Everything Boston College Men’s Basketball Head Coach Earl Grant Said at 2025 ACC Tipoff

The Eagles coach took the podium on Wednesday morning to talk about the upcoming season.

Oct 10, 2024; Charlotte, NC, USA; Boston College head coach Earl Grant answers questions from the media at The Hilton Charlotte Uptown. Mandatory Credit: Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images | Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images

Boston College men’s basketball took the podium at 2025 ACC Tipoff in Charlotte, N.C., on Wednesday morning.

The Eagles were represented by head coach Earl Grant, guard Donald Hand Jr., and forward Jayden Hastings.

Below is a transcript of everything Grant said.

EARL GRANT: Really thankful to be here. Thankful to have these two young men, Donald Hand and Jayden Hastings, with me. We're really excited about this season. We feel like we have a great team, great leadership, we're experienced. Excited to tip off a new season, '25-'26 in the ACC, which we feel is the best college basketball league there is.

So very thankful to be here. Just excited. Happy for these young men. They worked so hard to put themselves in a position to be here on a day like this, and we feel really great about our team and looking forward to the season.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach.

Q.  You and I were just talking about the transfer portal as well as retention, so I know you brought in some guys from Butler, Baylor, Missouri, to name a few, and then you also were able to retain. What does this roster look like for you this season with that mix?

EARL GRANT: Well, I mean, it starts with these guys here. You know, we retained half of our roster, which was very critical for us, because we feel like we do a good job identifying young men that could really compete in the ACC, but also are great students, have great character.

So once we get them on campus, if we can keep them, they're going to develop and they're going and they are going to become special. So I think it starts with retention. It's more important than the transfer portal.

To have six of our players from last year return and five of those six all play significant minutes, it's very exciting.

But, yeah, I do agree, we needed some help and so we went into the portal. We were prepared for the portal. We knew exactly what we were looking for.

So we got bigger and longer and more athletic and more experienced out of the portal. Certainly Boden Kapke coming from Butler, being a third-year player, played in the Big East. He's 6'11". He's 255 pounds; a really good player that's budding, ready to break out.

Aidan Shaw was at Missouri. Seen a little bit of everything. He's been to the NCAA Tournament. He's been through a year where they didn't win any games in the SEC, so he has a lot of experience. He's a great person. He's one of the better athletes on our team at 6'9".

Jason Asemota came from Baylor. 6'9" wing. Really good player that's going to flourish eventually.

Then a guy you didn't mention is from South Dakota, Chase Forte. I think in the portal we did great. We had good freshmen come in. Our freshmen really want to be at BC. They're special players and special people. I really like our roster.

THE MODERATOR: Curious about Chase. South Dakota is one of those spots where you don't see a whole lot of transfers coming out of. What was it about his play that put him on your radar screen?

EARL GRANT: Yeah, you know, the last transfer that came out of South Dakota went to Texas Tech and they went to the Final Four. He was a guard.

I think with Chase, we were looking for a leadership. We were looking for experience. We were looking for a good character guy, but somebody that was a worker that had toughness, that fit, you know, kind of our DNA at Boston College, which is high-character, talented person that's willing to work and roll his sleeves up.

We thought Chase fit all of those things that we were looking for. He's from North Carolina, so the ACC meant something to him. He really wanted to be at Boston College. He's getting a master's degree.

But he won. He was the defensive player of the year in his league. They won. He averaged 18 points. He averaged 25 points the last five games of the year. So he's very capable of scoring, but he really wanted to facilitate and serve and be a point guard and assist his teammates, but he's capable of scoring, and he's a great defender and he's a big, physical athletic guy.

Q.  Since you've been at Boston College you've endured the highs and lows of the season, but nevertheless you were able to retain your players to come back and play for you, to build and go through adversity together. What kind of identity are you trying to establish under your players here at Boston College?

EARL GRANT: Yeah, I mean, I think most of my time at Boston College has been great. We've just been climbing towards the top. Every year we got better. We won. We were very good in the ACC tournament. We got to the postseason. We had big wins in the ACC tournament. Everything was upward mobility.

The only year that wasn't was last year, which no big deal. We understood. It's a negative and positive. We lost players going into year four, really good players, four starters. If we didn't lose them, maybe these guys don't flourish the way they did. Maybe they don't play as much.

So them playing a lot last year, even though the season didn't go exactly the way we wanted it to go -- had about six overtime games -- they're ready now. So I think that year was actually a part of setting us up to have a good season this year.

Q.  I want to talk about the tempo and the style of play and build on what you were talking about. You shot the three as a team pretty well. You just didn't take a lot of them; about 28% of the total points came from three. Is that something you're wanting to implement a little bit more this season?

EARL GRANT: Yeah, we want to shoot about 12% more this year. We got better shooting. We have more guys that can make them, so we're going to make that an emphasis. We want to shoot good threes, so obviously you've got to get the ball inside, post feeds or driving it into the paint to get the defense to collapse.

So we got to work on ways to get more quality threes. I'm glad you brought that up. We did shoot 28, 29%. We want to be at 40% of our attempts coming from three. I think we have a very dangerous team that way, and we're going to really try to figure out how to get more three-point shots.