Boston College Basketball: A Program Arising

With any coaching change, there is going to be a transition period between the old and the new. For Jim Christian, the transition meant a older team in year one, and a young team with gaping holes in year two.

Now it is year three. The pressure, understandably, has mounted on the program given last year’s futility in-conference.

Yet this year, if everything goes according to plan, might be the year Christian begins to shine.

The front page of The Heights’ 2015 basketball preview had the bold headline Trust the Process. The reality of the season last year was that the process was going to be a bumpy one, as the young team had a nucleus of misfits: a shooting guard playing the point in the form of Eli Carter; a lack of a proper 4; Dennis Clifford, a Steve Donahue leftover playing the five.

This year’s team is also going to be significantly different from the last. Players like Matt Milon won’t be coming in off the bench this year when the Eagles need a three. Idy Diallo won’t make the attending press at Conte Forum keep a close eye on the foul totals.

Yet the team is going to be different for good reasons as well. Not only will the Eagles have a proper point guard, they will have options. A home-grown shooting guard will play the two. A graduate transfer 4 that was recruited by Turner rounds out the starting lineup. A.J. Turner, a home grown 3, will likely see significant action.

Frankly, there is a lot to get excited about with this team.

To be fair, the optimism probably should be tempered somewhat: it’s one thing to have promise, but in the ACC it is quite another to be good.

Year Three will be another edition of The Process. It will have missteps. Yet it is hard not to have hope for this team when hearing Jim Christian get excited on ACC Media Day about players like Jerome Robinson, Ky Bowman and Ty Graves playing “virtually 90 games together.” It is hard not to get excited when Jim Christian talks about this team being the first of his three at BC forming an identity that “can carry on and become special.”

It’s a process. And this might be the year the process begins to pay dividends.

Quotes from this article were taken from the ACC Media Day transcript, found here.