Photo by: Kelly Coughlan
Awakening Drives BC To Charlotte As Top Seed
April 24, 2023 | Lacrosse, #ForBoston Files
It feels like a rite of passage, but this year's Eagles dove into blue collar lacrosse.
This was supposed to be the year when Boston College fell off its perch atop the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The previous five years converted the Eagles into one of the nation's most glamorous women's lacrosse programs. The former upstart underdog first advanced to the national semifinals and the tournament's final game when the NCAA Tournament first visited its home state in 2017, and the seasons after that championship loss to Maryland only solidified the team's newfound star status.Â
A global pandemic canceled the 2020 season, but nothing stunted an upward trajectory that endured through return trips to the national championship game in 2018 or 2019. Ascending the mountain - the final breakthrough of a national championship - finally occurred one year after the world's infamous shutdown, and it continued straight through last year after BC came within a goal of its second consecutive title.
Still, this was the season when all of that was finally supposed to stop. The first nine games of the year weren't exactly championship caliber by head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein's standard, and after a 13-8 loss to Denver offered a mirror image to the Eagles' win over the Pioneers from last year's NCAA Tournament, it was widely expected that BC would slide into the second tier of an ACC teeming with elite-level talent.
Simply put, the Eagles were one of the nation's best programs, but they weren't on par with longtime rival North Carolina or Syracuse, the team that BC defeated in the 2021 national championship game.
The message apparently never reached Chestnut Hill.
Just over a month after BC's third loss of the season, the Eagles enter this week's 2023 ACC Tournament as arguably the nation's hottest team. A seven-game win streak to close the regular season unseated the Orange from a spot as one of the nation's two remaining undefeated teams, and a team once regarded as having slipped behind the ACC's top is instead standing as the No. 1 seed as the conference's postseason gauntlet begins on Wednesday in Charlotte.
"Our program has never won an ACC championship before," Walker-Weinstein said during this week's media availability. "The school has never brought home a female ACC championship, and the only ACC championship was for men's soccer in 2007. So this is something that we've never accomplished. I'm wired that if there's something out there that's an option to win, I want to win it, and I want our girls to want that as well. So [while] a national championship is the ultimate goal, we've never won an ACC championship. That's a remarkable accomplishment, and I want our girls to do that."
The five-year history of the BC program makes the postseason feel like a rite of passage, but entering the tournament as the No. 1 overall seed required the right amount of passion, execution, and luck. It boiled down to the last game of the season, which itself carried a Herculean task of defeating the undefeated, No. 1-ranked Orange on their home turf in New York before a sold-out crowd of 1,600 fans, and was further compounded when Syracuse jumped out to a 6-1 lead with six unanswered goals in the first quarter.
BC rallied for two late strikes and bled four of the game's next five goals into the second period, but the Orange's unrelenting attack pummeled the Eagles straight into the halftime break. The first goal of the third stretched Syracuse's lead to 12-6, and after Maddy Baxter scored with one second left before the fourth, BC found itself trailing by a four-goal lead that simultaneously felt close and a chasm.
Syracuse found every responsive method in its toolbox, and after Kayla Martello and Mckenna Davis slashed the lead to two in the fourth, another Syracuse goal pushed the lead back to three with 11 minutes remaining. Three BC goals later, Sierra Cockerille, the earlier fourth quarter goal scorer, broke a tie to take a 16-15 lead that temporarily shunted the Eagles' momentum.
It was a situation BC previously endured when Northwestern rallied from a three-goal deficit in the second half of the teams' February matchup. In that game, the Eagles managed to maintain a lead despite key goals from the Wildcats, but the constant triphammer of an attack under Izzy Scane's direction bore down the end of the third quarter and seeped into the fourth quarter. Northwestern, the team that ascended to No. 1 because of BC's win over Syracuse, defeated the Eagles by scoring six of the game's last eight goals, but the damage inflicted instead became a battle scar and an experience worth reflecting on.
"We honestly just needed to get punched in the nose a little bit," Walker-Weinstein said. "It wasn't that our girls were cocky - that's not what I mean at all because they're never cocky - but we just needed the wake-up call that winning is really hard. So there was nothing that really shifted in our X's and O's or our coaching. I just think the girls had a mental switch, and they realized it was time to work harder and work smarter."
The resulting equation allowed BC to retaliate late against Syracuse and assured the team of an ACC tournament path away from both the Orange and North Carolina. Had the Eagles lost, the second conference loss would have dropped them into a statistical tie with the Tar Heels, and the head-to-head loss from early March would have sent BC into the tournament as the No. 3 seed. At a surface level, that would have meant a trip into the late game during Wednesday's Quarterfinals before having to potentially traverse both UNC and Syracuse in the semifinals and championship.
BC instead won, and with the No. 1 seed, the Eagles instead slotted into the first game on Wednesday against ninth-seeded Duke, which defeated No. 8 Louisville on Sunday. If the tournament holds chalk, that would ensure a path that would face either Syracuse or UNC, not both, after the Orange and Tar Heels play one another in the semifinals.
None of this, of course, guarantees a championship, and Duke, Virginia, and Notre Dame are salivating at an opportunity to dethrone the regular season's co-champion. All three hold storylines in their own right, and as the tournament kicks off on Wednesday, it's easy to understand that no path ensures any kind of victory, let alone a trophy that this team openly wants and talks about.
"All of our success is triggered by our defense," Walker-Weinstein said. "Our girls, defensively, have been the anchor of our team for a decade. All of our offensive success comes from a defense spark. Everybody just kind of woke up [after the early season struggles], and I think everybody just decided to dive a little deeper. They really respected the fact that winning doesn't just happen. It's the product of an insane amount of hard work."
Top-seeded Boston College and ninth-seeded Duke kick off Wednesday's ACC Tournament quarterfinal round with an 11 a.m. start from Charlotte's American Legion Memorial Stadium. All games from this week's championship will be televised on the ACC Network and can be streamed through the ESPN family of online platforms.
The previous five years converted the Eagles into one of the nation's most glamorous women's lacrosse programs. The former upstart underdog first advanced to the national semifinals and the tournament's final game when the NCAA Tournament first visited its home state in 2017, and the seasons after that championship loss to Maryland only solidified the team's newfound star status.Â
A global pandemic canceled the 2020 season, but nothing stunted an upward trajectory that endured through return trips to the national championship game in 2018 or 2019. Ascending the mountain - the final breakthrough of a national championship - finally occurred one year after the world's infamous shutdown, and it continued straight through last year after BC came within a goal of its second consecutive title.
Still, this was the season when all of that was finally supposed to stop. The first nine games of the year weren't exactly championship caliber by head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein's standard, and after a 13-8 loss to Denver offered a mirror image to the Eagles' win over the Pioneers from last year's NCAA Tournament, it was widely expected that BC would slide into the second tier of an ACC teeming with elite-level talent.
Simply put, the Eagles were one of the nation's best programs, but they weren't on par with longtime rival North Carolina or Syracuse, the team that BC defeated in the 2021 national championship game.
The message apparently never reached Chestnut Hill.
Just over a month after BC's third loss of the season, the Eagles enter this week's 2023 ACC Tournament as arguably the nation's hottest team. A seven-game win streak to close the regular season unseated the Orange from a spot as one of the nation's two remaining undefeated teams, and a team once regarded as having slipped behind the ACC's top is instead standing as the No. 1 seed as the conference's postseason gauntlet begins on Wednesday in Charlotte.
"Our program has never won an ACC championship before," Walker-Weinstein said during this week's media availability. "The school has never brought home a female ACC championship, and the only ACC championship was for men's soccer in 2007. So this is something that we've never accomplished. I'm wired that if there's something out there that's an option to win, I want to win it, and I want our girls to want that as well. So [while] a national championship is the ultimate goal, we've never won an ACC championship. That's a remarkable accomplishment, and I want our girls to do that."
The five-year history of the BC program makes the postseason feel like a rite of passage, but entering the tournament as the No. 1 overall seed required the right amount of passion, execution, and luck. It boiled down to the last game of the season, which itself carried a Herculean task of defeating the undefeated, No. 1-ranked Orange on their home turf in New York before a sold-out crowd of 1,600 fans, and was further compounded when Syracuse jumped out to a 6-1 lead with six unanswered goals in the first quarter.
BC rallied for two late strikes and bled four of the game's next five goals into the second period, but the Orange's unrelenting attack pummeled the Eagles straight into the halftime break. The first goal of the third stretched Syracuse's lead to 12-6, and after Maddy Baxter scored with one second left before the fourth, BC found itself trailing by a four-goal lead that simultaneously felt close and a chasm.
Syracuse found every responsive method in its toolbox, and after Kayla Martello and Mckenna Davis slashed the lead to two in the fourth, another Syracuse goal pushed the lead back to three with 11 minutes remaining. Three BC goals later, Sierra Cockerille, the earlier fourth quarter goal scorer, broke a tie to take a 16-15 lead that temporarily shunted the Eagles' momentum.
It was a situation BC previously endured when Northwestern rallied from a three-goal deficit in the second half of the teams' February matchup. In that game, the Eagles managed to maintain a lead despite key goals from the Wildcats, but the constant triphammer of an attack under Izzy Scane's direction bore down the end of the third quarter and seeped into the fourth quarter. Northwestern, the team that ascended to No. 1 because of BC's win over Syracuse, defeated the Eagles by scoring six of the game's last eight goals, but the damage inflicted instead became a battle scar and an experience worth reflecting on.
"We honestly just needed to get punched in the nose a little bit," Walker-Weinstein said. "It wasn't that our girls were cocky - that's not what I mean at all because they're never cocky - but we just needed the wake-up call that winning is really hard. So there was nothing that really shifted in our X's and O's or our coaching. I just think the girls had a mental switch, and they realized it was time to work harder and work smarter."
The resulting equation allowed BC to retaliate late against Syracuse and assured the team of an ACC tournament path away from both the Orange and North Carolina. Had the Eagles lost, the second conference loss would have dropped them into a statistical tie with the Tar Heels, and the head-to-head loss from early March would have sent BC into the tournament as the No. 3 seed. At a surface level, that would have meant a trip into the late game during Wednesday's Quarterfinals before having to potentially traverse both UNC and Syracuse in the semifinals and championship.
BC instead won, and with the No. 1 seed, the Eagles instead slotted into the first game on Wednesday against ninth-seeded Duke, which defeated No. 8 Louisville on Sunday. If the tournament holds chalk, that would ensure a path that would face either Syracuse or UNC, not both, after the Orange and Tar Heels play one another in the semifinals.
None of this, of course, guarantees a championship, and Duke, Virginia, and Notre Dame are salivating at an opportunity to dethrone the regular season's co-champion. All three hold storylines in their own right, and as the tournament kicks off on Wednesday, it's easy to understand that no path ensures any kind of victory, let alone a trophy that this team openly wants and talks about.
"All of our success is triggered by our defense," Walker-Weinstein said. "Our girls, defensively, have been the anchor of our team for a decade. All of our offensive success comes from a defense spark. Everybody just kind of woke up [after the early season struggles], and I think everybody just decided to dive a little deeper. They really respected the fact that winning doesn't just happen. It's the product of an insane amount of hard work."
Top-seeded Boston College and ninth-seeded Duke kick off Wednesday's ACC Tournament quarterfinal round with an 11 a.m. start from Charlotte's American Legion Memorial Stadium. All games from this week's championship will be televised on the ACC Network and can be streamed through the ESPN family of online platforms.
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