They say you can tell a lot about a person when nobody is looking. Pick up after themselves in a food court? Bring the shopping cart back in the parking lot? Go outside the prescribed ranges on a Peloton ride in order to fudge their output numbers?
That last one is particularly gutless, but that's not the point.
I say you can tell a lot about a college basketball program in how they play in the final eight minutes of a contested tournament game. I didn't say the last four. All it takes is one mini-run, and it's scramble time with free throws and timeouts until your eyes bleed. I need the last eight. In those last eight, you can withstand a run. In those last eight, the defense gets tighter, the legs get heavier and the crowd gets louder. The lucky shots, bad whistles, and heatcheck three's sort themselves out in the wash. You can't fake your way through those minutes. You have it or you don't.
For more than a decade, Boston College basketball would consistently reveal themselves in those minutes. Yes, they were always bad, yet they still had times when they'd catch teams by surprise. But even on those rare occasions when they were in it, they never felt in it. You'd be holding on to dear life hoping Olivier Hanlan, Jerome Robinson or Ky Bowman could get you one more bucket. Or Jordan Chatman or Patrick Heckmann could get you one more three. It never felt sustainable.
Today, BC's win over a supposed tournament team in Wake Forest felt different. Wake Forest looked like the team looking for the prayer. Wake Forest looked like the team holding in a turd trying to finish a race. Earl Grant was T'ed up with a little more than eight to go. Wake went up 57-49. BC closed it on a 27-12 run to win their second straight ACC game. I realize the team is 13-19 on the year. I know they don't appear close to Providence or UConn at the moment for northeast attention. But damnit, there is something there. I could talk about Earl Grant's enthusiasm or the impact of the Langford brothers or a promising recruiting class, but we've done that before. This time you could tell something shifted in this program that makes you not have to pucker when the moment intensifies. They sustained horrible turnovers, missed free throws, banged heads, and bad fouls but still beat a tournament team that needed it. It was a good win for a team that, for the first time in a while, looked substantively good.
It's been a long time since BC relevance. 2009 was their last tournament appearance. "Rock of Love with Bret Michaels" was still on TV back then, to give you some perspective. You can't be 'back' until you're relevant. This team is there. Those eight minutes sold me. Everybody watched it today, and with an off-season of doing the right thing when nobody's looking, it will look even better when everybody's watching next year.
