Handful of Eagles hitting the portal as Murray Era truly starts this week
The introductory press conference is one thing. The real work is what matters.
Luke Murray ‘officially’ became the BC head coach when he signed a contract on an iPad before Duke played Michigan State. He once again ‘officially’ became the head coach during his introductory press conference last Tuesday.
But now, regardless of what happens Monday night against Michigan State, it’s all about to get very real for Murray in his first head coaching role.
As he acknowledged during the presser last week, the transfer portal for basketball opens on Tuesday. He’ll be flying back to Boston in the wee hours of the morning – possibly still sipping some champagne – and officially begin his mission to get BC back to the tournament.
Murray has already had important conversations with some players, and it’s pretty clear that the program either no longer sees a vision for them, or that they didn’t like what they heard.
Fred Payne, Boden Kapke and Luka Toews are all heading to the portal.
This was bound to happen and the program is probably better off letting Murray build it from scratch if he wanted to, given how ugly this last season was. Not only that, but the man clearly knowing what winning players at the highest level look like.
Payne is the one out of that group that might have stung Murray and in his incoming staff a bit. Payne averaged 15.8 points per game, 4.2 rebounds and 2.7 assists. Assuming Donald Hand Jr. is a key piece Murray wants to keep around, he’ll have to find a new backcourt mate to take the full load off.
Kapke was a neat little player for a season here, but wasn’t a dominant force or anything like that. He averaged 10.6 points per game, 5.7 rebounds and 0.7 assists.
You can make the argument that Toews could be a big loss off the bench. Whether starting or subbing in, he’s clearly a good energy player that can shoot (although, the team-wide shooting nightmare didn’t avoid him some nights too). Toews averaged 6.3 points and 2.2 assists last season, but it felt like with more run he could have been productive.
As a non-diehard fan of the program unable to form any true emotional attachment to any players, none of these feel like an earth-shattering loss for a program that’s truly starting over. Donald Hand Jr., Jayden Hastings and Jason Asemota are really the only guys Murray should try to retain.
It’ll be pretty interesting to see how quickly he moves and just how much he tries to add to the roster on Tuesday and the rest of this week.
