Boston Globe rips BC athletics w/front page cover story + Al Skinner rant

[Pat Kelly]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/...ng-scrutiny/iWqaOoo6ZnIIKyksVLYSGJ/story.html

Obviously blasted football and basketball. I'll bring up a couple points from the basketball portion of the article, as that program currently seems to be a much more difficult fix.

The basketball team has had only one winning season since Al Skinner was fired and it was in 2010-11, when they were led by Al Skinner recruit Reggie Jackson, who is currently averaging over 22 points per game in the NBA. Jackson was Skinner's 5th recruit to play in the NBA--there have been no BC players to play in the NBA since.

A couple reasons I've seen for the winningest coach in school history being fired was for becoming too complacent, being "too casual", and for running a boring style offense, the flex. Bob Ryan of the Globe ripped him on his way out and seemed to say as much (below).

http://www.boston.com/sports/colleg...ful_boston_college_tenure_had_run_its_course/

Oddly enough, Al was out of the game three years after his firing before being hired at an assistant at small-school Bryant, and before this year finally got another head coaching job at equally small Kennesaw State.

Couple interesting quotes from a couple more articles:

Current Providence head coach and former Skinner assistant Ed Cooley for a Globe article in January 2014: ""For Al Skinner not to be a head coach is a travesty to college basketball," Cooley said. "It's crazy how he's not a head coach somewhere."" (see below)

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/...ving-bryant/V3bXbeebFmJrGrNtIjrSCJ/story.html

And for one last article, a little background on Kennesaw State from a December article:

"Kennesaw State is 3-8. Its 11-year-old basketball program has been reeling with records of 10-22, 6-25, 3-27,and 3-28 the last four seasons. To say the Owls outmarched expectations in getting a former Division 1 National Coach of the Year to run the program is an understatement." (see below)

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/...nesaw-state/vJgr0hdEFEquq9hZSQLU2H/story.html

For a little continuation on Kennesaw State, they finished this year 11-20, including an 8-8 finish, basically matching their win total of the prior three seasons combined.

Long post, I know, but as someone who grew up going to many Boston College games and loved watching the teams in the mid-2000s, seeing where the program is now frustrates me to no end.

 

[MSOrange]

Boring style offense? Because yeah that was just dynamite watching them put up 40 points in the Dome earlier this season. That was outrageous to fire Skinner and I'm glad they are paying for it.

 

[DJHAK232]

A few things. The Bob Ryan/Globe thing was spoon fed by Gene DeFilppo to justify the firing. Towards the end of skinner, when cooley and all of his original assistants left, Skinner fell off. I don't think many were completely broken up over the firing, because it did get stale and the trajectory was not positive.

Of course BC looks bad in retrospect because of this year, but the real root of the problem wasn't firing Skinner. Donahue took a large class his first year (which was a result of a large class taken by Skinner when he was there) and is now the cause of another large class full of Freshman. Donahue was also uninterested in recruiting and strength training, and the guys that he did have remote success bringing in, left. Ryan Anderson is a great example, he was solid at BC, but is a completely different player at UA this year having taken a year off to finally get stronger and rehab.

 

[orange79]

BC hasn't been trying in anything but hockey since they joined the ACC. Kind of disgusting, really.

But...SUPERFANS!!!!

 

[Cheriehoop]

BC admins hurt themselves by firing their old successful football coach simply because he interviewed for another job. Think of the message this gave their future stable of coaches in revenue sports. Do not think of BC as a stepping stone coaching position, so unless BC is your destination job - do not apply. That's what contract buyouts are for and negotiated before a hire. You can't force your university to be considered a destination job unless it truly is. I don't feel sorry for them, they aren't a victim, they doubled down making a poor situation absolutely horrible.

 

[GoYanks1989]

BC basketball had an announced attendance of 1018 people against Virginia Tech about three weeks ago. Pretty sure I've been to high school games with more people