Defending Champs Still Hold Something To Prove On Friday
May 27, 2022 | Lacrosse, #ForBoston Files
The Final Four features three blue bloods and BC, but the Eagles might be the most powerful contingent.
Take a walk on any dark, moonless night, and you're liable to see a sky littered with hundreds of stars. Their shining beacons scar the otherwise blank backdrop and are nature's way of lighting up a disorienting emptiness. For generations, their bulbs told stories of gods and myths, all while offering voyagers and travelers a method to find their way home.
The lit-up sky has a serene beauty to it, and its brilliance is amplified when it is truly devoid of any light pollution, but beyond their charming glitter, stars are burning. Their spheres are exploding and colliding atoms, a constant reaction of energy and thermonuclear fusion. Their shine is the product of an up-close, intense, never-ending burn, and their creation only happens when elements begin working to fuse together.
It perfectly defines what it takes to win championships. People see the shine and appreciate the blazing luster of the title, but under the surface, only the team understands the fusion and burn required to create the glowing radiance. In women's lacrosse Boston College understands that definition, but the Eagles aren't hoping to recreate the alchemy that led to last year's national championship.
Instead, they arrived in Baltimore this week for their fifth consecutive Final Four and Friday's semifinal matchup against No. 2 Maryland with a new outlook, a new fusion, and a new burn they hope ends with another permanent shine in the Boston College sky.
"We had a plan a long time ago to do this," head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein said. "We had players that got on board with the plan, and that's what separates our girls and our team from other teams. It's been hard, but it's what Michael Jordan said: 'What separates the good from the great is his heart.' So we've stuck with that plan over the last 10 years. This is what we wanted to do, and we've had players who came in and played so passionately and with so much heart that they've kept us on the map."
The Eagles enter Friday as defending national champions, but it's hard to ignore how they remain outsiders of a sport littered with blue blood programs. BC's first opponent of the weekend, No. 2 Maryland, holds 14 national championships, including two that came at the Eagles' expense in 2017 and 2019, and fourth-seeded Northwestern holds an additional seven titles.Â
Top-seeded North Carolina is more of a recent champion in comparison, but the Tar Heels advanced to six different Final Fours dating back to 1997 before breaking through with their win over Maryland in 2013. Two years later, they lost to the Terrapins in a rematch before winning a second championship in a rubber match in 2016.
In comparison, BC hadn't advanced to a national tournament before a Bowen Holden-coached team qualified for the 2011 bracket, and the Eagles didn't win a game in the event until Acacia Walker's second season in 2014. It wasn't until the 2017 tournament that the Eagles advanced to the Final Four, and Maryland's win in the championship spoiled a Cinderella story for an unseeded team playing at home in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
"It's so hard [to compete]," Walker-Weinstein said. "What we're doing is so difficult, but we have girls that are so intrinsically motivated and so deeply inspired by winning a national championship. Once your program believes it can be the best, it really rolls from there. The expectations are good expectations, but what we want to do gets passed on year after year after year. New leaders had to emerge, and the team's success had to build on itself. As long as we maintain our culture with an unselfish group of girls striving to be the very best, it can be a dangerous combination. We've had the right players come in and do that."
BC might feel like an outsider, but any historical bias does the Eagles a disservice as the defending champion. Last year's championship wasn't an accident, not after they repeated as national runner-up in 2018 and 2019 with teams that plowed through undefeated regular seasons with All-Americans and a Tewaaraton Award winner, and they won the 2021 title as the No. 4 overall seed.
Two of the last three national champions have been newcomers who ascended the mountain through those blue bloods. In 2018, BC's matchup against James Madison featured three combined national championship game appearances between the two teams and guaranteed a first-time national champion at the expense of both Maryland and North Carolina. It's just that the Dukes weren't exactly party crashers after entering the tournament as the No. 3 overall seed.
It's a complex set of emotions for Walker-Weinstein, who grew up in Maryland and won national championships as a player with the Terrapins and an assistant coach with Northwestern. No matter what BC accomplishes, the Eagles can't rewrite or replace history, but they remain emboldened by having never lost in the national semifinal round.
"It's really powerful for our girls, year after year, to see their names next to the Marylands and Northwesterns," she said. "To me, they are still the powerhouses of women's lacrosse, and we've got a long way to go to compare ourselves to them, but I think it just adds to our confidence and excitement. I don't think there's any anxiety or fear [in playing those teams]."
That's good, because BC draws a scenario on Friday similar to what the Terrapins faced when they arrived at Gillette Stadium five years ago. In 2017, Maryland beat BC in Massachusetts under reminders of what the New England region now represents to sports. Super Bowl trophies watched attentively, and the region was five months removed from celebrating its miracle comeback over the Atlanta Falcons.
Nearly 8,000 people packed the lower bowl of the stadium to watch BC beat Navy in a one-goal game, a number dwarfed by the 11,668 people who watched the national championship game two days later. Home field advantage very much mattered in that scenario, and the Terps never truly pulled away from BC before two Sam Apuzzo goals brought the Eagles back within three in the game's late stages.
Short of the seeds, the situation will be reversed on Friday when it's Maryland's turn to play at home. An expected sell-out crowd at Johns Hopkins' Homewood Field will give the Terps something of a home field advantage for a game in Baltimore, and there's anticipation of a hometown celebration for a state that's been the heartbeat of the sport for decades.
"You know what, it's exciting," Walker-Weinstein said. "You have to take the good with the bad from playing Maryland in Maryland. It's the mecca for lacrosse, but it is a backyard game for Maryland. I'll just tell the girls, let it be an away game for us. Let us continue to feel like the underdog that will be counted against. It doesn't matter, after all. It's all about the lacrosse. Whoever plays better lacrosse is going to win.
"It's all about X's and O's," she said. "It's not emotional. The better team that plays better lacrosse has nothing to do with the fans or who's the home team or where we're ranked. That's noise. Whoever plays better lacrosse [will win]. We've [done] film and walkthroughs and practice, and we're really focusing on eliminating distractions and controlling what we can control. It's about putting all of our heart and soul into the preparation."
No. 3 Boston College and No. 2 Maryland start the NCAA Final Four this weekend on Friday at 3 p.m. The game can be seen on national television via ESPNU with streaming available through the ESPN Online platform.
The lit-up sky has a serene beauty to it, and its brilliance is amplified when it is truly devoid of any light pollution, but beyond their charming glitter, stars are burning. Their spheres are exploding and colliding atoms, a constant reaction of energy and thermonuclear fusion. Their shine is the product of an up-close, intense, never-ending burn, and their creation only happens when elements begin working to fuse together.
It perfectly defines what it takes to win championships. People see the shine and appreciate the blazing luster of the title, but under the surface, only the team understands the fusion and burn required to create the glowing radiance. In women's lacrosse Boston College understands that definition, but the Eagles aren't hoping to recreate the alchemy that led to last year's national championship.
Instead, they arrived in Baltimore this week for their fifth consecutive Final Four and Friday's semifinal matchup against No. 2 Maryland with a new outlook, a new fusion, and a new burn they hope ends with another permanent shine in the Boston College sky.
"We had a plan a long time ago to do this," head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein said. "We had players that got on board with the plan, and that's what separates our girls and our team from other teams. It's been hard, but it's what Michael Jordan said: 'What separates the good from the great is his heart.' So we've stuck with that plan over the last 10 years. This is what we wanted to do, and we've had players who came in and played so passionately and with so much heart that they've kept us on the map."
The Eagles enter Friday as defending national champions, but it's hard to ignore how they remain outsiders of a sport littered with blue blood programs. BC's first opponent of the weekend, No. 2 Maryland, holds 14 national championships, including two that came at the Eagles' expense in 2017 and 2019, and fourth-seeded Northwestern holds an additional seven titles.Â
Top-seeded North Carolina is more of a recent champion in comparison, but the Tar Heels advanced to six different Final Fours dating back to 1997 before breaking through with their win over Maryland in 2013. Two years later, they lost to the Terrapins in a rematch before winning a second championship in a rubber match in 2016.
In comparison, BC hadn't advanced to a national tournament before a Bowen Holden-coached team qualified for the 2011 bracket, and the Eagles didn't win a game in the event until Acacia Walker's second season in 2014. It wasn't until the 2017 tournament that the Eagles advanced to the Final Four, and Maryland's win in the championship spoiled a Cinderella story for an unseeded team playing at home in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
"It's so hard [to compete]," Walker-Weinstein said. "What we're doing is so difficult, but we have girls that are so intrinsically motivated and so deeply inspired by winning a national championship. Once your program believes it can be the best, it really rolls from there. The expectations are good expectations, but what we want to do gets passed on year after year after year. New leaders had to emerge, and the team's success had to build on itself. As long as we maintain our culture with an unselfish group of girls striving to be the very best, it can be a dangerous combination. We've had the right players come in and do that."
BC might feel like an outsider, but any historical bias does the Eagles a disservice as the defending champion. Last year's championship wasn't an accident, not after they repeated as national runner-up in 2018 and 2019 with teams that plowed through undefeated regular seasons with All-Americans and a Tewaaraton Award winner, and they won the 2021 title as the No. 4 overall seed.
Two of the last three national champions have been newcomers who ascended the mountain through those blue bloods. In 2018, BC's matchup against James Madison featured three combined national championship game appearances between the two teams and guaranteed a first-time national champion at the expense of both Maryland and North Carolina. It's just that the Dukes weren't exactly party crashers after entering the tournament as the No. 3 overall seed.
It's a complex set of emotions for Walker-Weinstein, who grew up in Maryland and won national championships as a player with the Terrapins and an assistant coach with Northwestern. No matter what BC accomplishes, the Eagles can't rewrite or replace history, but they remain emboldened by having never lost in the national semifinal round.
"It's really powerful for our girls, year after year, to see their names next to the Marylands and Northwesterns," she said. "To me, they are still the powerhouses of women's lacrosse, and we've got a long way to go to compare ourselves to them, but I think it just adds to our confidence and excitement. I don't think there's any anxiety or fear [in playing those teams]."
That's good, because BC draws a scenario on Friday similar to what the Terrapins faced when they arrived at Gillette Stadium five years ago. In 2017, Maryland beat BC in Massachusetts under reminders of what the New England region now represents to sports. Super Bowl trophies watched attentively, and the region was five months removed from celebrating its miracle comeback over the Atlanta Falcons.
Nearly 8,000 people packed the lower bowl of the stadium to watch BC beat Navy in a one-goal game, a number dwarfed by the 11,668 people who watched the national championship game two days later. Home field advantage very much mattered in that scenario, and the Terps never truly pulled away from BC before two Sam Apuzzo goals brought the Eagles back within three in the game's late stages.
Short of the seeds, the situation will be reversed on Friday when it's Maryland's turn to play at home. An expected sell-out crowd at Johns Hopkins' Homewood Field will give the Terps something of a home field advantage for a game in Baltimore, and there's anticipation of a hometown celebration for a state that's been the heartbeat of the sport for decades.
"You know what, it's exciting," Walker-Weinstein said. "You have to take the good with the bad from playing Maryland in Maryland. It's the mecca for lacrosse, but it is a backyard game for Maryland. I'll just tell the girls, let it be an away game for us. Let us continue to feel like the underdog that will be counted against. It doesn't matter, after all. It's all about the lacrosse. Whoever plays better lacrosse is going to win.
"It's all about X's and O's," she said. "It's not emotional. The better team that plays better lacrosse has nothing to do with the fans or who's the home team or where we're ranked. That's noise. Whoever plays better lacrosse [will win]. We've [done] film and walkthroughs and practice, and we're really focusing on eliminating distractions and controlling what we can control. It's about putting all of our heart and soul into the preparation."
No. 3 Boston College and No. 2 Maryland start the NCAA Final Four this weekend on Friday at 3 p.m. The game can be seen on national television via ESPNU with streaming available through the ESPN Online platform.
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