A Jersey Guy: BC Needs Back To Future Plan

If newly named Boston College basketball coach Earl Grant wants to re-establish BC's foundation he should name Al Skinner as his associate head coach

The zoom call press conference was filled with enthusiasm and energy. Boston College athletic director Patrick Kraft and his just named men's basketball coach Earl Grant were ready to take on the challenge of rebuilding BC basketball.

Standard stuff really. Expected words from an administration trying to breath life into a basketball program which hasn't had an NCAA bid in 12 years and only two winning seaons.

But Grant has no BC connections, and no visible Northeast recruiting link.

Here''s a suggestion. 

Use a resource Gant admitted he had already tapped--former BC head coach Al Skinner, who oozes Northeast links.

 He grew up in New York, went to school at UMass --was a teammate of the legendary Julius Erving. 

 Skinner played for seven years in the NBA--the Celtics drafted him--before moving into coaching at Rhode Island and then for 13 years as the head coach at Boston  College,  where he was the winningest coach in BC history.

Then the tale took a dark twist. 

BC fired Skinner, who had won Coach of the Year honors in the Atlantic 10 at Rhode Island and in the Big East at BC. He also won two regular season titles in the Big East and was an upper tier team in the ACC--including a remarkable 28-8 record and a Sweet 16 appearance for the Eagles in 2005-06. 

So much for the theory that BC can't win in the ACC.

But a 14-17 season, followed by a 22-12 bounce back and a  15-16 finish wasn't good enough and BC was fired.

BC hasn't been the same since Skinner left, with some harsh feelings on both side.

But that was yesterday's news. 

It is time to move forward.

Binging in Skinner to serve as an associate head coac, in the same manner that young Michigan coach Juwan Howard added former Saint Joseph's head coach Phil Martellli to his staf, would be wise move.

Skinner didn't reject the idea when I asked him about it on Tuesday. ""Haven't given it that much thought,'' he said, while conceding that Grant had talked to Skinner about  BC and "coaching in general.'''H's a good guy. I wish him luck.''

 Hiring Skinner would make sense.

BC needs to up its basketball budget in facilities and coaching salaries. 

It needs a link to the past, with someone who knows how the recruiting pipeline in and out of the Northeast works.

And Skinner, at a young  69, living in semi-retirement in  Charleston, South Carolina still has the competitive juices flowing in him, which belies all the garbage about his lack of a work ethic and how he did his job.

The bottom line was that he WON at BC, which hasn't happened for a long time at The Heights in basketball

How bad has it been?

Get beyond the point of never climbing above the .500 mark in the ACC for the past seven years.

In a survey we did comparing BC to 16 other Jesuit schools competing at the  Division 1 level, the Eagles finished 15th of 16 teams in overall record since Skinner was fired after the 2009-2010 seasons, topping only Fordham.

Grant and BC can take a huge giant step forward by bringing Skinner back to The Heights.

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