Jeff: It was tough for all BC sports this weekend. Men's basketball loses by a million at Holy Cross. Both soccer teams lose in the NCAA Tournament. And of course in the biggest games, the Eagles went 0-2 in South Bend.
How bad was the weekend? It feels like it was unprecedentedly bad. Was it?
Brian: Last weekend, right before an extremely busy BC sports weekend, DeFilippo tweeted this:
"AD's delight today! Watching BC in ACC soccer championship on ESPN, headed to NCAA women's soccer shortly, then to BU-BC hockey tonight"
One week later and it's less like "AD's delight" and more like an AD's nightmare. If you go back to last Sunday's 5-0 home hockey beatdown against Boston U., this is how the week has gone:
Men's Basketball. Like you said, hoops got ran off the court out in Worcester against our once Jesuit basketball rivals. Playing without Patrick Heckmann, the Eagles sorely lacked depth and on defense, let the Cross score at will. Hopefully hoops can rebound tonight as they host UMass in the Commonwealth Classic.
Women's Basketball. Dropped a pair of games to 15th ranked Rutgers and Arizona State on Sunday. Falls to 1-2 on the year.
Men's Hockey. Gets crushed by Boston U. on Sunday. Then on Friday night, has a legitimate goal disallowed, goes to overtime with the Irish and loses with less than two seconds left on the clock. This game likely will have huge PairWise implications come NCAA Tournament selection time. Basically, this isn't the last we'll hear about this loss. This one will hurt a good deal come March.
Soccer. Both the men's and women's soccer teams get bounced from the NCAA Tournament on the same day. The women's loss is a bit more easy to swallow as everyone other program is probably going to lose to Stanford too. This season was also the third straight year BC has been bounced from the NCAAs by the Cardinal, losing in last year's National semifinals (2-0) and the 2009 quarterfinals (3-1). Still would have been nice to make a deep run in this year's tournament after the season the women had.
But the men had a clear path to the College Cup and couldn't parlay a deep ACC Tournament run into any success in the NCAAs, getting bounced in their first game of the tournament. BC is now just 2-8-2 all-time against the State University of New Jersey.
Football. Loses a close game to a thoroughly mediocre Notre Dame team (I bet Spaz would love to have that 1:19 back at the end of the first half, eh?). Spaz is now 0-3 against some 'meh' Irish teams and the Eagles go into the regular season finale as more than a 2 TD underdog. Mercifully, the Eagles 2011 football season ends a day early this year as BC gets Miami on Friday.
NFL. The New York Giants lose to the Eagles 17-10 in Mark Herzlich's first career start at linebacker. I only throw this in here because I'm a Giants fan.
Not counting BC women's soccer team's penalty kick shootout victory over Cal, that's 0-8 on the weekend. 0-9 if you are a Giants fan. About the only bright spot on the weekend was the women's hockey team's performance in a sweep of 8th ranked Northeastern (3-1 and 4-1).
Suffice it to say it was one epic fail of a weekend. Weekends like this make me want to stand on top of my car in stand-still traffic and belt a few verses from a real sad song, Michael Stipe style. This one goes out to you, Boston College.