Luke Murray and his ‘infinite ideas’ are targeting an NCAA bid, this year, for Boston College men’s basketball

For most of Sunday’s scrimmage, Boston College men’s basketball coach Luke Murray stood in the background and observed the action through an analytical lens.

He smirked occasionally, encouraged players when they missed shots, and tilted his head slightly when cutters were out of position. Murray didn’t say much, but he didn’t have to.

When assistant coach Mathew Johnson approached him and asked for a play to unlock UConn transfer Jacob Furphy, Murray grabbed his black ballpoint pen and illustrated a diagram that resembled a never-ending maze. Murray has a nearly limitless, ever-evolving file in his brain, and those in the program believe his superpower as an “offensive genius” is the ability to unveil those plays at the exact right moment.

“It keeps turning over like a cog,” Furphy said. “It just keeps going and going and going and going, concept after concept. The more we can drill those concepts in, the more our plays will be executed perfectly.”

In recent years, Boston College adopted former coach Earl Grant’s “Gritty, not pretty” mentality a bit too literally. The Eagles played with passion, but they lacked the organization and discipline to execute high-level offensive concepts in crunch time.

With two-time national champion assistant Murray at the helm, and essentially an entirely new roster and staff, those involved believe qualifying for the NCAA Tournament this season for the first time since 2009 is a realistic mission.

“That’s absolutely our goal,” Murray said. “A goal less than that is probably not worth having. That’s our motivation. That’s what we’re pushing for and that’s what we’re pushing toward.”

That quest began back in March, as Murray prepared for March Madness opponents while contemplating his future. Before the Sweet 16 matchup with Michigan State, he stared at the contract in his inbox as UConn head coach Dan Hurley entered the room.

Hurley asked Murray what he thought. Murray told him he was leaving, they hugged, and then it was back to business. The Huskies beat the Spartans and Duke in scintillating fashion. Murray came to BC for his introductory press conference, then flew to Indianapolis for the Final Four.

Missing a practice for the first time ever felt strange, and compartmentalizing both jobs was tricky, but he appreciated that the Boston College administration let him finish at UConn.

The morning after the title game, with a new job title and blank canvas, it was time to fully unfurl his personalized blueprint.

“In my BC email, which I had no understanding of how to access, there were 12 notifications of guys going in the portal,” Murray said. “People had made their decisions. At the time, it felt daunting.”

But he chipped away, conscientiously putting the puzzle pieces together with his own personal flavor and assistance from HD Intelligence, a basketball analytics company. Murray, 41, whose dream job as a kid was to become an NBA general manager, now gets to operate in a similar role with total creative freedom.

“He’s always had that hunger, from my conversations with him, to lead his own program,” Johnson said.

Outside of basketball, the lion’s share of his work this offseason has centered around fundraising through donors, alumni, and personal connections. Murray knows the next step for the program is to make strides in the third-party realm, and it’s a challenge he embraces.

On the court, Murray is proud of how the team has grown the past few months but knows there is more work to be done. His system heavily features off-ball screens and movement, with shooting all over, switchability on defense, and the sum of the parts outweighing any individual.

Brandon Benjamin, Money Williams, Andrija Bukumirovic, Armoni Zeigler, Furphy, JB Frankel, Aly Tounkara, and Colby Duggan were catalysts Sunday, but spots are up for grabs in the coming weeks as he narrows his rotation.

It’s a new era, a new style of play, and a new face of the program in Chestnut Hill.

“As a hooper, you think you know it all until you come across Luke Murray,” Williams said. “It’s just infinite ideas.”