Boston College is in the midst of yet another miserable season, but in one of those weekend yawners that not many people paid attention to, Eagles guard Jordan Chatman had perhaps the best long-range shooting performance that the college game will see this year in his team’s 85-79 loss to Virginia Tech on Sunday.
Chatman, a 6-foot-5 sophomore from Vancouver, Washington, scored a career-high 30 points for the Eagles, who have lost five straight.
Chatman kept the Eagles in the game in the first half, hitting all seven of his shots. He hit 10 of 12 from the floor for the game, including nine from deep.
Seth Allen and Justin Bibbs each scored 18 points to help Virginia Tech notch coach Buzz Williams’ 200th career victory.
On the real, ain’t nobody checking to watch yet another terrible Boston College team. Call it the Al Skinner curse. The program was legit back in the day, with high-caliber players that were worth the price of admission like Dana Barros, Danya Abrams, Scoonie Penn, Michael Adams, John Bagley, Troy Bell, Howard Eisley, Jared Dudley, Craig Smith and Reggie Jackson.
The last time the program made some noise was when Skinner, Dr. J’s former college teammate and roommate at UMASS, staked the sidelines as head coach from 1997 to 2010. They won 20 straight games to open the 2004-2005 season, and advanced to the Sweet Sixteen the next year while winning a school-record 28 games.
BC has never recovered from their short-sighted decision to part ways with Skinner after the 2010 season, and the Steve Donahue and Jim Christian teams that have followed have been terrible.
But if Chatman can get some more burn and a green light to fire away, along with the audacious scoring of fellow sophomore guard Jerome Robinson, BC might be worth a look every now and then. But the transfer of freshman point guard Ty Graves less than halfway through the season is not a good sign that things are moving in the right direction in Chestnut Hill.
Props to Chatman for conjuring up images of when Boston College hoops was actually worth checking for.
