As conference championship season heats up and the college basketball world prepares for the looming NCAA tournament, the sport’s coaching carousel begins to spin. The ACC now has two openings as of Sunday.
Hours after Georgia Tech fired Damon Stoudamire after an 11–20 (2–16) season that left the Yellow Jackets in the ACC’s basement, Boston College, which posted the same overall record with a slightly better mark in conference play (4–14), has done the same with Earl Grant, per Jeff Goodman of Field of 68.
Grant exits Chestnut Hill, Mass. after posting a 72–92 record with the Eagles since taking over ahead of the 2021–22 season. He finished above .500 just one time, leading Boston College to a 20–16 record (8–12 in ACC play) in 2023–24, finishing the year with a second-round loss in the NIT. He led the team to a pair of ACC tournament quarterfinals in 2022 and ‘24, but the Eagles failed to quality for the event in the last two years.
Prior to the job at Boston College, Grant had a successful run in the CAA at College of Charleston, leading the Cougars to a 127–89 record from 2014 to ‘21. The Cougars won a share of the CAA regular season title and took home the conference championship in 2018, finishing with a record of 26–8. A 13-seed in the NCAA tournament, they lost a very competitive game against No. 4 seed Auburn, 62–58, in the first round.
Five candidates to replace Earl Grant at Boston College
The Eagles job is not an easy one, in a bloated ACC that now stretches from coast to coast. Even in a league with more winnable games than ever, Boston College has struggled to maintain anything close to relevance since the 2000s. The Eagles haven’t reached the NCAA tournament since the 2009 season under Al Skinner, whose dismissal after a sub-.500 season a year later feels more like a critical error with each passing year.
Steve Donahue, Skinner’s replacement in 2011, went 54–76 in four seasons, reaching the NIT in his first year in Chestnut Hill. Jim Christian, who took over after a solid stint at Ohio, was 78–132 in seven seasons, and like his predecessor and successor Grant, reached one NIT and zero Big Dances.
An ACC job is still an ACC job, even in the league’s diminished state of the last few seasons, and if nothing else, after 12 seasons of Christian and Grant, Boston College has shown that it will give a coach some leeway. That may not count nearly as much as institutional support in the way of revenue sharing and NIL cash, but it is something.
Sports Illustrated’s Kevin Sweeney has identified five names to watch for the B.C. job.
Joe Gallo — Merrimack
Gallo, a 46-year old New Jersey native, has impressed in Boston College’s backyard, elevating Merrimack—a school about 45 minutes north of Chestnut Hill—from Division II to Division I, and winning immediately in the process. Merrimack captured the 2020 Northeast Conference title in its first D-I season, and after a pair of down years, took home the conference tournament in 2023, finishing the season on an 11-game winning streak. The fourth-year transition team was not allowed, however, to compete in the NCAA tournament that year. The Warriors have since moved to the MAAC, where they are the No. 1 seed. After defeating Sacred Heart in the conference quarterfinals, they will take on Marist Sunday for a chance to punch a ticket to their first-ever Division I NCAA tournament. That success could cost him their coach in the process, as Gallo is a natural inclusion for any Northeastern schools looking for a program builder.
James Jones — Yale
The Ivy League’s longest-tenured coach has been a stalwart in New England. If he wants to try his hand at a Power 5 job after 27 years leading the Elis, the opening at Boston College could be his chance. B.C. is a strong academic institution in its own right, and would love the high-level success that Jones has had in New Haven. It wasn’t until his 17th season at Yale that Jones led the Bulldogs to the NCAA tournament, but his program has since become a regular, participating in March Madness in five of the last 10 years, with a chance to do so for a sixth time this year. Yale will be the No. 1 seed in this year’s Ivy League tournament. (The program was also the Ivy League’s top team in 2020 before the conference and NCAA tournaments were canceled due to COVID-19).
The Bulldogs have made noise in the Dance as well. As a No. 12 seed in 2016, they knocked off No. 5 Baylor before giving No. 4 Duke a real run in the round of 32, falling 71–64. Eight years later, Yale knocked off No. 4-seed Auburn as a No. 13-seed, before losing to San Diego State two days later.
Jay Larranaga — Los Angeles Clippers (assistant)
A name that will be familiar to those who follow ACC basketball, Larranaga is the son of former George Mason and Miami coach Jim Larrañaga. Jay, who played at Bowling Green, has primarily coached on the pro side, leading the G League’s Erie BayHawks from 2010 to ‘12 before assistant stints with the Celtics (‘12 to ‘21) and the Clippers, where he currently works under Ty Lue. Larranaga is also a very familiar name to Boston College athletic director Blake James, who previously served in the same role at Miami, working with the senior Larrañaga for nearly a decade before taking over at Boston College.
Jared Dudley — Denver Nuggets (assistant)
If the Eagles want their next hire to harken back to the Skinner years, they can look no further than one of his biggest star players. Dudley was the 2007 ACC Player of the Year and a second-team All-American as a senior before he posted a lengthy NBA career. After playing for 15 years across seven franchises, Dudley entered coaching after the end of his playing career in 2021, working under Jason Kidd with the Mavericks from 2021 to ‘25 before joining David Adelman’s Nuggets staff this year. A move to college seems unlikely, but we’ve seen beloved alumni make similar jumps before.
Matt Langel — Colgate
Another long-tenured coach in the Northeast with some recent NCAA tournament success, Langel’s profile is similar to that of Jones’s above. He took Colgate in 2011, and while it wasn’t until his seventh season that he posted a winning record, he’s turned the Raiders into a consistent force in the Patriot League ever since. Colgate won at least a share of the conference’s regular season title and the tournament each year from 2019 to ‘24, making the NCAA tournament five times in that stretch. (The 2020 postseason tournaments were canceled due to COVID-19.) Langel has not won an NCAA tournament game yet, but the Raiders were very competitive in first-round matchups with No. 2-seed Tennessee in 2019 (77–70) and No. 3 Wisconsin in ‘22 (67–60). The program has experienced a downturn over the last two seasons, but that doesn’t erase a very impressive, recent run of success.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Boston College Dismisses Earl Grant: Five Candidates to Take Over Eagles, Including Program Legend.
