Year in Review: Men's Basketball

Despite starting the year 3-0, things quickly unraveled for the injury-plagued Eagles, who finished the season 13-19 with just the 228th-best offense in the country, according to Kenpom.

With the departure of Ky Bowman to the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, Boston College men’s basketball lost its best and most dynamic player and replaced him with a whole lot of questions heading into the 2019-20 season. To make matters worse, Wynston Tabbs was declared out for the year in September. That left graduate transfer and former five-star recruit Derryck Thornton, freshman Jay Heath, and a host of others to pick up the pieces in the backcourt. Paired with an experienced frontcourt led by upperclassmen Steffon Mitchell and Nik Popovic, the pieces were theoretically there for an improvement on the 14-17 finish of a season ago. 

Unfortunately, theory didn’t translate to results. Despite starting the year 3-0, things quickly unraveled for the Eagles, who finished the season 13-19 with just the 228th-best offense in the country, according to Kenpom. BC lost its last six games, including an embarrassing 22-point loss to Notre Dame in the first round of the ACC Tournament. The COVID-19 pandemic might have canceled March Madness, but it came just a little too late to put a premature end to a disappointing season for the Eagles. Here’s a look-back at BC’s campaign.

Best Moment: The Eagles Halt South Bend Skid

Heading into a Dec. 7 matchup with Notre Dame at the Joyce Center, BC hadn’t won in South Bend since Jan. 11, 1997, a span of 8365 days. Thanks to a combined 35 points from Heath and Thornton, the Eagles broke that streak, winning 73-72, though they made it much harder on themselves than they had to. 

After a Jay Heath triple gave BC a 73-67 cushion with just 36.3 seconds to go and the Eagles forced a turnover on the other end, BC was firmly in the driver’s seat. But back-to-back turnovers—as well as a missed free throw from Thornton—cut the Eagles’ advantage to just two points and gave Irish guard TJ Gibbs a chance to tie the contest at the stripe. 

Fortunately for BC, he missed the first free throw and though Heath missed the front end another 1-and-1, a desperation heave from Dane Goodwin missed the mark, leaving the Eagles to celebrate their first win at Notre Dame in 22 years. 

Worst Moment: Belmont Buries BC From Behind the Arc

There are plenty of bad losses dotting the Eagles’ schedule but the defeat to the Bruins  is arguably the worst of the lot. BC entered the contest 3-0, and just three days earlier had held High Point to just 33 points. For comparison, Belmont scored its 33rd point at the 8:05 mark of the first half. The game was close at halftime—the Eagles trailed just 49-45—but after the break BC simply couldn’t keep up. Aided by a barrage of 3-pointers, Belmont scored a whopping 30 points in the first eight minutes of the period, building a 79-54 lead. BC never recovered, and when the final horn sounded the Eagles were on the wrong side of a 100-85 scoreline. 

All game long, BC simply had no answers. Belmont shot 53 percent from the field, and hit 15-of-26 triples. And though the Eagles were able to keep pace offensively in the first half, they scored just nine points in the first eight minutes of the second. It wasn’t necessarily the most embarrassing loss of BC’s season—Belmont did win an auto-bid to the NCAA Tournament before it was canceled—but it was certainly a low point. 

MVP: Steffon Mitchell 

All the talk about Mitchell staying in Chestnut Hill over the summer to improve his offense didn’t materialize in a significant way during the season—though his scoring output did improve from 4.6 to 7.8 points per game, and he hit a not-terrible 29.8 percent of his 3-pointers—but there’s no denying his impact on both ends of the court. He made the ACC All-Defensive team, led the Eagles in rebounds, steals, and blocks, and finished the season second on the team in assists behind only Thornton. He remained limited offensively, but often popped up with clutch buckets at the right times, nearly single-handedly leading BC to a win at Virginia Tech with a 21-point effort. There’s no denying Mitchell was the Eagles’ most important player.

Breakout Player: Jay Heath

BC having a dynamic young guard is seemingly a yearly tradition at this point and Heath proved to be just the latest addition to that decorated list. Able to score at all three levels, he finished the season as the Eagles’ leading scorer—averaging 13.1 points per game—and looked more than capable of running the offense when Thornton was off the floor. He hit the double-figure mark in all but five of BC’s games and dished out 66 assists, third-most among Eagles players. A backcourt duo of Heath and Tabbs should be something BC fans have to look forward to in 2020-21. 

Three Storylines:

1)The Injury Bug Keeps Biting

The Eagles just could not stay healthy this season. Nik Popovic missed extended time with a back injury, while Jairus and Jared Hamilton finished the season with knee and ankle injuries, respectively. Derryck Thornton missed three games with a back injury, Chris Herren Jr. battled various arm and wrist ailments throughout the season, and even Julian Rishwain came down with a lower leg injury towards the end of the year. Consistency was hard to come by for BC this season, and their search for the right lineup combinations was hurt even more by injuries.

2) BC Can’t Connect from Deep 

The Eagles attempted just over 24 3-pointers per game in 2019-20, but simply wasn’t efficient shooting them. BC hit just 30.8 percent of its attempts from behind the arc—302nd best out of 350 Division I teams. Jay Heath was the only Eagles player with more than two total attempts to shoot over 34 percent from deep. Simply put, BC was not a good perimeter shooting team. 

3) Christian Survives Another Year 

Another losing record—Christian’s fifth in his six years of coaching the Eagles—coupled with an abysmal end to the season meant many fans believed Christian had reached the end of his tenure on the Heights. To make matters for the embattled coach worse, the main argument for bringing him back—a talented team in 2020-21—took a huge hit with the announcement that Jairus Hamilton, a former ESPN Top-100 recruit, had entered the transfer portal. But according to multiple reports released Monday, Christian will indeed be back for a seventh campaign, likely in large part due to revenue constraints and the wildly different hiring/firing cycle brought upon by the coronavirus. 

Top-Three Plays:

1) Jared Hamilton is Clutch Against Virginia

An Eagles team missing both Thornton and Popovic had battled all game long against then-No. 18 Virginia, but with under a minute remaining and the teams knotted at 53, BC needed one more big shot to get over the finish line. Enter Hamilton, who knocked down a 3-pointer from the left wing to hand the Eagles their only ranked win of the season in dramatic fashion.

Andy Backstrom @andybackstrom

0:37 left in 2H: BC 56 No. 18 UVA 53. Jay Heath backs down in the post and appears to go up for a fadeaway jumper but instead whips a pass to Jared Hamilton in the left corner, and Hamilton drills a 3-pointer. BC leads by three with less than 40 seconds to go.

2) Mitchell’s Acrobatics Help BC Escape Blacksburg With a Win

BC and Virginia Tech were knotted at 73 with just 15 seconds to go in overtime when Mitchell backed down Hokies freshman Landers Nolley in the post and squeezed in a twisting layup for a basket that eventually proved to be a game-winner. The bucket capped off an outstanding performance from the junior, who finished with 21 points, 15 rebounds, and 6 assists. 

Boston College Men's Basketball @BCMBB

.@MitchellSteffon sends us home with the sweep of the Hokies. #WeAreBC

3) Mitchell Plays Hero Again Against N.C. State 

Twice in the final minute against the Wolfpack with the Eagles clinging to a one-point advantage, Mitchell made huge defensive plays that ended up as fastbreak dunks for Jairus Hamilton, helping BC eke out a 71-68 victory that proved to be their last of the season. 

What’s Next?

The Eagles will lose Derryck Thornton, Nik Popovic, and Jared Hamilton to graduation, as well as Jairus Hamilton to the transfer portal (more on that later), but should still have a talented nucleus in place next season. Jay Heath and Wynston Tabbs should form a capable backcourt pairing, while four-star recruit DeMarr Langford and his brother Makai-Ashton—a former five-star recruit who transferred from Providence—provide reinforcements. Steffon Mitchell and CJ Felder return to man the post, while Justin Vander Baan—a seven-footer that hails from Northbridge, Mass.—should provide a welcome addition. BC has the players in place to be .500 or better next season. 

The question, though, is whether Christian—who will indeed be back as coach—will be able to maximize the talent available and maybe even get the Eagles back to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2009. After all, he has just a 25-85 record in the ACC, and just one winning record to his name in six years at BC. Regardless of your thoughts on Christian, though, the 2020-21 campaign looms as a pivotal one for the Eagles. Christian is now likely on his last chance to prove that he’s the coach to break BC’s decade-long tournament drought.

All Images Credit of Boston College Athletics