Christian Won't Use Youth as Excuse

It’s tough to find many silver linings when you take a 28 point beating at home against a good but not great Notre Dame team. For BC fans it’s also tough to continue to remain positive when there’s been so much losing going on around the Heights dating back to the fall football season. Give BC coach Jim Christian credit for one thing though: he isn’t making any excuses for having one of the top 20 youngest teams in the country (according to KenPom). Christian opened up his postgame press conference visibly upset and gave an apology to BC fans.

"We didn’t play hard and I apologize to the people of BC," said Christian. He later added, "My teams don’t play like that."

After that statement Christian was given plenty of opportunities to blame the loss on youth or inexperience or even a combination of both. So far this year the BC coach has stuck to his guns and never given youth as an excuse for poor play. If you remember, he set the tone back in the second game of the season when he gave the following quote about the freshmen lineup after a win:

"They need to identify what they need to do to win and then hold themselves to a certain standard and not use their age as a reason for not getting it done. I'm never going to talk about it...It's irrelevant how old you are," said Christian.

That was surely a strong statement from Christian back in November, but the loss to the ‘Irish seemed like as good a time as any to take maybe even a half a step away from that statement. For a moment last night it looked like Christian would when he said of ND, "They have great leadership and exposed our lack of leadership."

Some initially thought that Christian’s leadership quote was pointed directly at seniors Eli Carter and Dennis Clifford and was an excuse for the freshmen. After a follow-up question to clarify if Christian was talking about the seniors, he surprisingly took the conversation in a different direction.

"Eli has been here for 15 games. He shouldn’t have to be the leader," Christian said. "The guys that should be the leaders are the young guys. They should be the leaders. They should be trying to change the culture of the program and I thought as a group, collectively, they did nothing to do that tonight."

Christian later added that it’s time for the younger players to step up. "Nobody is a freshman anymore," said Christian.

The Eagles have some time off before a trip to the Carrier Dome next week for a game against a Syracuse team that has lost three in a row and has UNC left. With an expected 4 game losing streak heading into that game the Orange will need a win desperately.

Massachusetts Kids Haunt BC (Again)

It’s not exactly new news but it continues to be a tough pill to swallow when BC gets eaten up by opposing players that are natives of the Bay State. That was the case again last night as forwards Zach Auguste and Bonzie Colson combined for 31 points, 15 rebounds, 4 blocks and 2 steals in the victory. Both players were key in the Irish outscoring BC 42 to 10 in the paint as well.

In reality Colson was probably never going to come to BC because of how things went down with Al Skinner and the BC administration. However, Auguste was a player that was very much in play and someone that Donahue’s staff had an eye on back to when Auguste was a freshman at Marlborough high school. Auguste’s recruitment will go down as one of Donahue’s biggest mistakes at the Heights because the BC staff actually held up on recruiting Auguste near the end even though they were still in the hunt.

Sammy Barnes-Thompkins Sidelined

The Eagles played without freshman guard Sammy Barnes-Thompkins last night who sat out with a concussion. There is no timetable for his return. However, it’s not expected that he will miss extended time to the point that Will Magarity did last season when he missed weeks with a concussion.