Boston College Athletics
ACC Champ-Champs Begin Quest To Regain National Crown
May 06, 2024 | Lacrosse, #ForBoston Files
Princeton and Drexel meet Friday in the NCAA First Round ahead of Sunday's matchup against BC.
There's no way of knowing if winning the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament avoided sending Boston College on the road for a four-team bracket located somewhere away from the team's customary homes in Newton and Chestnut Hill. The hypothetical situation, while a fun conversation piece for anyone who watched last week's run to a second consecutive Atlantic Coast Conference championship, is so loaded with unknowns that it becomes virtually impossible to even measure what would have happened. There's no insight, no clipboard material, that could ever understand how important winning the conference title became to that goal, so talking about it is a nonstarter before it ever begins.
The world can only exist in what's known, and what's absolutely clear is that winning the conference championship clinched another year with Boston College ahead of its competition. The ACC champions were never going to vault over top-ranked Northwestern unless the Wildcats collapsed in the Big Ten tournament, so elevating back to the No. 2 spot meant the last couple of weeks gave the Eagles a clear path to the NCAA Tournament as the road to their seventh consecutive Final Four begins where everything started - right at home.
"Being able to have these last few games on the home field means everything," said senior Sydney Scales. "The atmosphere is one of the strengths of our program, and having such a family atmosphere and having that home crowd, being able to play in front of them that one last time, it's something we don't take lightly."
The women's lacrosse tournament long carried a natural evolution through its national seeds, but this year's bracket seemingly found its path with an easy trip through the power conference and mid-major league elites. Northwestern's rally against Penn State in the Big Ten championship made the Wildcats a clear-cut and easy selection for the No. 1 national seed, but the ACC champion's head-to-head wins through the rest of its conference solidified the No. 2 spot after Syracuse, Notre Dame and BC all advanced to the semifinal round.
BC won the conference for the second straight year and defeated the Orange twice on its road to the league championship, but winning the ACC's regular season championship before advancing to last weekend's title game easily grouped Syracuse as the foil on the opposite end of the Eagles' bracket. A possible down-the-road rubber match between the teams then allowed Notre Dame, the third representative, to sneak into BC's bracket as the No. 7 seed after the remainder of teams built their regional appearances.
Both BC and Syracuse had better resumes than Maryland, which dropped a Big Ten season finale to Penn State before mysteriously blowing out of the conference tournament in its first game against Rutgers, but the Terps' overall body of work prevented the unnatural slotting of three straight ACC teams by moving into the No. 4 spot.Â
Virginia subsequently filled the No. 5 spot with its head-to-head regular season wins over Notre Dame and BC, but charting the power programs took a sideways turn when both Yale and Penn upended the national chart with their overall performance in the Ratings Performance Index. Both earned national seeds on either end of the bracket after the Bulldogs won the Ivy League's regular season and postseason championship, but Princeton's head-to-head win over the Quakers turned the Tigers into an undeniable at-large bid with the second place slot in a good mid-major league.Â
Stemming from that conversation, it wasn't difficult to understand why Princeton was given a first round matchup against Drexel. Though officially a first round matchup, both felt worthy of a play-in game atmosphere, and the de facto head-to-head determines which teams advances to play BC.
"We've been so hard on our seniors all year," said Walker-Weinstein, "trying to get them to understand the power that they have as a group and the experiences that they have at winning at the highest level [and] losing at the highest level. Being able to harness all of that towards the end of the season is why we're in this position. We leaned on them. We were hard. It was a hard couple of weeks, but we came out…and look at what they did. The seniors led the way, and that's what I think I'm most proud about."
Both teams have an uphill battle to eliminate BC, which earned its sixth consecutive national seed. The Eagles haven't played a first round game since the abbreviated 2021 tournament's matchup with Fairfield and haven't traveled away from Chestnut Hill for the tournament's first weekend since the 2017 tournament produced consecutive victories at sixth-seeded Syracuse. Then-unranked, BC scored 42 goals combined in beating Canisius in the first round and the Orange in the second round before a third 20-goal game sent the Eagles to a Final Four hosted at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass.
A three-team expansion over the last seven years hasn't changed much about BC's path compared to those years, but even slotting into the No. 2 seed means the Eagles won't have to leave Massachusetts unless they advance to their seventh consecutive national semifinal. Like last year, that would even keep BC within its ACC footprint with a return trip to Tobacco Road after last week's conference tournament in Charlotte to play in Cary, North Carolina, a location that saw Northwestern defeat BC, 18-6, for last year's national title.
"This means everything," said goalie Shea Dolce after BC's championship win. "We say it a lot but we play for the people that came before us, and we've been working so hard for this. We worked hard last year, and we knew that we'd have to work even harder this year. I think it really just stems from the program and everyone that came before us and the family atmosphere that we have at BC."
Princeton and Drexel face-off on Friday at 4 p.m. from Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, with the winner advancing to Sunday's Second Round matchup against the second-ranked Eagles. Game time is scheduled for 12 p.m. with coverage available on ESPN+ with the quarterfinals following on May 16 from locations to be determined. All future game times beyond Sunday are not yet determined.
The world can only exist in what's known, and what's absolutely clear is that winning the conference championship clinched another year with Boston College ahead of its competition. The ACC champions were never going to vault over top-ranked Northwestern unless the Wildcats collapsed in the Big Ten tournament, so elevating back to the No. 2 spot meant the last couple of weeks gave the Eagles a clear path to the NCAA Tournament as the road to their seventh consecutive Final Four begins where everything started - right at home.
"Being able to have these last few games on the home field means everything," said senior Sydney Scales. "The atmosphere is one of the strengths of our program, and having such a family atmosphere and having that home crowd, being able to play in front of them that one last time, it's something we don't take lightly."
The women's lacrosse tournament long carried a natural evolution through its national seeds, but this year's bracket seemingly found its path with an easy trip through the power conference and mid-major league elites. Northwestern's rally against Penn State in the Big Ten championship made the Wildcats a clear-cut and easy selection for the No. 1 national seed, but the ACC champion's head-to-head wins through the rest of its conference solidified the No. 2 spot after Syracuse, Notre Dame and BC all advanced to the semifinal round.
BC won the conference for the second straight year and defeated the Orange twice on its road to the league championship, but winning the ACC's regular season championship before advancing to last weekend's title game easily grouped Syracuse as the foil on the opposite end of the Eagles' bracket. A possible down-the-road rubber match between the teams then allowed Notre Dame, the third representative, to sneak into BC's bracket as the No. 7 seed after the remainder of teams built their regional appearances.
Both BC and Syracuse had better resumes than Maryland, which dropped a Big Ten season finale to Penn State before mysteriously blowing out of the conference tournament in its first game against Rutgers, but the Terps' overall body of work prevented the unnatural slotting of three straight ACC teams by moving into the No. 4 spot.Â
Virginia subsequently filled the No. 5 spot with its head-to-head regular season wins over Notre Dame and BC, but charting the power programs took a sideways turn when both Yale and Penn upended the national chart with their overall performance in the Ratings Performance Index. Both earned national seeds on either end of the bracket after the Bulldogs won the Ivy League's regular season and postseason championship, but Princeton's head-to-head win over the Quakers turned the Tigers into an undeniable at-large bid with the second place slot in a good mid-major league.Â
Stemming from that conversation, it wasn't difficult to understand why Princeton was given a first round matchup against Drexel. Though officially a first round matchup, both felt worthy of a play-in game atmosphere, and the de facto head-to-head determines which teams advances to play BC.
"We've been so hard on our seniors all year," said Walker-Weinstein, "trying to get them to understand the power that they have as a group and the experiences that they have at winning at the highest level [and] losing at the highest level. Being able to harness all of that towards the end of the season is why we're in this position. We leaned on them. We were hard. It was a hard couple of weeks, but we came out…and look at what they did. The seniors led the way, and that's what I think I'm most proud about."
Both teams have an uphill battle to eliminate BC, which earned its sixth consecutive national seed. The Eagles haven't played a first round game since the abbreviated 2021 tournament's matchup with Fairfield and haven't traveled away from Chestnut Hill for the tournament's first weekend since the 2017 tournament produced consecutive victories at sixth-seeded Syracuse. Then-unranked, BC scored 42 goals combined in beating Canisius in the first round and the Orange in the second round before a third 20-goal game sent the Eagles to a Final Four hosted at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass.
A three-team expansion over the last seven years hasn't changed much about BC's path compared to those years, but even slotting into the No. 2 seed means the Eagles won't have to leave Massachusetts unless they advance to their seventh consecutive national semifinal. Like last year, that would even keep BC within its ACC footprint with a return trip to Tobacco Road after last week's conference tournament in Charlotte to play in Cary, North Carolina, a location that saw Northwestern defeat BC, 18-6, for last year's national title.
"This means everything," said goalie Shea Dolce after BC's championship win. "We say it a lot but we play for the people that came before us, and we've been working so hard for this. We worked hard last year, and we knew that we'd have to work even harder this year. I think it really just stems from the program and everyone that came before us and the family atmosphere that we have at BC."
Princeton and Drexel face-off on Friday at 4 p.m. from Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, with the winner advancing to Sunday's Second Round matchup against the second-ranked Eagles. Game time is scheduled for 12 p.m. with coverage available on ESPN+ with the quarterfinals following on May 16 from locations to be determined. All future game times beyond Sunday are not yet determined.
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