Boston College is starting over with Luke Murray, and the reset is on the floor. The Eagles are building their new identity around his offense as the season begins, with a nearly entirely new roster asked to learn a system built on backdoor cuts, off-ball movement and constant unpredictability.
That matters now because Boston College is trying to climb out of an offense that finished last in the Atlantic Coast Conference a season ago. The Eagles averaged 67.4 points per game, shot 40.8 percent from the field and 29.4 percent from 3-point range, numbers that made the need for change impossible to ignore.
For Murray, the appeal is not just style. It is structure. Zak Smrekar called his basketball foundation the most European style of play college basketball has to offer, and said the way Murray explained it during the recruiting process separated him from other coaches. That pitch has helped draw in a roster that has little history together and plenty to prove.
Money Williams is one of the players expected to carry much of that burden. He led the Big Sky Conference in scoring last season at 20.6 points per game, arrived at Boston College at 228 pounds and is now down to 204. Williams said he has to be comfortable being uncomfortable, and that life in the ACC is a challenge he wants because it demands accountability.
The problem for Boston College is that a clever offense still has to survive contact. Murray said the team lacks real size and called it a potential weak spot, even as the roster includes Luke Hunger at 6-10, Brandon Benjamin at 6-8 and Aly Tounkara at 7 feet. Benjamin, who was the eighth-leading rebounder in the country last season at 10.4 rebounds per game, said Murray taught him so much about basketball that he felt like he had never learned this much from the game before.
That is the tradeoff Boston College is making: betting on a system that can create movement and shots, while relying on a group that is still figuring out how to hold up in the ACC. The first real test comes Tuesday against Wagner at 7 p.m., followed by UMass at TD Garden on Friday at 4 p.m. If the offense travels, the reset can start to look real; if it does not, the size issue Murray flagged will move from concern to problem.
