Is This The Last Go-Round for BC’s Jim Christian?

Sometimes it just doesn’t work.

You labor long and hard. You modify and intensify your thought process and preparation. You try to sell others on your vision, and hew to your chosen path through better and worse. You feel worthy of success and ache to achieve it.

But the crosscourt pass goes just out of reach and your team turns over the ball in the decisive final seconds of a narrow loss at Duke. Crucial free throws are missed. The block-charge call goes against your team. The key recruit changes his mind and goes elsewhere.

You reach a certain point and you recognize it doesn’t work.

That’s where Jim Christian and Boston College rest 12 games into the 2021 season, Christian’s seventh on the job.

Well-respected for his teams’ competitiveness, the University of Rhode Island grad, 56 next month, has a record that unfortunately argues for ending his tenure. “Success was measured in numbers, anyone who claimed otherwise was just scared of the truth and seriously believed that delusion was an essential fact of life for the average person,” novelist Jo Nesbo wrote in The Thirst.

Limited patience with spotty performance goes with a major-college coaching job, for which Christian reportedly is paid $1.38 million annually. That’s lowest among ACC men but a handsome sum nonetheless.

A dispassionate view of the evidence shows that, of seven of Christian’s clubs, only the 2018 unit posted a winning overall record, earning his program’s sole postseason bid, a one-and-done trip to the NIT.

Within the ACC, through its home victory over Miami this past Tuesday Boston College has now won 26 games and lost 90 under Christian’s direction. That’s a .224 ACC winning percentage – less than one triumph every four games played. In 2016 his Eagles went 0-18.

BC has done better lately. Prior to the pandemic attendance was up markedly at Conte Forum, by percentage of capacity more than at any other ACC arena. In two of the past three seasons Boston College won seven league contests each. Unfortunately, those Christian-era highs in victories still failed to outnumber the ACC losses in any season.

No Christian team has finished better in the conference than last year’s tie for 10^th .

Cobbling together talent in a difficult recruiting environment, far removed from close media coverage of the league in which his teams play, Christian has built dangerous squads but produced only two All-ACC players. Jerome Robinson was a first team selection in 2018, and Ky Bowman made second team in 2019. Olivier Hanlon, inherited from Steve Donahue, also made first team in 2015.

Rather than build on the modest success of recent years, BC’s 3-9 start in 2021 is the worst of Christian’s tenure, even after blowing past the Hurricanes.

Ominously, this is only the second season in which his perennially low-flying Eagles lost more than they won over the first dozen games of the year, a stretch when less-formidable nonconference clubs tend to dot the schedule.

Trying hard is important. Playing your league rivals close, fielding a competitive unit, is essential. Praise for “gutsy” play is gratifying. But beyond a certain point that’s not enough.

Time remains for BC to mount a miraculous, program-vindicating turnaround in 2021. More likely the verdict is already in. For whatever reasons, sometimes it just doesn’t work.