For the all the faces of frustration he may have shown on the court along with his sometimes frustrating tendency to play 1-on-5, Eli Carter was never the leader of Boston College’s men’s basketball team. He was the scoring guard with the burden of generating the team’s offense. And for all the respect that Dennis Clifford won inside the program and around the ACC for battling his way back onto the court after injury, his leadership was largely symbolic.

The players with the greatest stake in the program’s future were the ones who will be around to see it. A dismal season in which Boston College unprecedentedly lost all 18 of its Atlantic Coast Conference games could stunt the group of eight freshmen that took those lumps.

Or, coach Jim Christian hopes, it could force them to pick themselves up from what has to be the absolute bottom.

“I think they get it,’’ Christian said. “I think the young guys understand. The beautiful part is you learned what worked and what didn’t work. For guys individually and the team collectively, you’ve got to go through that. I think they understand that they don’t want to see the same result happen. They know there’s a lot of things they have to change about themselves and all the little things — nothing major, but a lot of little things — that have to get better.’’

For all but five players on the Eagles roster, this week’s trip to Washington will be their first ACC tournament experience, one that will be dramatically different and undoubtedly more intense than the atmosphere they faced during the regular season in some of college basketball’s most intimidating environments.

“It’s going to be interesting to see,’’ Christian said as his team prepared for the tournament opener against Florida State on Tuesday. “It’s an unbelievable experience. I think it’s going to be great for them to see because it’s new. It’s totally different than anything they’ve gone through. They’ve played in some great venues, but this is a totally different thing.’’

Christian said it isn’t a given that the tournament will give the Eagles another chance to find a silver lining in a desolate year. Their energy level will have to be closer to what it was in their disappointing loss to N.C. State a week ago — when freshmen Jerome Robinson and A.J. Turner both returned from injury to give BC a spark — and nothing like their empty-tank performance in their season finale against Clemson last Saturday.

“The tournaments do what you want them to do,’’ Christian said. “If those guys want to play hard . . . when they came back at N.C. State, they really lifted us with just effort. I thought [Saturday] they didn’t. I don’t think either one of them played hard, for them and for what we expect of them. I talked to them about it. Obviously, what happened has nothing to do with those two guys. Anybody can lift you. If somebody was to just play better or if somebody was to just play harder.

“That’s what happens in a tournament game. You want to see who can respond to that, because you’ve been through a lot. It’s not easy to be resilient for three months, and now you know it’s final now. If you don’t win, it’s over.’’

In Malik Beasley and Dwayne Bacon, Florida State has a pair of potential NBA lottery picks in its backcourt. Beasley scored 22 points on 13 shots in the Seminoles’ 72-62 win over the Eagles at Conte Forum in January. Bacon added a 14-point, 12-rebound double-double.

“Any shot off the rim is a potential breakout for them,’’ Christian said. “They just push the ball from four spots. They’re athletic. They run. They get the ball to the basket. They’re a good offensive rebounding team.’’

Going forward, both in the tournament and into the offseason, those will be among the list of things the Eagles will have to emphasize and improve, Christian said.

“The one thing that we have not done is we have not done any of the little things better than the teams we play because we’re overmatched,’’ Christian said. “Moving forward, we have to be a great attention-to-detail team, and we’re not.’’

There were plenty of times when Christian could be seen going down the bench pointing out things to his players, things he had gone over in practice only to have them break down in games.

“We went over this yesterday,’’ he said. “We went over this exact situation or play, and look what happened. That can’t happen. The problem is for us, the next guy would go in and do the same thing. At the end of the day, the players have to get it. We have to teach it, we have to enforce it, but really the players have to get it.’’

Ideally, with growth and progression, those teachable moments will shrink and the players will be able to see those things for themselves.

“That would be leadership,’’ Christian said. “That would be ownership. That’s what has to happen. It’s hard to be an owner in one year. But now they should get this, because obviously this is something, like I tell them, we should never forget this year. This should never be forgotten. Not that it should affect what you do going forward, but you should be understanding that, hey, this is rock bottom, and we’ve got to get out of it.’’

Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com.