Boston College, a program with the second-longest NCAA Tournament drought of any high-major program, will again try to find a coach to get the Eagles back to the Big Dance.
The Eagles fired coach Earl Grant on Sunday, the school announced, ending a five-year tenure that never saw BC crack the top-70 in the year-end KenPom standings. Grant went 72-92 in his five campaigns after getting the job in 2021, after a nice seven-year run at Charleston.
Boston College’s last NCAA Tournament appearance came in 2009 under Al Skinner. The program has seen Steve Donahue, Jim Christian and Grant try to break through, only to wind up near the bottom of the power-conference-program hierarchy. Whereas BC was consistently making the NCAAs and earning good seeds in the 2000s under Skinner, the program is now considered among the five least desirable among all high-major jobs in men’s college basketball.
The last coach to leave Boston College’s men’s basketball program on his own accord was Jim O’Brien in 1997.
“We are grateful to Earl for his dedication to our student-athletes and to the Boston College community over the past five seasons,” Boston College AD Blake James said in a statement. “Earl is a man of high character who represented our institution with class. However, we have greater expectations for our basketball program and I believe a change in leadership is necessary to change the trajectory of our program.”
A lack of fan support, combined with an incongruent marriage with the ACC, has doomed the team for much of the past two decades. Boston College was believed to be working with the lowest NIL number of any ACC team the past three years.
Who’s next? It’s a tough job, but it is nonetheless a power-conference opportunity. The Eagles are expected to seriously look at Joe Gallo (of nearby Merrimack), UConn assistants Luke Murray and Kimani Young, Yale coach James Jones and Los Angeles Clippers assistant Jay Larranaga (who has ties to Boston) as it builds out its search this week.
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