WRAL Sports Fan

WRALSportsFan

Preview: #7 Boston College (20-11) vs. #10 Texas Tech (21-12)

By Barry Jacobs

Mar 14, 2007

This is a nice Boston College team, essentially the same unit as last year minus inside leader Craig Smith and longtime playmaker Louis Hinnant. “The core of the team was still in place,” said coach Al Skinner. That remained true even after the mid-season dismissal of ‘06 reserves Sean Williams, an intimidating center, and Akida McLain.

The Eagles were carried for much of the year by senior wing Jared Dudley, the ACC player of the year, and by fleet point guard Tyrese Rice. Four members of the starting lineup were essentially set, with freshman forward Tyler Roche lately filling over the fifth spot.

Boston College led the ACC in mid-February, then sputtered badly and limped into postseason. Counting its decisive loss to UNC in the ACC Tournament semifinals, BC has dropped five of its last seven games. Even its win over Miami in the quarterfinals came in overtime after trailing most of the game.

Skinner, a laid-back sort whose sideline wardrobe invariably includes a golf shirt buttoned to the neck while other coaches wear dress shirts and ties, uses eight players. Where last year BC went to Smith first, in 2007 it became perimeter-oriented.

Dudley leads the team in scoring (19.0) and rebounding (8.3) and made a handsome 45.8 percent of his 3-pointers. Rice chips in 17.2 points despite inefficient 31.7 percent shooting from the bonusphere. His 32 points in an ACC Tournament win over Miami was a season high for the Eagles. Burly senior guard Sean Marshall is the other double-figure scorer at 14.8.

Tyrelle Blair and Shamari Spears, both new to the program, come off the bench to bolster the interior, where John Oates starts to modest effect. Blair is among the ACC’s better shotblockers, and is a solid rebounder.
The Eagles get to the foul line far more often than their opponents, and convert 72.4 percent of their free throws. They barely hold their own on the boards and in their ratio of assists to turnovers, and outscore opponents by only 4.7 points per game.

Their first round opponent, Texas Tech, resembles BC to a large extent.
Like BC, Texas Tech is guard-dependent. The top two scorers are senior Jarrius Jackson (20.0), nearing the school’s career scoring record, and 6-5 junior Martin Zeno (16.8). The Red Raiders shoot well but sparingly from long range (.412 on threes) and make 73.8 percent at the foul line. But they are outrebounded by nearly five per game and are next-to-last in the NCAA field in field goal percentage defense (45.9).

Texas Tech finished fifth in the Big 12 and was crushed by Kansas State in the league tournament quarterfinals, a game supposedly played with an NCAA berth on the line. Kansas State and new coach Bob Huggins did not get in, the first time in the 11-year history of the Big 12 one of its teams was snubbed despite compiling 10 conference wins and 20 victories overall.
Instead, the NCAAs included the league’s other verbally abusive coach, whose team won at least 20 games for the fifth time in his six years at Lubbock.

Knight’s squad also lost 12 times, including games outside the league against Marquette, UNLV, Stanford and Air Force. None of those teams is seeded higher than eighth in the NCAAs.

Boston College should have enough to survive this game, but without clicking on all cylinders will be bumped in the second round by second-seeded Georgetown in a matchup of former Big East rivals.