Eagles UnlimitedDan Rubin, BCEagles.com contributor
Earl Grant's arrival has BC-Cuse feeling an awful lot like an older era
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- College basketball feels, at times, like it's moving into a very different present and future. A sport formerly known for its territorialized approach to leagues is now a rapidly growing, changing and realigning nation moving more towards national prominence than its former structure. The concept of what makes a power conference is very different from its football counterpart, but even the volume of leagues, some of which occupy rarified, elite air in the sport, requires approaches stretching geography well past homegrown regions.Even with its evolution, vestiges of the past have a way of rearing their way into the public sports conscience. Older, historic matchups and the renewal of ancient rivalries maintain their presence as the conferences continue their inevitable shift. They tirelessly collide and build chapter after chapter in their never-ending struggle, dooming its participants into an eternity against one another.Tuesday night brings one of those battles to the forefront in college basketball when Boston College and Syracuse tip off at Conte Forum. The logo on the floor will read ACC and reflect their greater efforts to topple their conference brothers based on Tobacco Road, but at their heart, an old Big East matchup, one of the last of its kind, brings old, familiar Northeast feelings right back to where they feel most at home."There is obviously history with Syracuse," BC head coachEarl Grantsaid. "For Boston College, it's when Al Skinner was here, and with Jim O'Brien, they both would have been big [matchups]. There were some battles, some really good teams with great toughness. It just so happened that Jim Boeheim got to be a part of three or four different coaches at BC, but there were definitely battles. And that's what every game in our league in the ACC is about, [like the] Big East with a lot of tradition and the rivalries between the different schools."It never took much to appreciate what BC and Syracuse brought to the ACC as former Big East stablemates. They helped create a style that burst onto the national scene in the 1980s as the new conference developed a college basketball revolution throughout the Northeast. Both won regular season championships and competed at the national level, and BC was one of the first Big East teams to threaten the Phi Slama Jamma Houston Cougars team before dropping an Elite Eight game during the 1982 NCAA Tournament.A two-point conference tournament win over Syracuse preceded that NCAA run, and BC repeated its performance at the Hartford Civic Center one year later when it beat the Orangemen at Madison Square Garden. The first of a half dozen meetings throughout the 1980s, they very squarely entrenched the Eagles against Syracuse even as the 'Cuse earned its first Final Four berth in 1987.The battles between the two teams - and the rest of the league - helped chart the Big East's early course through the college basketball waters, but as the 1980s ended, Syracuse rose through the ranks while BC rebuilt its program for the next decade. A chasm emerged between the two teams and didn't end until Jim O'Brien's Eagles upended the Orangemen with an overtime victory during the 1992-93 season. One year later, the currency of two consecutive NIT berths converted into another run to the Elite Eight after BC swept Syracuse during the regular season.Competing at the national level was a staple of Big East basketball, and both BC and Syracuse brought that reputation to the ACC after both realigned into the conference at different intervals. But while BC is now laying the foundation of a rebuild it hopes will springboard a run to the NCAA Tournament in the near future, Syracuse is still there, always seemingly holding one last run through March thanks to the 2-3 zone defense."They have been playing really well the last five games," Grant said. "They've been playing well, and I think the biggest thing is that they are playing with a lot of confidence. They have a lot of experienced guys and have shrunk their bench, but they are just a long and athletic team. You have to find ways to score against them, but you have to find ways to stop them and test them. You have to make it harder for them to stop you."Winning on Tuesday won't erase the past decade, nor will it springboard the Eagles into the national tournament discussion, but it will go a long way to enhancing the digital images of a lost era. The Big East still exists but looks very different from its predecessor, but its older members still carry the torch of those years. Jim Boeheim is still at Syracuse, and BC, with its hire of Grant, is looking to rediscover a gritty, blue collar style once embodied by the O'Brien and Skinner eras.Nobody is entering Conte Forum on Tuesday expecting a high scoring affair resembling the Loyola Marymount offenses under Paul Westhead - the Guru of Go. They want to see two old rivals rediscovering the old fashioned, clean hate for one another, and they want to see the fundamentals, the defense, the system offense and the pride taken in beating one another. They want to see the old coach and the new coach, the old lion and the new lion, matching wits, and they want to relive an older era when John Bagley, Billy Curley, Danya Abrams, Dana Barros, Jared Dudley, Craig Smith and others bodied up against Louis Orr, Rony Seikaly, Derrick Coleman, Billy Owens, Sherman Douglas and Pearl Washington in an old, Northeast-style, physical battle."You have to commit to what you do," Grant said. "You can't really change. If you've been doing something, it's hard to completely change it in three days for one opponent. There are tweaks you have to make depending on what you want to see from that opponent, but that happens constantly. There are certain things we do against zone and certain things we do against press. We practice it every day, and we talk about it all the time. So you want to do those things, but you have a tweak depending on the system. It's more important to do the things that you really believe and let the chips fall where they may."Boston College and Syracuse will tip off on Tuesday at 8 p.m. from Conte Forum. The game can be seen on national television on ACC Network with radio broadcast available on the Boston College Radio Network from Learfield, locally in Boston on WEEI 850 AM.Print Friendly Version
06/02/2023
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