Date 1/18 || Time 8:00 || Venue Conte Forum || Video ESPN
Next up for Duke is a trip to Boston College, which is about 3 1⁄2 hours from Cooper Flagg’s hometown of Newport, Maine, so we’d say there’s a solid chance of a bunch of Mainers making the drive.
Earl Grant, who left Charleston for BC, inherited a tough job. Jim Christian’s last season saw the Eagles fall to 4-16.
Grant made an immediate improvement, bringing BC back to 13-20. His second year, BC finished 16-17 and last year, the Eagles got to 20-16 and made the NIT tournament.
Slow but steady improvement, in other words.
So far this year, BC is a middling 9-7 but Grant had to replace big man Quentin Post, who emerged as a really good center, Claudell Harris, who averaged 13.7 ppg, Devin McGlockton, who put up 10.2 ppg and Jaeden Zackery, who was a rock-solid guard for BC.
Mason Madsen, Prince Aligbi and Armani Mighty also left.
Things can change of course. BC could eventually become the sort of school that guys want to transfer to, but it’s not right now, so rebuilding is tough.
So far, Boston College’s best wins are over Temple and probably ODU and the Eagles are on a three-game losing streak.
Boston College’s best player is Donald Hand, a 6-6 redshirt sophomore. We’re really happy that he’s playing well and putting his knee injury behind him. Hand is getting 14.8 ppg, 7.0 boards and 1.2 assists.
We’ve been kind of pulling for Elijah Strong too. A 6-8/235 lb. sophomore who’s getting 10.5 ppg and 4.7 boards. A Charlotte kid, he didn’t get much interest and jumped on the BC offer. So far he’s made the most of his opportunity. He’s getting 10.5 ppg and 4.7 rebounds.
Chad Venning, a 6-9/270 transfer from St. Bonaventure, is getting 12.4 ppg and 4.0 boards.
Dion Brown, a 6-1 junior transfer from UMBC, is getting 6.1 ppg and 3.4 boards.
Roger McFarlane is a 6-4 senior transfer from Southeast Louisiana, manages 5.2 ppg and 5.1 boards.
Chas Kelley, 6-3, is a junior now and like everyone else down the rotation, his stats are modest. Same for Clemson transfer Josh Beadle, a 6-3 senior, Fred Payne, a 6-1 sophomore and Jayden Hastings, a 6-9/240 lb. freshman out of Orlando.
None of that really matters much when it comes to Boston College. Grant has talked a lot about building a culture at BC and while that’s tough with the player movement we see today, the identity he pushes is grittiness, toughness and competitiveness.
So Duke is certainly going to be favored and a win is likely, but the Eagles will definitely play hard.
And they’ll need to because Duke is rounding into form.
The defense has been overwhelming, by most metrics the best in the nation and the offense is starting to hit its stride lately too.
Obviously the highlight player is Cooper Flagg, who has been called a Generational Talent and who has lived up to his hype and sometimes exceeded it. Kon Knueppel has had some freshmen ups and downs, naturally.
The guards – Tyrese Proctor, Sion James and Caleb Foster – have worked out a solid chemistry and they all defend really, really well. Mason Gillis is building a solid role and Isaiah Evans is capable of absolutely incinerating a team as we saw against #1 Auburn and Patrick Ngongba is getting more minutes in Maliq Brown’s absence (he’s out indefinitely with a knee injury).
The guy who has really impressed us lately though, who is growing visibly game by game, is Khaman Maluach.
Really it’s asking a lot for a 7-2 kid who spent most of his life as a refugee to adopt quickly to American college basketball, but lately, Maluach really seems to be getting the nuances. No one has improved as much as he has this season and in our memory, we can’t think of anyone at Duke who has improved as quickly.
We’ve learned to never say never because things happen. Duke fans know Coach K’s key lesson: always respect your opponent enough to give them your best effort.
The most likely way for Duke to be upset is if they failed to do that and that would be a major mistake because while the Eagles might be outmatched, they will play hard.
The second most likely way would be for BC to play out of their minds and just kill it from three point range. You know how that goes. Sometimes a team hits one or two and it just snowballs. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what happened to Miami in Cameron on Tuesday.
So while the odds definitely favor Duke, you should never bet the house against a team that plays as hard as BC does. Their culture demands respect.
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