Season Preview: #12 Boston College

A few notes before I get started talking about Boston College: I went through and did my preseason rankings, and then looked at each team's schedule.  I counted how many games each team had against my top four in the ACC and how many they had against my bottom four.  Obviously, Boston College would not have as many games against teams in the bottom four because they are one of those teams.  So much of what you have to look at when deciding where teams are going to finish is who they play in the conference.  Based on these numbers, Boston College actually has the toughest conference schedule of any ACC team.  Virginia, NC State and Miami all have the easiest.

Ok, now to Boston College:

Games against 2012 NCAA Tournament teams: 10

Games against ACC top 4: 7

Games against ACC bottom 4: 4

Best non-conference game: 12/4 vs. Harvard


Projected Starting Five:

C - Dennis Clifford (Sophomore)

F - Ryan Anderson (Sophomore)

G - Patrick Heckmann (Sophomore)

G - Lonnie Jackson (Sophomore)

G - Jordan Daniels (Sophomore)


Interesting lineup there, with all five starters sophomores.  So it's pretty obvious that BC just does not have ACC level talent right now.  They were decimated before last year, and really struggled.  It was a testament to how weak the ACC was that BC won nearly almost as many games in conference (4) that they won out of conference (5).  I would guess that Coach Steve Donahue had more talent on some of his Cornell teams than he has right now.

There really was not one star on BC last year.  Ryan Anderson led the team in scoring, but their top five scorers averaged between 8 and 12 points per game.  I watched BC several times last year, and I couldn't tell you what Ryan Anderson looks like.  That's the kind of team they have.  Dennis Clifford was a nice surprise for them at times, but is pretty slow and unathletic.  They bring in three freshmen, but none who were very highly rated, so this is largely the same team as last year.  They did lose Matt Humphrey, who was their second highest scorer.

With pretty much the same team, it's natural to expect pretty much the same results.  They face a tough start to the season, with a trip to the Charleston Classic and a first round game against Baylor.  I think the key part of the season for them is in December.  They have six home games, all of them winnable.  They can't stub their toe and lose more than one of these games, like they did last year.  They need to be able to build some confidence.  That's because they have a very difficult conference slate, with two games each against NC State and Duke.

The other thing for BC is they have got to play better on the road.  All of their conference wins last year came in the Conte Forum.  I have thought that Coach Donahue was a solid coach, but you can only be so patient with him and he has to prove he can recruit on the ACC level.  Looking at the talent that BC has, it's really hard to find more than a few conference wins.