Boston College Athletics
BC-Syracuse Writes Its Latest Chapter As Title Hangs In Balance
May 29, 2021 | Lacrosse, #ForBoston Files
The Eagles and Orange know everything about one another across every sport.
Friday afternoon brought a familiar scene to the NCAA lacrosse community. Boston College's women's team watched the final seconds tick off the Johnny Unitas Stadium scoreboard and exploded in celebration and jubilation. The players sprinted onto the field and weaved through dejected opponents in order to share hugs and cheers, and the families and fans clad in neon green shirts filled their section of the stadium with overjoyed smiles.
It was, for the fourth consecutive time, a replay of an NCAA semifinal win for the Eagles. It involved a win over a favored North Carolina squad for a second straight tournament, and it avenged an earlier loss to a top-ranked team for the third time. Three years and two tournaments after BC gained a measure over Maryland in the national semifinals, the Eagles had done it again to the Tar Heels in order to advance to the national championship game.
The win felt like a measure of revenge, but that's not a word any coach or player enjoys using. It implies the team played with hate in its heart and clouds in its vision and judgment, and BC's win came because the Eagles played both free and spirited. It was more of a learned lesson from a past slip and the culmination of a growth initiative.Â
Two days later, BC is hoping for the same result one more time when it stands on a sideline and attempts to win a national championship. This time, though, it won't be just a game or a national championship; it'll be the next chapter in a long, all-sports rivalry between the Eagles and the Syracuse Orange.
"(We are) definitely hardened," Walker-Weinstein said. "That's a great way to put it. I think we are just trying to focus on the things that we wanted to be better at in this moment, and there are a lot of things that the staff wanted to do differently and do better. We have the opportunity to do those things better (on Sunday)."
Boston College and Syracuse are separated by 300 miles, a slightly longer distance than it takes to get to Chestnut Hill from New York City or Long Island. They originally formed the Big East as a basketball conference in the 1980s and chartered the conference's football league in the early 1990s, but their histories intertwined both off the hardwood or the football gridiron well before and after both teams realigned into the ACC.
Men's soccer, for example, saw BC win six consecutive matches in the 1990s and again during the bridged era between the Big East and the ACC. The Orange, though, hold the only national tournament win with a victory in the 2015 College Cup playoffs.
A similar path unfolded on the softball diamond, where BC lost seven of 11 meetings between 2000 and 2005 but dominated Syracuse after the Orange entered the ACC. The Eagles won nine in a row before an 8-3 win snapped the streak in 2019, and the teams split a four-game doubleheader weekend last month.
The rivalry plays itself out everywhere and can occur without warning. The schools' women's hockey teams don't play in the same conference, but Syracuse still tied BC in the teams' first meeting in 2009 and outright won in the third meeting in 2013, a year in which the Eagles won 27 games and advanced to the NCAA Tournament. The next six games went to BC, but only three were true blowouts with the remaining three ending in identical, one-goal, 4-3 scores.
Yet nothing likely matched the intensity of this year's lacrosse matchup after the ACC consolidated its schedule to both maximize games played and minimize travel in the COVID-19 era. BC and Syracuse didn't meet until they played two games against one another in the last weekend of the regular season, and both entered the weekend with a shot at the conference's second seed. Their records were identical, and BC won the first game on a one-up goal by Jenn Medjid with just over one minute remaining to earn the inside track at the No. 2 seed. Two days later, a 16-9 Syracuse win prevented the Eagles from outright clinching the spot.
It didn't seem like much at the time because the two teams were always going to finish with either the second or third seed, but the natural collision course to the conference semifinals resulted in an impact on the NCAA Tournament. Syracuse won the rubber match to break a virtual tie for the selection committee, and the subsequent drop placed BC on No. 1 North Carolina's side of the bracket as the No. 4 overall seed. The Orange entered as the No. 3 seed, which ultimately earned them a first round bye compared to the extra game against Fairfield in BC's bracket.
It ultimately didn't matter because the Eagles defeated UNC on Friday, but an unexpected Hadron collider effect smashed both BC and Syracuse together for the national championship on Sunday. The Orange advanced to play No. 2 Northwestern in the other semifinal and won, 21-13, in the second game, after dispatching Loyola Maryland and Florida in the Second Round and Quarterfinals, respectively.
"We knew it was a weird year," Syracuse head coach Gary Gait said. "We've played (BC) three times, and we (knew) we could see them a fourth time, and sure enough, we will. We'll go back, tweak our scouting reports and rewatch the game (against Northwestern) and come up with a game plan."
The matchup adds to the already-thick drama of a national championship game that will ultimately crown its 13th overall championship school. The winner of Sunday's game will become the second first-time champion in the last three tournaments and will join James Madison, North Carolina and Northwestern as the only other teams to win their first championship ring in the 21st century.Â
"I think the ACC just truly dominated this year by playing each other a couple of extra games and playing outside opponents," Gait said. "I think it prepared us better than any other conference, and I think we saw that with five of the top eight teams being ACC and three of the four Final Four teams being ACC. I think our conference really prepared us well for this. It's nice that there is going to be a new champion. It's been a weird year. Everybody has had different experiences. Some are tougher than others...I always preach that you've got to learn to win against the best to have a shot at the end of the year."
It's perhaps cruel irony that all three of those teams have history with Boston College. JMU beat BC in 2018, and UNC obviously holds its own rivalry with the Eagles. Northwestern went through BC to win its sixth overall championship in 2011.Â
That's not to speak anything about how the Eagles supplanted Syracuse on the national radar. The Orange were national runners up in 2012 and 2014 but cooled as BC challenged their mantle as the top team in the Northeast. They continued advancing to NCAA Tournaments but watched BC emerge as a consistent Final Four team as their five-year streak ended. It built a divide along fault lines as the Eagles dominated with players raised on Long Island and in New Jersey while the Orange more consistently built from within their own home network, and it continued when Kayla Treanor, the all-time leading goal scorer in Syracuse program history, defected to BC as an assistant coach.
All of this is great content, but it's not anything discussed within the BC locker room. There is a place for history, but Walker-Weinstein and the Eagles know there isn't time to talk about it when a tough opponent looms. BC has been here before and knows the stakes all too well. Winning this game is a trip into immortality, but the bitter tears of losing aren't worth revisiting.
"Whoever you have to play, you're going to have to be at your best," Walker-Weinstein said after her game and prior to the Syracuse win on Friday. "We're going to have to figure out a way to win. It's an incredible, incredible group of coaches that are here."
Boston College and Syracuse will play for the NCAA Championship on Sunday afternoon at 12 p.m. from Johnny Unitas Stadium in Towson, Maryland. The game can be seen on ESPNU and online via both ESPN.com and the ESPN streaming platform for mobile devices.
It was, for the fourth consecutive time, a replay of an NCAA semifinal win for the Eagles. It involved a win over a favored North Carolina squad for a second straight tournament, and it avenged an earlier loss to a top-ranked team for the third time. Three years and two tournaments after BC gained a measure over Maryland in the national semifinals, the Eagles had done it again to the Tar Heels in order to advance to the national championship game.
The win felt like a measure of revenge, but that's not a word any coach or player enjoys using. It implies the team played with hate in its heart and clouds in its vision and judgment, and BC's win came because the Eagles played both free and spirited. It was more of a learned lesson from a past slip and the culmination of a growth initiative.Â
Two days later, BC is hoping for the same result one more time when it stands on a sideline and attempts to win a national championship. This time, though, it won't be just a game or a national championship; it'll be the next chapter in a long, all-sports rivalry between the Eagles and the Syracuse Orange.
"(We are) definitely hardened," Walker-Weinstein said. "That's a great way to put it. I think we are just trying to focus on the things that we wanted to be better at in this moment, and there are a lot of things that the staff wanted to do differently and do better. We have the opportunity to do those things better (on Sunday)."
Boston College and Syracuse are separated by 300 miles, a slightly longer distance than it takes to get to Chestnut Hill from New York City or Long Island. They originally formed the Big East as a basketball conference in the 1980s and chartered the conference's football league in the early 1990s, but their histories intertwined both off the hardwood or the football gridiron well before and after both teams realigned into the ACC.
Men's soccer, for example, saw BC win six consecutive matches in the 1990s and again during the bridged era between the Big East and the ACC. The Orange, though, hold the only national tournament win with a victory in the 2015 College Cup playoffs.
A similar path unfolded on the softball diamond, where BC lost seven of 11 meetings between 2000 and 2005 but dominated Syracuse after the Orange entered the ACC. The Eagles won nine in a row before an 8-3 win snapped the streak in 2019, and the teams split a four-game doubleheader weekend last month.
The rivalry plays itself out everywhere and can occur without warning. The schools' women's hockey teams don't play in the same conference, but Syracuse still tied BC in the teams' first meeting in 2009 and outright won in the third meeting in 2013, a year in which the Eagles won 27 games and advanced to the NCAA Tournament. The next six games went to BC, but only three were true blowouts with the remaining three ending in identical, one-goal, 4-3 scores.
Yet nothing likely matched the intensity of this year's lacrosse matchup after the ACC consolidated its schedule to both maximize games played and minimize travel in the COVID-19 era. BC and Syracuse didn't meet until they played two games against one another in the last weekend of the regular season, and both entered the weekend with a shot at the conference's second seed. Their records were identical, and BC won the first game on a one-up goal by Jenn Medjid with just over one minute remaining to earn the inside track at the No. 2 seed. Two days later, a 16-9 Syracuse win prevented the Eagles from outright clinching the spot.
It didn't seem like much at the time because the two teams were always going to finish with either the second or third seed, but the natural collision course to the conference semifinals resulted in an impact on the NCAA Tournament. Syracuse won the rubber match to break a virtual tie for the selection committee, and the subsequent drop placed BC on No. 1 North Carolina's side of the bracket as the No. 4 overall seed. The Orange entered as the No. 3 seed, which ultimately earned them a first round bye compared to the extra game against Fairfield in BC's bracket.
It ultimately didn't matter because the Eagles defeated UNC on Friday, but an unexpected Hadron collider effect smashed both BC and Syracuse together for the national championship on Sunday. The Orange advanced to play No. 2 Northwestern in the other semifinal and won, 21-13, in the second game, after dispatching Loyola Maryland and Florida in the Second Round and Quarterfinals, respectively.
"We knew it was a weird year," Syracuse head coach Gary Gait said. "We've played (BC) three times, and we (knew) we could see them a fourth time, and sure enough, we will. We'll go back, tweak our scouting reports and rewatch the game (against Northwestern) and come up with a game plan."
The matchup adds to the already-thick drama of a national championship game that will ultimately crown its 13th overall championship school. The winner of Sunday's game will become the second first-time champion in the last three tournaments and will join James Madison, North Carolina and Northwestern as the only other teams to win their first championship ring in the 21st century.Â
"I think the ACC just truly dominated this year by playing each other a couple of extra games and playing outside opponents," Gait said. "I think it prepared us better than any other conference, and I think we saw that with five of the top eight teams being ACC and three of the four Final Four teams being ACC. I think our conference really prepared us well for this. It's nice that there is going to be a new champion. It's been a weird year. Everybody has had different experiences. Some are tougher than others...I always preach that you've got to learn to win against the best to have a shot at the end of the year."
It's perhaps cruel irony that all three of those teams have history with Boston College. JMU beat BC in 2018, and UNC obviously holds its own rivalry with the Eagles. Northwestern went through BC to win its sixth overall championship in 2011.Â
That's not to speak anything about how the Eagles supplanted Syracuse on the national radar. The Orange were national runners up in 2012 and 2014 but cooled as BC challenged their mantle as the top team in the Northeast. They continued advancing to NCAA Tournaments but watched BC emerge as a consistent Final Four team as their five-year streak ended. It built a divide along fault lines as the Eagles dominated with players raised on Long Island and in New Jersey while the Orange more consistently built from within their own home network, and it continued when Kayla Treanor, the all-time leading goal scorer in Syracuse program history, defected to BC as an assistant coach.
All of this is great content, but it's not anything discussed within the BC locker room. There is a place for history, but Walker-Weinstein and the Eagles know there isn't time to talk about it when a tough opponent looms. BC has been here before and knows the stakes all too well. Winning this game is a trip into immortality, but the bitter tears of losing aren't worth revisiting.
"Whoever you have to play, you're going to have to be at your best," Walker-Weinstein said after her game and prior to the Syracuse win on Friday. "We're going to have to figure out a way to win. It's an incredible, incredible group of coaches that are here."
Boston College and Syracuse will play for the NCAA Championship on Sunday afternoon at 12 p.m. from Johnny Unitas Stadium in Towson, Maryland. The game can be seen on ESPNU and online via both ESPN.com and the ESPN streaming platform for mobile devices.
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