Don't Call It An Upset, Eagles To ACC Championship

Kelly Doton stood on the Kentner Stadium sidelines with a pit feeling growing larger by the second. She'd watched Boston College find gritty toughness over the previous four periods and two overtimes against Duke, but the third-seeded Eagles stood on the precipice of being sent home from the Atlantic Coast Conference Field Hockey Championship because of a goal scored less than one minute ahead of a penalty shootout.

Game officials discussed a video review surrounding Duke's sudden victory goal, but the uneasy tension didn't prevent the Blue Devils from gathering on their sideline. Their reaction stood poised to explode in a celebration, and the Tobacco Road crowd gathered at Wake Forest's home stadium prepared itself for an inevitable Duke-North Carolina championship game on Friday afternoon.

The review of Alaina McVeigh's goal agonizingly stretched past one and two minutes, and each moment seemingly grew hope that the BC-sized speed bump had some life left in its aftershock. When official word finally broke, the gathered Duke sideline hung its head, and the Eagles, granted new life, immediately injected adrenaline into their legs.

The goal was declared invalid, the game continued, and one of the ACC's most prominent rivalries went back into the proverbial ice chest, where it remained after the Eagles claimed a five-round shootout with two goals as part of a 2-1 shootout victory that sent BC to its first championship game since 2019.

"When you look at where we were in 2019, it seems like forever ago," said Doton. "We were building momentum, but after the pandemic hit, there were some programs that kind of got through it. We really didn't, so looking back, what I thought was going to be the start of a great run is now [coming full circle]. All of those seasons with the frustration and the adversity and losing games that I didn't think we should have lost, to watch the sheer joy of our players is one of the greatest things about coaching. Seeing your players happy, knowing that it's a tall task to go to the ACC Championship, we're going to celebrate the win. This is a league with nine great teams competing for a conference championship during the regular season, and only eight of them make it [to the postseason], and that's where we are."

BC knew the path through Duke required a grueling and physical test of strength, but playing for the second time in two days added extra elements that the Blue Devils exploited in the first half. They, too, had to return to Wake Forest on short rest, but the volume of taxing plays in the first two periods fed to Kia Curland's goal in the 34th minute by forcing the Eagles to play more towards the midfield. That neither team recorded a shot in the first 30 minutes highlighted the intensity of play away from their respective circles, but it led to the first true mistake when Curland redirected Macy Szukics' shot on a penalty corner Curland inserted to Paige Bitting.

Barb Civitella later scored a second goal on another penalty corner, but her goal was negated by a whistle for a dangerous shot, which in turn freed BC and fed the Eagles into the attacking third for their first true attempts. As the clock ticked towards the final 10 minutes, a penalty corner fed Madelief Grandjean that beat Frederique Wollaert ahead of the final buzzer and force overtime ahead of the penalty shootout, where goals by Yani Zhong and Martina Giacchino slammed BC into Friday's ACC Championship.

"Having played them so recently helped us with what we tactically needed to do," said Doton. "We weren't changing a lot, but I told the team that this was going to be the hardest game, mentally and physically, because it was a back-to-back. We don't play back-to-back, so there was a fatigue factor that certainly set in. We weren't as fast or fluid as we normally are, which was expected, but we battled through it. When we went down 1-0, we battled back, and you could see the sheer pain on some of the players' faces. I just told them to give me one more run, and by doing one more run, they overcame [Duke] to absolutely deserve to win that game."

Duke finished the game with a 9-3 shot advantage after notching four shots in each of the final two periods, but the Blue Devils' ability to gain penalty corners waned after earning four looks at BC's net in the third period. Three chances arose in the first overtime, but the 10-3 advantage slipped to a 2-1 look by BC before the shootout commenced.

Goaltender Charlotte Kramer made five saves for BC and stopped Duke during critical moments in both overtime and the shootout, in particular keeping McVeigh off the scoresheet despite two shots and a shot on goal. Having earned the right to close out the Blue Devils in the shootout, she twice forced mistakes by McVeigh and Charlie van Oirschot around misses by Logan Clouser and Josephine Palde.

"[Assistant coach] Mark Foster worked with her on the shootout before," said Doton, "so we had a little bit of a read on some of their players and where they were going to go. He gave Charley a bit of the heads up, which didn't mean that they were going to do the exact same thing, but the scout worked perfectly [for Wednesday]. With Charley, there's a confidence level to it because we practice [shootouts] with multiple different players doing multiple different skills. From a coaching and player perspective, there's so much confidence in her, and she has a lot of confidence in herself."

With the win, BC likely locked a spot in next week's NCAA Tournament, but the automatic bid through the conference championship looms for an athletics program that won its first two ACC championships on the lacrosse field in 2023 and 2024. Top-seeded North Carolina is an undefeated wonder, but the Eagles understand that any team is beatable with the right plan and execution.

"You don't need the perfect game [to beat UNC]," said Doton. "Every team has its flaws. You just can't shoot yourself in the foot like we did last time against them. We have to look at how to stop Ryleigh Heck from creating goal scoring opportunities for herself and her teammates, and then we obviously need to limit their corners from creating goal-scoring chances. We're going to have to figure out how to double-team Riley and make sure that we have help whenever the ball is in and around the defensive circle. We gave up way too many corners against them last time, and we had some mental mistakes that led to goals. Those are the things you can't do."

BC and UNC battle for the 2024 Atlantic Coast Conference field hockey championship on Friday afternoon from Kentner Stadium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The game starts at 12 p.m. and can be seen on the ACC Network with online streaming available through ESPN's online platform of Internet and mobile device apps. The NCAA Tournament selection show is scheduled for Sunday at 10 p.m., at which point the 18-team field will be revealed with its four national seeds set to host campus site-based games during next week.

Don't Call It An Upset, Eagles To ACC Championship

Players Mentioned

Martina Giacchino

Madelief Grandjean

Charlotte Kramer

Yani Zhong

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