Because I tend to focus on football first and men's basketball second, there are plenty of BC teams I overlook. Both Hockey teams are elite and hardly get talked about here. But the focus of this post is another great team: the BC Women's Basketball.
It might be premature to call the team great, but they are off to a great start. They are tearing up their non-conference slate and their only loss came in a Holiday Tournament against Oklahoma. At this current pace, there is no reason to think they won't be ranked by the start of ACC play.
But aside from their hot start, BC fans should care about BC Women's Basketball because they recovered from a recent low point.
For all of Gene's bad hires, his worst might have been Sylvia Crawley. She left BC with an overall winning record, but the program fell apart under her reign. There wasn't much talent left when Erik Johnson took over. Johnson started to patch things up with recruiting and transfer, but his first three season as the head coach at the Heights were frustrating and full of losing. Now it looks like the team has turned the corner. If they are even close to .500 in ACC play it will be Johnson's best season at BC.
The lesson of Johnson though is that we as fans need patience. The lesson for other struggling BC coaches is that they need to recruit, recruit and recruit. Recruiting Women's Basketball prospects to BC is a different sell than other sports, but it is all about effort and passion.
Johnson's former BC boss Cathy Inglese also started slow at BC. But once she turned the corner, there was a long stretch of very good basketball. Let's hope Johnson matches that and our other lost programs do too.
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7 comments:
I agree on the patience point. Big Al had to turn around a dump of a team when he came on board. His first year he had some holdovers from O'Brien but the next year (98-99) BC went 6-21 with his first class of recruits. Following year 11-19. Next year Big East champs. Not saying we are going to be ACC Champs in 2 years but you can't judge Christian's results until his first recruits are at least upperclassmen.
Here's a look back at that legendary roster:
Player Class Pos Height Summary
Julian Bah SO F 6-6 0.3 Pts, 0.4 Reb, 0.0 Ast
Jonathan Beerbohm SO F 6-7 5.9 Pts, 2.6 Reb, 1.0 Ast
Jim Boland JR F 6-5 0.0 Pts, 0.0 Reb, 0.0 Ast
Michael Cotton JR F 6-4 10.0 Pts, 4.6 Reb, 1.3 Ast
Willie Deane FR G 6-0 5.3 Pts, 1.6 Reb, 1.2 Ast
Nicolas Dunn SO G 6-3 0.0 Pts, 0.0 Reb, 0.0 Ast
Kenny Harley SO G 6-5 11.2 Pts, 3.7 Reb, 1.5 Ast
Osei Millar FR F 6-8 2.2 Pts, 1.3 Reb, 0.2 Ast
Dwayne Pina JR G 5-10 4.3 Pts, 2.7 Reb, 4.3 Ast
Brian Ross FR F 6-8 8.5 Pts, 4.9 Reb, 0.7 Ast
Clinton Sims FR G 6-3 8.7 Pts, 3.0 Reb, 0.8 Ast
Kenny Walls FR G 6-5 10.5 Pts, 4.0 Reb, 1.1 Ast
SLe
Great post Jonathan Beerbohm was Al's first recruit, struggled early, but was a big time contributor when they won the B.E. Patience is indeed the key.
Obviously, very confusing situation in regard to Al Skinner. I thought that he was a success. What happened?
Living the past.
Good start for WBB - but let's see how they do in conference play first. Johnson has had marginal success recruiting ACC level talent. A couple very good players (Hughes, Boudreau) but this is the ACC. Lately, he has been looking to overseas players and apparently found a gem in 6'4" center (Mariella Fasoula) from Greece. She has made a major difference.
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