotated in their forwards where they saw fit. Whatever the case, the game-plan worked and is probably the reason behind such a huge score margin when you have four scorers on the court for the majority of the game.

Even with this lopsided victory for the Crusaders, I still do not see how this team poses as any issue for the Eagles. Holy Cross does have one tall Forward in Austin Lewis who stands at 6’11, but I do not envision him as being too much of an issue for Post, Karnik or JVB or whomever Grant decides to stack up against him down low. The Crusaders like to play fast paced with a lot of guard play so if the Eagles can slow down their pace and contain their shooters the Eagles should coast to their second victory of the season. Not to mention tightening up their turnover ratio as seeing 12 turnovers against Dartmouth was giving me deja vu of the Christian days.

Final Prediction: Boston College 78 vs. Holy Cross 53