Bright Future Ahead For BC

Last night the Boston College men's basketball team faced off against No. 5 Duke. The teams were two ACC foes with very different seasons. Under the leadership of Blue Devil head coach Mike Krzyzewski, Duke is making another run to March Madness. The Eagles are in the development stages of their program under second-year head coach Steve Donahue. Donahue, who has started four freshmen consistently this season, has seen the challenges of inexperienced players in the ACC this season. Yesterday's matchup proved no different.

Krzyzewski applauded the efforts of Donahue and his program after his team won 75-50 in a packed Conte Forum.

"Steve's done a great job with this team," he said. "With all these young kids, he kept them up all year long. He's come up with three huge conference wins. The last one, 11 days ago against Florida State, was a remarkable game. I watched that a couple of times in preparation for this, because their offense puts pressure on our big guys to put it out on the court. The first four minutes, we didn't handle that well."

The Eagles came out firing early, hitting their first five shots. This included 3-pointers by freshman Ryan Anderson and junior Matt Humphrey. However, the home team went on to go scoreless for just over nine minutes. Duke took advantage of this lost momentum, and went on to push out to a nine-point lead at the half.

There was definitely a difference in maturity seen in last night's contest, as Anderson, Humphrey and freshman guard Jordan Daniels were the only Eagles to score for the majority of the game. The inability to move the ball and create opportunities was something that hurt BC in the long run.

Krzyzewski called Donahue's offensive scheme "unconventional," and praised his players for holding the Eagles to 50 points. He did not want to take this team for granted, especially after their upset of ACC foe Florida State.

"We respect them," he said. "We came in here respecting Boston College, which we should."

He went on to explain that experience does have a factor in games like these—however, maturity can have a negative impact if relied upon. He said that this was evident in BC's win over FSU.

"I think [Donahue]'s done a really good job with this team, because his kids are up. They've gotten better. Really, one of the huge wins of all the conference games was their win against Florida State. Florida State can go to the Final Four. Florida State has six seniors and two postgraduates. And they beat them. You can't let experience let down, and not show up. Like our experience tonight, we showed up, and that's going to be an advantage over them."

With this in mind, Krzyzewski does believe that his team has certain advantages that can only come through game day experience.

"Physically. Emotionally. The whole thing. We're more physically mature than they are right now, but [Donahue]'s done a really good job with this team. I've watched about eight of their games. This game worried me so much. I watched that Florida State game twice. I said, ‘These kids can beat us.' I wasn't just trying to tell myself fairytales, or anything like that."

As one of the veteran coaches in the ACC, Krzyzewski sees a new group of coaches developing younger programs around him. He said that BC is certainly a group to watch down the road, due to great coaching and a strong team attitude.

"I think, as long as Steve is coaching, [they'll be strong down the road]. We have really strong coaches in our league. That's the thing about this new wave of coaches. None of these teams are going to give up. They're building. All of them are building. We had to do that, and I know we never gave up. I think it's been a good league. It's a lot better than people anticipated it to be. That's a result of how good all these coaches are, and the good jobs they've done."

While this season was all about the Eagles beating the learning curve of college basketball, Krzyzewski sees this team's attitude as a strong indicator for the future.

"Most teams with almost 20 losses would've packed it in a long time ago. They're far away from doing that, because they're building something really nice here."