Boston College Basketball Faces Massive OVERHAUL With Luke Murray’s Leadership

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Luke Murray is the new head coach for Boston College Basketball, and that is great news,

but he has a ton of work ahead of him if he wants to fix Boston College Basketball.

You are a Lockdown Boston College, your daily podcast on the Boston College Eagles,

part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day.

Hello, everyone, and welcome.

This is Lockdown Boston College, your team every day.

I'm your host A.J. Black of Eagle Insider, part of the 247 Network on today's show.

Baseball shines beating UVA 2 out of 3.

Where is Burtball going?

And how high can this group rise?

Talk about that.

The scrimmage from this weekend, I was there.

Two very big positives that I noticed.

And one concern.

We'll talk about what we saw.

Additionally, the biggest news of the weekend is BC Basketball has their head coach.

Now what?

Let's get into that.

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All right.

Now, if you had not listened to La Friday's emergency episode,

Boston College has their basketball coach,

and as I cheered for on Thursday, they didn't mess this up.

They didn't screw any of this up.

BC has the right head coach, and I couldn't be more excited about

the future Boston College basketball as Luke Murray,

the assistant coach for Yukon is now the head coach.

Now, a little bit of context here is he's not going to be able to be the next head coach

for another week because Yukon, and I gotta say, I watched it,

and I was kind of rooting for him in this.

One of the craziest games I've ever seen in March Madness with a shot

with what point four seconds left to down Duke

and complete a furious 16 point comeback.

Incredible win, and I don't know.

I don't know how much I should play into that.

If you get a guy that can be part of that on your roster,

that's a great thing, but I'm going to go there because

Luke Murray was on that bench.

He's helped dry out those offenses.

He was coaching those players.

And so, yeah, you have now a coach that coached one of the most crazy

and wild March Madness wins of all time.

That being said, the excitement.

And yeah, now that they're on the finals,

go get yourself a national championship, Luke Murray.

And this is when hell freezes over that you have AJ Black,

a Boston College person, hearing for the Yukon Huskies.

If you listen to this podcast before,

I'm usually ripping on them any chance I get, but

I change them right here.

So, Murray, now what does he have to do?

What does he have to do?

This can be interesting.

I'm curious to see how he's going to manage

his Yukon duties for the next week.

Because Dan Hurley already said he's not leaving Yukon

until the season's over.

So, you have him for nothing.

He's going to be with the Huskies for another week.

But he's not a dumb man.

He's going to want to make sure that he's not behind the eight ball

when the transfer portal opens in just over a week.

You know, it opens the day after,

or it's either the day after or right after the national championship game.

So, Murray's going to need to get his ducks in a row.

Like, he's going to have to do a few different things.

First of all, he's going to have to put his staff together.

Who is he going to bring in?

Now, he's not going to, I would bet the House

that unless it's a lower level assistant,

maybe a general manager or something like that,

then he's going to give a bump up too.

I don't think he'll bring anyone from Yukon.

Come on, he young's not going to be coming.

And, you know, it seems like he's going to want to leave things good

with Dan Hurley and poaching his staff is not the best thing to do.

But on the positive side of things,

Murray has had multiple stops.

I mean, he worked with Chris Mack at Louisville.

He's got good coaching connections all over the place.

One person sent me a name that I thought was interesting,

which was the head coach of Robert Morris, Andy Toul,

who apparently knows Luke Murray.

Maybe he's a name to watch for,

but like see what I mean, like things like that.

And he's a head coach, so that's a good one and a young one too.

So he's going to have to get those coaches in place

because it's going to be really important for a few things.

He has to decide what the roster is going to look like.

You have, I mean, this is the world of college sports now.

It's not like selling the players that you have to keep them there.

There may be that you want something that you want to keep.

But he's basically going to look at his roster,

make decision like this guy fits what I want to do.

This guy fits what I want to do.

This one's not and then make his decisions from there.

Like he's look Murray plays a very fast pace,

fast movement style offense at UConn.

And involves a lot of work and a lot of in high basketball IQ.

So looking at his roster and deciding who fits what he needs to do.

And he's going to have to have conversations.

It's the world of college sports where you know,

you got to be saying to a guy like, okay, you know,

I think it probably best if you enter the portal

because you're not going to have much of a role here

and we're not going to be able to offer you anything.

You know, there's variations in those kinds of conversations

that happen across college sports.

So I imagine that's going to happen.

And on top of all this, this guy's never going to sleep.

I feel like he's going to pee up for the next like a week straight.

You got to start evaluating the portal.

Like now, like you can't wait until Monday.

The people are already doing it.

You know what's happening.

And if he wants to rebuild this roster fast,

that's the joy of college basketballs.

You can do it like this.

This is not like most college sports or like college basketball teams.

You can do it really quickly if you do it right.

Like look at Louisville.

Look at what NC State just did.

Like they turned the Miami.

Like they turned it around fast.

So he has that ability,

but he's going to have to have the time to go out there

and hit the portal because I imagine he's going to need.

He's going to have quite a few spots.

I'm not going to get into who's in and who's out.

Not fair to the players.

And honestly, I'm not sure where his mind is.

And maybe he sees things in tape that I wouldn't see.

But I imagine there's going to be a lot.

I bet there's going to be a lot of spaces.

I mean, just off the off of what we know now, he's got two.

He's got Tray Beamer who entered the not into the portal,

but reopened his recruitment after Earl Grant got fired.

And then we had Akbar Waheed who entered the portal.

So you get two right there.

And that's before a coach was even named.

So I imagine we're going to start to hear more and more of that.

But usually the way this kind of works,

I know it worked with Bill O'Brien this way was.

He took over O'Brien and he had conversations with every player.

But Paul, I think he wanted more to keep things going.

But when your team was, or they went 11 and 21,

or something like that last year,

may not be the worst thing in the world to hit the reset button.

Like just wish everyone well and have them head on their way.

But I think that's going to be where things are going to be going.

Because he needs to watch those tapes and go, I need a center.

I need a couple of wings.

I need a shooting guard.

I need someone who can actually play point guard.

Like he's going to need things like that.

He's going to need time to do it.

And it's not just like, oh, I can do that on Monday and be done.

If you've been following along on social media,

players are entering all the time now.

And it's going to like, I imagine it's going to get worse and worse

as we get closer to the portal time.

So that's all going to be happening.

That's a busy week.

We're going to have new assistant coaches because he's going to have to.

And he's going to have to decide which players are going to say

and which ones he's going to encourage to hit the portal.

And you're never going to hear them say that they were encouraged at the portal.

But we all know that kind of stuff happens, right?

It happens in all teams.

It's just part of the game now.

And then he's going to have to start reaching out to find portal players.

And I think, too, this is just my, my conjecture here.

He's going to have money.

Obviously, he didn't take this job unless he was given money to build a roster.

Like, look, Barry wouldn't, like, he's one of the higher rated,

like, regarded assistants out there.

And he could have just sat and waited another year

if he didn't get what he wanted, my opinion on that.

The school had to guarantee, I think, a certain amount of money to build a roster.

But I've heard good things, too, that he's a good fundraiser.

So I wonder, too, if this excitement around him,

and there's a lot of excitement.

I was at practice and talking a couple other people out there that follow BC.

And they're excited.

One of the big things I keep hearing about from various people

is that he's a fundraiser and can raise money.

So maybe he makes a few phone calls and gets a little extra from different organizations.

Because I don't think you can do individual NIL anymore.

It's going to be group-based.

But maybe that excitement starts and he'll have a little extra money to go around, too.

So as I said to start this off, Luke Murray is not going to be sleeping for the next week.

Between that and he's got a game prep for next weekend.

And, you know,

front practices and all that good stuff, he's going to be a busy man.

But I'm excited because I think he's got a lot he can do for BC.

And it all starts, it's already started.

So we'll have to see what the next steps are in his evolution as a head coach.

Now, in our second segment, I was at Scrimmage on Saturday.

I can tell you more about two things that really impressed me

and one thing that concerned me.

I'll explain what I mean by that in just a moment.

This is moving the game forward for those who know the score

who never tells the whole story.

This weekend, I need to tell you about Nick Wang.

Slugger for BC, who has now, I believe he's onto a 29-game hitting streak.

This guy is everywhere.

You know, the joke is always the Wang Bang.

But he is the level of consistency that BC baseball needed.

Beating UVA 2 out of 3 games at home.

They're one of the best teams in the ACC right now.

And they're playing at a level no one expects.

And there's more of these players in the highlights.

The early mornings, the late night runs,

constantly showing up for their squad on and off the field.

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Locked on Boston College AJ Black here.

And I want to tell you about our everyday club.

If you've not joined already right now,

you get a three-month with the code March.

I think this is the last day.

You can use that code to get up there and use it.

Try out our discord server.

What does discord?

It's a big group chat

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If you want to chat BC, if you want to talk about Luke Murray,

what's going on in the portal with other BC fans?

Al drop by?

I want to make this a big hop and thing.

all you need to do is put in the code March, you get a free month. Let's get that bang and let's

get that going. So check that out on locked on Boston College dot supercast dot com again locked on

Boston College dot supercast dot com to sign up two day. All right. On Saturday I got to go to

scrimmage. BC had a scrimmage in fish field house and I was excited because I got a chance to

really watch what the football team can do and to get a chance to see everything that's going on

and it was a packed crowd 70 plus recruits about 10 of them. I would say a priority or 12

or about guys that you might want to know about. We have those over an eagle insider.

But I got to watch the players and I after watching 120 plays talking to the staff talking to

Michael crowns and Chris Jones. I left with two very strong positive reactions to that scrimmage

and then one that they left me a little bit like who if they get some work to do there and the

two big positives. I'll go with I'll go with the smaller positive first and that's the running

game. Not that smaller but like this was a less surprised to me because I was like yeah they get

some good running backs. They got a lot of good running backs and I got a shout out a few

different names because they showed me what they could do. Now we've heard all spring about Evan

Dickens. This kid is quick. He's very very quick and had a couple big runs in this game like they

got something there. I saw a little bit out of Nolan right that the transfer from so Evan Dickens

the transfer from Liberty. Nolan raised a transfer from Maryland. He had a couple nice plays as well

but nothing like as explosive but I can I definitely can see what he brings because he's the

biggest back out there. Like they're going to use him a lot. I imagine especially in like goal

line or short term things because he's just big. He's a big dude. So he stood out to me like

like that that piece but it was some of the other guys that you just don't talk about as much

that really showed me that they're going to have a big role. The first is Makai Don. This is the

running back from Catholic Memorial. We've talked about how last year didn't get a chance to really

see him at all. Like I was a camp last year. He was always with the scout team so I never got to

really see him because they usually push those guys off to away from the media because most media

don't really care about the scout team but he's out there doing more now. He's out there competing

against you know the you know top guys and he looks good. He's a bigger back and they have something

there. There's something with Makai Don. It's the the size the he's got an explosiveness to him

like like a like you want to use this back type more often type of back because he's just he's got

everything you need in a back like how many times BC has had the Alex Brooms and who is a camp

barfields and Xavier Coleman. He's like undersized smaller backs and he does always room for those

on a college football team right but it felt like for a while. Halfly had a lot of those and you you

wish to go back to the days of AJ Dylan and Andre Williams with big beefy backs but she didn't

never really got huge ones. You get like like pair down versions with Kai Roba Show or even last year

you know with Jordan McDonald. Makai Don is like he's not an AJ Dylan size back. Not he not

not like that but he's a bigger back. He's got the size and that's going to help because you can

do more physical running games where you can let your your front line win and let him grind things out

and I think that's going to be important when I talk about what one of my concerns is going to be

because you need a guy like that. The other bombachromic obviously continues to look fine like I you

know I'm not sure how things will you know I can't talk about who ranks higher than what right now

it's one one scrimmage it's not fair to say because like you know you never know like who's

dinged up or who has you know an off day or whatever it's just one it's one data point right.

Bo had Bo had a couple good runs too but the name that stood out to me which I've talked about

on the show but I was really impressed with the physicalness of him was Sandvik Addison this

the freshman right running back from Peach Tree Georgia he is physical as heck good size on him too

what impressed me was it was practice and he did not seem scared of any you know taking any hits

like there was one play where he lowered his shoulder and like just popped the guy

I get the sense that the defense might have been getting frustrated with him because they got

right back to him at one point but like he's something like you combine this all together like

I'm not sure who will be the most explosive back you have obviously Dickens probably could be that

but you you can make an argument for Dodd you can make an argument for Addison like

they've got so much talent here on that running game so that was one point I wanted to mention

where all those guys lots of good talent on that running game I like that the other positive

actually what's let's I want to tell you all this we'll see the one big positive to the very end

I'm gonna give you my concern now and that was the passing game was not very crisp I'm not gonna

say it's a huge concern yet again it's one data point it's one practice as Bill said during the

during the post game that the passing game was not where he wanted it to be and it was clear like

they just they were struggling all over the place with just like downfield passing but

when you have a quarterback I I wonder if it's gonna take some repetition for Mason McKenzie right

you have a quarterback that ran for thousand yards or whatever last year and he's thrown too but

if you're trying to get him to to understand more of those downfield concepts maybe it's

gonna take him a little long and that's okay um the positives with the with that with all the

quarterbacks where they were quick uh their running game was great I thought McKenzie was

Mason McKenzie does a nice job of trying to make his reads he doesn't like just you know

tuck it and run febby that below it did a little bit more of that but he's a true freshman so

that that's understandable uh but he would make his reads and if if nothing was there and then he

would take it and run and it's important to note too like yeah there was not the running the wide

receivers were not open a lot that could have been the play of the the quarterbacks but it also

could have been uh they're they're missing guys as Bill has said on his show and this is once he

talks about it we can talk about it jaden skied is out until next uh till the till till till the summer

and Dawson pew is battling a hamstring so your top two wide receivers are out you're you're using

a lot of your backups for this so that piece was there too so there was a lot going on yeah the

Mason McKenzie did making an incredible pass to uh I want to call him read Harris because it was a

read Harris s catch to read swanson I love that um but for the most part the the passing part of

their offense it was definitely behind of the other pieces like and they're gonna have to do a lot

of work there and I and that's what he even said that after the practice like it wasn't where he

wanted it to be so that was the one concern was the passing game I wasn't too concerned with the

offensive line um they they were back there was issues there but I think you have five guys that

are learning to work together were they perfect no but I think that as they continue to to to gel

and uh work together more that I think they'll probably get better I'm not too concerned there

the big positive though the big positive that I took away from this I'm gonna get into in just a

moment because I want to talk in depth about why this makes me most excited about BC basketball

I mean being a BC basketball BC football heading into next year I'll tell you who that

group is and what's got what's got me buzzing I'll tell you that in just a moment

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wrapping things up here at locked on Boston college if you were into the show you need to check out

all my shows go back to the archives right now there's so much goals in my loop my re episode go check

out the any of my coaching search stuff there's lots to go back on check those out and if you want more

there's locked on ACC as well that's available on youtube and wherever you podcast now I was going to

tell you the biggest positive from Saturday's scrimmage and that was the play of the defensive line

specifically the ed rushers and there's two ed rushers in particular that need to be highlighted

from practice that is Georgia edge rushing transfer Chris Jones and second year Valpo transfer

on you new EC are no CC no CC I think I messed it up so those two players Jones and no CC had

a eye opening practice Jones specifically one his match up consistently through practice he was in

the backfield he had multiple sacks he was you know rushing the passer and getting good pressure

on the passer on a bunch of others he would have had sacks if they if they blew it dead earlier

and and and sacks it just so you guys are aware of it because you haven't been many you haven't been

a sack and a scrimmage is too hand touch basically if he gets his hands on the quarterback the rough

blows dead after the practice O'Brien said that they're defensive lines at a level that they're

very happy about and it's very clear this is night and day from last year last year you're hoping

Q Hutchins was going to be the guy and then you didn't really have any like honestly go back and

listen even then I was going I don't know who else they have now you have these two and no

CC I think I should bring up to he played four games last year got hurt and then redshirted

I've been talking to the sources I have I've heard all sorts of good things about no CC like this is

the guy that I think is going to play a major role for BC this year like I'm a big talented ed

rusher and he showed he showed it number eight he's now number eight I think I don't know if I

don't know the the details of why he's he redshirted all last year but he looks like I remember

watching him last year at practice and going this is it like this I don't like I when I was talking

about how I didn't think BC any ed rushers last year I watched him and I he was not even someone

they would notice like he was kind of invisible he's very visible now he's he's everywhere they got

something here I think there's a reason to be really confident that you're going to have a good

pass rush this year and something I didn't expect you have those two you also need to bring up like

they have some depth there too with and Bill brought them up Israel all of the poo poo and

why am I making my name Demetrius Ballard who is an absolute monster like he is six every

he's listed six six he's very much six six like he's heads and shoulders about everybody out so

you have four right there and Bryce Lewis who was at you know practicing well too with his dad

watching which was interesting to see you know former BC defensive coordinator Tim Lewis who's

now a parent gets to watch his kid but you got five ed rushers that you can rule with five that

have pretty good upside that's a huge positive that defense is going to be much better

sia torrents as Bill said on his podcast is out right now he was you know he's going to be

back during the summer but you have a healthier max Tucker you have a healthy

Ashton cutting him out there KP price you have Carter Davis in the right spot now at the other

safety position Marcus Upton looked really good you got you got some positive talent there

now again I'm not going to tell you right now it's the middle of March I end of March

who's going to be like the most talented plet you know how good this team is going to be I'm

telling you what I noticed from that practice and the defense is much better it was much better

and honestly too I think it's important if potentially could that have been because of struggles with

the offensive line yes that's a fair thing because Jones but Jones was all over the place he they

had him lined up on you know both sides and he would move around doing all sorts of stuff could be

that though and it's also typical to say at this point of practice I think even Bill said it

that the defense is usually ahead of the offense and that was clear yesterday so that's my thoughts

on practice but before we go out two shout outs to two teams that have had a good last couple

weeks I got a shout out women's lacrosse I didn't mention this end of last week after losing the UNC

who's a juggernaut right now they played the number two team Stanford and beat them 13 to 11 at home

and that the number two team that's a big win for them it's been an up and down year for the

women's lacrosse team they started off really slow they kind of got things going but they're on a

good roll right now and honestly you you can put the the UNC loss in a different basket because

they're just so good like they can't knock them for losing to the to cardio so just very very good

and you're not there yet beating Stanford the number two team in the country shows you belong so

they're they're right there that's a positive okay the other piece I need to know to shout out is

baseball and I want to specifically mention the pitching staff who had an unbelievable weekend

until one inning at the end of the Sunday game they had let up I think they let up three runs

to to UVA before Sunday's game and you know you got great pitching from mud and Kip and AJ

Call of Russo and like Brady Miller like all these guys were pitching their their tail off you win

the first two games incredible wins they run rule them on Saturday 17 to nothing the number nine

team in the country UVA you run rule them and then it fell apart at the end of Sunday's game where

the bullpen couldn't throw strikes and they lost but they should be ranked there was no reason

bc baseball should not be ranked because you just want two out of three against them you swept

cow you want two out of three against Miami like you're this is a good team you beat you con you beat

northeaster like good decent programs rank them rank bc baseball they deserve it and it was great

to see that I think they had 2400 fans at the game on Sunday that's awesome that's so awesome

and they deserve it because they're a fun team they're playing extremely well and they deserve

the support and Todd engine and I just got something going there they're going to be a tournament team

if they keep this up all right thank you all for joining me we'll have much more news with portal

also it's a good stuff coming up on tomorrow show follow me on twitter day jblc for seven and I'll

see you all again soon for another episode of locked on Boston College your team every day

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