Published Jan 24, 2023
BC Basketball: Earl Grant Transcript
Kevin Stone
Staff Writer

Coming off a historic win for the program over rival Notre Dame this weekend, BC is looking to keep momentum rolling against a very, very beatable team in Louisville when the Cardinals visit Conte Forum on Wednesday night.

BC then hits the road this weekend for a massive test against Virginia on Saturday afternoon, but before that, head coach Earl Grant met with the media during the weekly ACC coaches Zoom call on Monday. Here’s what stood out:

ON IMPACT OF QUINTEN POST’S RETURN AND WHERE HE’S IMPROVED MOST

“Well, obviously, he’s given us leadership, experience, size, skill, he’s given us a little bit of everything. So, he’s just really been an impactful guy and I think he’s kind of getting going a little bit. He’s only played five or six games, so he’s still got a ways to go, but I think he’s moving in the right direction.”

ON TEAM REBOUNDING

“From a defensive and offensive rebound standpoint, we have standards. We try to rebound the first miss, that’s a big part of our identity. We’ve certainly got to improve on the defensive rebounding side of it. Just continue to be more continue of hitting and being more physical on the glass. I think we’re at a good number right now, we’re want 72% of the misses, we want to secure those and I think we’re close to that number.”

ON THE STATE OF ACC OFFICIATING AND DEVELOPMENT OF OFFICIALS IN THE COLONIAL ATHLETIC LEAGUE

“I was in the ACC at Clemson and then went to the CAA, now I’m back in the ACC…didn’t see a lot of these officials out in the Missouri Valley, those guys are doing Pac 12 games and Mountain West games now. Officials are officials, I think we’ve got good officials. They have good nights, they have bad nights, just like our players do, just like we do as coaches, they’re humans. I think the biggest thing, as a coach, is you want consistency. I think we have some of the most top notch officials in all of college basketball, I don’t know that we can complain too much. I don’t know if we can find any better officials from anywhere else, so consistency would be the thing we all want.”

“Yeah, I think (the development of referees in the CAA and A-10) is working. Nothing in life is perfect, so I think it’s working. I think we’ve got a lot of good officials and they make mistakes, they’ve got a hard job. Some of the calls they have to make, it’s hard. So, again, you just want consistency. If they’re calling it the same on both ends, from a coaching standpoint, that’s all you can ask for.”

ON HOW BC CAN SUSTAIN OFFENSIVE OUPUT THEY HAD AGAINST NOTRE DAME

“I don’t know how other than we’ve just got to keep practicing every day. Going into this season, we thought we had a lot of firepower, but we lost a lot of those guys. I said to someone last week, I felt like we were back in late November trying to find ourselves, find our rhythm, how we want to play because that kind of got snatched away from us in the first part of the season. Just continue to practice, continue to show up every day, try to master our system offensively and defensively, maintain skill development and conditioning. We hope we’ll be playing our best basketball in March.”

ON THE SUDDEN SHARP THREE-POINT SHOOTING AGAINST NOTRE DAME

“I wish I could tell you (what happened in-between the UNC and ND games), I need to figure it out. But no, we did a lot of skill development. We spoke life to them. Maybe some of the messaging got through? I don’t know exactly what it was, but I think the guys spent a lot of extra time in the gym shooting and working on their shots. I just think this team, because of how the first 45 days went for us, it’s just getting better. Just getting better as we go and my whole hope is we’re playing our best in March, we’ve just got to get better every day. We made a step in the right direction offensively and defensively, but now we’ve got to build on it.”