Boston College was set to enter the 2019-20 season with a razor-thin margin for error. In a deep ACC, the Eagles are certainly not the most talented team, and they don’t exactly make up for it with more experience than anyone else. On Wednesday, things got worse, as the school announced that Wynston Tabbs will undergo surgery on his left knee and miss the entire season.
The sophomore guard showed plenty of promise last season, and he did it right away as he was the first BC freshman to score at least 15 points in each of his first three games. He was third on the team in scoring and fourth in assists, the latter despite playing in just 15 games due to knee issues last season. Tabbs figured to be the primary scoring option in the backcourt now that Ky Bowman left early to pursue a professional career.
Now, the Eagles will be without Tabbs as well, and thus will lean more heavily on graduate transfer Derryck Thornton and holdovers Jared Hamilton and Chris Herren Jr.. The latter two were bit players a year ago, so they need to make sizable leaps. Jordan Chatman is also gone, which means the Eagles don’t have a proven sniper from long range; Herren is the only holdover who shot better than 30 percent from deep last year and he was below 33 percent.
Put another way, the Eagles are going to have to be a better defensive team than a year ago to have better results. Last year, they were just okay there, holding opponents under 42 percent from the field including under 32 percent from deep. However, they didn’t force many turnovers and were also out-rebounded, surrendering nearly 12 offensive boards every time out, and as nice as the 42 percent opponent field goal percentage might sound, only four ACC teams allowed opponents to shoot better.
The Eagles’ top returning scorer is Nik Popovic, who came on at the end of the season by scoring double figures in all but one game and 20 or more in three of the last four. Chances are, they will now run a lot more of the offense through him and junior Steffon Mitchell, who showed promise as a freshman but slumped last season. A bounce-back year from Mitchell is even more of a necessity now.
BC got a taste of life without Tabbs last season, and it wasn’t good. While they were 10-5 in the games he played, they were 4-12 in the 16 games he missed, including the last 14 games. His role was different than it would be this season, and the Eagles were a tough team to figure in non-conference with wins over Loyola-Chicago and Minnesota against losses to IUPUI and Hartford, but the results last season were not encouraging for what is to come.
The Eagles will not have it easy on the schedule this season aside from the always-tough ACC. They host Belmont, Eastern Washington and Saint Louis in the Gotham Classic, and also get DePaul at home fresh off a run to the CBI championship, though the Billikens and Blue Demons each lose some key pieces from a year ago. Belmont and Eastern Washington figure to be contenders in their respective conferences. Northwestern visits for the ACC/Big Ten Challenge as well, and while the Wildcats don’t project to be in the upper echelon of the Big Ten, they don’t figure to be an easy win, either.
This also doesn’t come at a good time for the coaching staff. Head coach Jim Christian will enter his sixth season at the helm with just one winning season during his tenure, a 19-16 win two years ago that earned them an NIT bid. He didn’t inherit a good situation, especially with the roster situation from a class balance standpoint, as for the first couple of seasons they had to rely on graduate transfers for some experience. There has been some promise over that time, but athletic director Martin Jarmond is not the person who hired him, and another losing season can’t be a plus from a job security standpoint even if there’s no thought to making a move anytime soon save for something drastic like an NCAA violation.
Avoiding that got a lot more difficult with last Wednesday’s news.
