BC-UNC: The Next Chapter

Acacia Walker-Weinstein isn't interested in talking about the past when it comes to her Boston College lacrosse program. Her overarching themes are always about the here-and-now and don't necessarily reference past years, past records or past performances. She acknowledges those seasons as part of the program's fabric, but she often discusses the past without a hint of nostalgia.

It's the perfect attitude for a coach committed to avoiding the degrading of this year's team efforts, but it's also something unavoidable heading into Friday's NCAA Division I Women's Lacrosse national semifinal. That's because the rivalries that are all too present traveled to Maryland with the Eagles, and the first Final Four in two years features a rematch of sorts when No. 4 BC plays No. 1 North Carolina for the right to advance to the national championship game.

"We have to learn from the good things and from the bad things," Walker-Weinstein said ahead of BC's game on Friday. "We'll study every game, probably, because our staff are film junkies. We'll look to see what we can learn and dissect everything to figure out some patterns, and we'll talk to as many coaches that will talk to us to learn as much as we can before Friday."

The context surrounding BC's rivalry with UNC isn't all that hard to determine. The Tar Heels are appearing in their third straight Final Four and ninth since 2009, and two national championship banners from the 2013 and 2016 seasons hang in Chapel Hill. The four-time defending ACC tournament champions are also in their 22nd national tournament appearance and haven't missed a bracket since 2004, a time period before the Eagles entered the league.

BC, meanwhile, advanced to its fourth consecutive Final Four with its eighth straight NCAA Tournament appearance, but the Eagles' trophy case is still devoid of hardware because of teams like North Carolina. In 2018, an undefeated, No. 1-ranked Eagle squad lost to the No. 2 UNC in the conference championship, a feat replicated the next year when an undefeated, No. 1-ranked squad lost at home in Alumni Stadium.

The Eagles avenged both losses in some capacity - most notably with a double-overtime, 15-14 thriller in 2019's Final Four - but losses in the national championship only kept the shelving bare. They didn't play last year as part of the abbreviated COVID-19 campaign, but this year's meeting went to UNC with a resounding, 21-9 win in Chapel Hill.

"You're always going to make some adjustments when you look back," UNC head coach Jenny Levy said. "I think the fabric of each team at this point during the season (is such that) you're going to have your strengths and areas where you feel like you need to get better. We'll try to do some things better from the last game, but I think Boston College and us played so long ago (that) both teams have changed a lot. That game isn't an informant as much like the Syracuse game."

That might be good news for the Eagles because that last game got away from them in the second half. They had momentum into the break after Charlotte North scored with just over one minute remaining, but UNC broke BC almost immediately with seven unanswered goals from six different goal scorers. Jamie Ortega, the third-leading scorer in the nation, scored twice over that stretch as part of a larger, six-goal game, and the Tar Heels ran off with the 12-goal win.

But Levy is right in the respect that the Eagles changed after that because they rattled off nine straight wins until the second leg of a two-game stretch at Syracuse. They simply found another gear during that time and scored 20 goals on two occasions while recording separate double-digit victories over Hofstra, Louisville and Virginia Tech.

They launched past Virginia in the ACC Championship before losing to Syracuse again and pummeled three separate opponents on Newton Campus to advance to the Final Four. BC destroyed Fairfield in the First Round by racing out to a 9-1 lead en route to a 12-3 advantage and a 19-6 win, and it beat both Temple and Notre Dame with 20-goal outputs.

It was a different path than UNC, the consensus No. 1 team that beat the Orange in the ACC Championship. An NCAA Tournament run past James Madison and Stony Brook included a first round bye as an undefeated top seed, and the 11 goals surrendered to the Seawolves was only the third time it gave up double-digit goals all year.

Both teams are capable of beating teams in different fashions. UNC's 9-4 win over Syracuse was the only time the Tar Heels failed to score 10 goals, but they beat Virginia Tech with a 22-1 rout earlier this season. BC won a one-goal game over Louisville before lighting the lamp 18 times, but its 19-11 win over Notre Dame was virtually identical to the 21-10 final against the Fighting Irish in the NCAA Quarterfinals.

"Each season starts in September or August or even in the summer for us," Levy said. "(We) just build relationships and really understand their mentality and expectations and what their goals are, both individually and obviously collectively at our school. We want to win ACC (and) national championships. We talk about that openly, but the relationship piece is important because we really dive into helping each player grow within there. We're not a cookie cutter team. We have a lot of different types of players."

The entire tournament played out with the top chalk teams advancing to the Final Four and a third ACC team - No. 3 Syracuse - playing No. 2 Northwestern in the second game. All four schools represent the finest of the lacrosse culture with BC's dominance in Long Island and the Northeast rivaling the Mid-Atlantic power of UNC and the New York-based Syracuse roster preparing to play the seven-time national champion Northwestern team hunting for its first crown in over a decade.

All four teams are converging on Towson University in a state marked by one of the best lacrosse cultures in the nation. It's the first Final Four at Johnny Unitas Stadium since 2014, but 2021 marks the second straight tournament final in Maryland before next year returns to Johns Hopkins as a redux to last year's canceled bracket.

"Stony Brook really took it to (UNC) physically," Walker-Weinstein said, "and I think right from the very beginning, which sort of indicated that we are going to make this a game. They did a really nice job, but we're just studying some of the nuances of the Stony Brook defense and some of the offensive players to come up with a collection of aggregating data. NOrth Carolina has an excellent team, and they came out with a win when they needed it."

No. 4 Boston College and No. 1 North Carolina draw at 12 p.m. from Johnny Unitas Stadium in Towson, Maryland. The game can be seen on national television on ESPNU with streaming available through ESPN's online platform.

Players Mentioned

Charlotte North

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