Field Hockey Returns To Tournament As Princeton Awaits
November 15, 2024 | Field Hockey, #ForBoston Files
BC enters the 18-team bracket for the first time since a 2019 Final Four run.
Reaching this level was always part of Kelly Doton's plan for Boston College field hockey.
She understood how the Eagles were already a national brand capable of competing for national championships and tournament berths, but her vision encompassed an ability to threaten the elite tier of an Atlantic Coast Conference teeming with respected championship brands. She saw the conference as a tool, a conduit to achieving goals she experienced when Wake Forest won consecutive national championships in 2002 and 2003, to which the next level and generation of collegiate field hockey would run through the iconic institution located in her home state.
As a coach, she constructed five different national tournament berths for the BC program and orchestrated the program's rise to its first Final Four appearance in 2019. Having previously made the tournament in 2015 and 2016, she felt like the Eagles sat on the cusp of perennial appearances in the last weekend of the season after the meteoric rise eventually broke through its last glass ceiling.
And then COVID happened.
No pathway exists to fully understood how the novel coronavirus derailed or temporarily delayed BC's overall attempt to crash the national party, but four years after the pandemic turned any program's build into a much more difficult course, the Eagles are finally returning to the stage envisioned by their head coach and a group of players who are fully prepared to take the next step in exorcising demons in Friday's NCAA Tournament Second Round matchup against Princeton.
"First and foremost, this is a huge credit to [athletic director] Blake James and our administration for really focusing on getting all of our fall teams [on campus] for Summer Session II," Doton said in an interview with The Podcast for Boston. "It's not something that we've necessarily done in the past, but players arriving in late June [meant] they were able to train together. They were able to lift together. They were able to get up to the field and hit around and start their team bonding. I think that's where the foundation of this run started because it's something that the players love to have. When you're all together, you seem to be working a little bit harder than when you're by yourself, and throughout the season, as you're building the team positionally and finding out who fits where, that makes us the best team possible."
Advancing to last week's ACC Championship clinched the already-assured berth in the dozen-plus field of teams, but assignment into a bracket with No. 4 St. Joseph's indicates how narrowly BC missed hosting this particular bracket. The Atlantic-10 champion Hawks went 17-3 during a season in which BC went 14-6 but gained entry through their conference's automatic bid, a fact that likely means the A-10 would have only been a one-bid league. At best, earning a second seed would have dropped the program into a road game, a fact echoed by UConn's entry into a No. 3 seed and Second Round matchup against conference mate UMass.
Dropping either of those times would have flipped this bracket to Newton and possibly brought the Harvard-Syracuse matchup or Lafayette-Princeton grouping to Boston College, but the chips falling on Sunday's selection show pushed the Eagles into a path exclusive from any previous opponent. Even at 14-6, BC won its way into the field by essentially finishing second in the best league in the nation while simultaneously competing against and defeating several high profile programs.
"One of the important reasons why we keep the Big 10-ACC challenge on the schedule is because Maryland and Northwestern are two of the top programs in the country," Doton said. "They can expose you, regardless of the outcome, and help you build your identity, [which is] a word that I used a lot with Maryland. I didn't think we were anywhere close to this team's capability, but we watched a ton of film on what we could do better and went into that Northwestern game. I'm a very competitive person, but I was happy with that loss because I finally knew what we could be in Week Two, after which we kind of built on that momentum."
Constantly improving and building the team's overall program is a big reason why the NCAA selection committee moved BC into an ultra-competitive bracket with these three programs. Princeton, in particular, nearly matched the Eagles by going 13-5 this season, but the Tigers arguably produced a better result against No. 1 North Carolina during a 2-0 loss in early September. A 1-0 overtime win against Miami (Ohio) earned a victory over the Mid-American Conference's eventual champion, and one-goal losses to Northwestern and Syracuse kept the Tigers in a strong position for their eventual positioning to an Ivy League Tournament championship run - until, that is, they were upset by Harvard in the final.
"Princeton's schedule is always hard," said Doton. "Their biggest opponent was [essentially] Harvard, and they had a heartbreaker in the Ivy League final. But they've also had some really great wins. They beat Maryland late. They had a close call with UNC and another close call with Northwestern. So this is a very good team. They're not allowing a lot of goals, and their defense is pretty stout. We're going to have our work cut out for us to see if we can get inside the circle and challenge their goalkeeper."
Doton advocated for strong defense and cohesion through her team's ability to move the ball through the different levels of an opponent's positioning, but Princeton has few holes in a lineup that combines that back line with one of the nation's best scorers in Beth Yeager. A United States Olympian during this past summer's games in Paris, she helped return the Yanks to group play after missing the Tokyo tournament. A Greenwich, Connecticut native, she hasn't yet scored at the national outdoor level but produced seven goals in 10 previous appearances for the national indoor team.
"She'll go anywhere on the field," Doton noted. "She starts in the center-mid position, but she can run to the sideline and move through double teams and triple teams. We need to be prepared because she played against some of the best field hockey players in the world in Paris. She is the key [for Princeton], and they have some really great players. I wasn't very familiar with them this year, but just watching a ton of film, they have a high pressure, and their forward line is going to really pressure our backfield. We have to be ready for it, and at the end of the day, our midfield needs to know exactly where No. 17 is because she's a drag flicker on corners. That means we can't be giving up corners because she can set up goals as well. She's got 11 assists, she scores goals, she's on corners, and she can do it on the open field. So this is going to be a tough task for us."
BC and Princeton will face-off on Friday in the Second Round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament from Ellen Ryan Field on the campus of St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Game time is slated for 1:30 p.m. with television coverage slotted for the ESPN Plus subscription video service available through the network's family of Internet and mobile device apps.
She understood how the Eagles were already a national brand capable of competing for national championships and tournament berths, but her vision encompassed an ability to threaten the elite tier of an Atlantic Coast Conference teeming with respected championship brands. She saw the conference as a tool, a conduit to achieving goals she experienced when Wake Forest won consecutive national championships in 2002 and 2003, to which the next level and generation of collegiate field hockey would run through the iconic institution located in her home state.
As a coach, she constructed five different national tournament berths for the BC program and orchestrated the program's rise to its first Final Four appearance in 2019. Having previously made the tournament in 2015 and 2016, she felt like the Eagles sat on the cusp of perennial appearances in the last weekend of the season after the meteoric rise eventually broke through its last glass ceiling.
And then COVID happened.
No pathway exists to fully understood how the novel coronavirus derailed or temporarily delayed BC's overall attempt to crash the national party, but four years after the pandemic turned any program's build into a much more difficult course, the Eagles are finally returning to the stage envisioned by their head coach and a group of players who are fully prepared to take the next step in exorcising demons in Friday's NCAA Tournament Second Round matchup against Princeton.
"First and foremost, this is a huge credit to [athletic director] Blake James and our administration for really focusing on getting all of our fall teams [on campus] for Summer Session II," Doton said in an interview with The Podcast for Boston. "It's not something that we've necessarily done in the past, but players arriving in late June [meant] they were able to train together. They were able to lift together. They were able to get up to the field and hit around and start their team bonding. I think that's where the foundation of this run started because it's something that the players love to have. When you're all together, you seem to be working a little bit harder than when you're by yourself, and throughout the season, as you're building the team positionally and finding out who fits where, that makes us the best team possible."
Advancing to last week's ACC Championship clinched the already-assured berth in the dozen-plus field of teams, but assignment into a bracket with No. 4 St. Joseph's indicates how narrowly BC missed hosting this particular bracket. The Atlantic-10 champion Hawks went 17-3 during a season in which BC went 14-6 but gained entry through their conference's automatic bid, a fact that likely means the A-10 would have only been a one-bid league. At best, earning a second seed would have dropped the program into a road game, a fact echoed by UConn's entry into a No. 3 seed and Second Round matchup against conference mate UMass.
Dropping either of those times would have flipped this bracket to Newton and possibly brought the Harvard-Syracuse matchup or Lafayette-Princeton grouping to Boston College, but the chips falling on Sunday's selection show pushed the Eagles into a path exclusive from any previous opponent. Even at 14-6, BC won its way into the field by essentially finishing second in the best league in the nation while simultaneously competing against and defeating several high profile programs.
"One of the important reasons why we keep the Big 10-ACC challenge on the schedule is because Maryland and Northwestern are two of the top programs in the country," Doton said. "They can expose you, regardless of the outcome, and help you build your identity, [which is] a word that I used a lot with Maryland. I didn't think we were anywhere close to this team's capability, but we watched a ton of film on what we could do better and went into that Northwestern game. I'm a very competitive person, but I was happy with that loss because I finally knew what we could be in Week Two, after which we kind of built on that momentum."
Constantly improving and building the team's overall program is a big reason why the NCAA selection committee moved BC into an ultra-competitive bracket with these three programs. Princeton, in particular, nearly matched the Eagles by going 13-5 this season, but the Tigers arguably produced a better result against No. 1 North Carolina during a 2-0 loss in early September. A 1-0 overtime win against Miami (Ohio) earned a victory over the Mid-American Conference's eventual champion, and one-goal losses to Northwestern and Syracuse kept the Tigers in a strong position for their eventual positioning to an Ivy League Tournament championship run - until, that is, they were upset by Harvard in the final.
"Princeton's schedule is always hard," said Doton. "Their biggest opponent was [essentially] Harvard, and they had a heartbreaker in the Ivy League final. But they've also had some really great wins. They beat Maryland late. They had a close call with UNC and another close call with Northwestern. So this is a very good team. They're not allowing a lot of goals, and their defense is pretty stout. We're going to have our work cut out for us to see if we can get inside the circle and challenge their goalkeeper."
Doton advocated for strong defense and cohesion through her team's ability to move the ball through the different levels of an opponent's positioning, but Princeton has few holes in a lineup that combines that back line with one of the nation's best scorers in Beth Yeager. A United States Olympian during this past summer's games in Paris, she helped return the Yanks to group play after missing the Tokyo tournament. A Greenwich, Connecticut native, she hasn't yet scored at the national outdoor level but produced seven goals in 10 previous appearances for the national indoor team.
"She'll go anywhere on the field," Doton noted. "She starts in the center-mid position, but she can run to the sideline and move through double teams and triple teams. We need to be prepared because she played against some of the best field hockey players in the world in Paris. She is the key [for Princeton], and they have some really great players. I wasn't very familiar with them this year, but just watching a ton of film, they have a high pressure, and their forward line is going to really pressure our backfield. We have to be ready for it, and at the end of the day, our midfield needs to know exactly where No. 17 is because she's a drag flicker on corners. That means we can't be giving up corners because she can set up goals as well. She's got 11 assists, she scores goals, she's on corners, and she can do it on the open field. So this is going to be a tough task for us."
BC and Princeton will face-off on Friday in the Second Round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament from Ellen Ryan Field on the campus of St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Game time is slated for 1:30 p.m. with television coverage slotted for the ESPN Plus subscription video service available through the network's family of Internet and mobile device apps.
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