The 43rd Women’s Beanpot, Boston College vs. #3 Northeastern: Final Thoughts & Prediction

We’ve made it to the Beanpot! Unbelievably, that means we’ve got just two and half weeks left in the regular season. In a season like this, with NCAA at-large aspirations out of reach, these tournaments hold even more meaning than usual — the Eagles aren’t playing for Pairwise points or trying to claw their way up the standings. It’s all about the hardware. BC’s first opportunity to steal a trophy is here, and they’ll have to get the hard part out of the way first if they want to play in the final.

WHO

Boston College Eagles (14-11-0, 12-8-0 WHEA)
at No. 3 Northeastern Huskies (21-3-1, 16-3-1 WHEA)

WHAT

The 43rd Women’s Beanpot Semifinals

WHERE

Matthews Arena
Boston, MA

WHEN

Tuesday, February 1st, 2022
7:30pm EST

HOW TO WATCH

The game will be shown live on NESNplus. As always, those outside the NESN coverage area can stream the game for free at CollegeSportsLive.com. Here is a direct link to that stream.

LAST TIME OUT

Boston College was supposed to play Boston University on Sunday, but the game was postponed. But not because of COVID, for once! There was a burst pipe at Walter Brown Arena. Unfortunately there don’t seem to be any reasonable open dates to make the game up this late in the season, so it might not be made up. We’ll see. Prior to that, the Eagles won an exciting contest down in Storrs, defeating UConn 3-1.

Northeastern is actually coming into the Beanpot on a loss after falling 2-1 at home to Vermont on Friday. It was kind of a perfect storm as the Catamounts have been hot of late and Northeastern’s Alina Mueller is off in Beijing for the Olympics.

PROJECTIONS

KRACH (used for odds) has the Eagles ranked 15th and Northeastern in 6th. Running the numbers gives us the Eagles with an 22.3% chance of winning, or BC +348 with your local bookie.

The GRaNT rankings (used for point spread) have a bit more separation, with the Eagles in 20th and Northeastern in 5th. Our calculator gives us a projected score of 3.36 to 1.14 in favor of the Huskies, or something like a 3-1 Northeastern win.

THIS WEEK’S STORYLINE

No Mueller, Big Problems. Northeastern isn’t a one-player team, but let’s be honest here, they are definitely not the same without Alina Mueller. Losing one of the world’s greatest players has already had a profound effect on NU’s season. Mueller missed most of the first half with an injury and missed the Huskies’ last game against Vermont. That time frame features all three Northeastern losses — once to Boston University, once to Providence, and then this weekend to Vermont.

On balance, Boston College is a better team than BU or PC are, especially over the last couple weeks. A Beanpot upset with Mueller off the ice could definitely happen.

GAME TIME MEAL OF THE WEEK

Taco Tuesday!

YEAH buddy! Who doesn’t love Taco Tuesday?! I’m more of a soft taco guy, but maybe you like the shells; who am I to judge? As long as you’re loading the hell of those things with extra cheese we’ll get along just fine.

GAME TIME SONG OF THE WEEK

Arctic Monkeys — The View From The Afternoon

Anticipation has a habit to set you up
For disappointment in evening entertainment but
Tonight there’ll be some love
Tonight there’ll be a ruckus, yeah, regardless of what’s gone before

Oh yes, “We are BC” is synonymous with “We know what it’s like to get our hopes up just to get them shattered.” Oh well, there is no love without pain. I’m ready to be hurt again.

PREDICTION

The Eagles will have at least two opportunities to get some meaningful hardware and both of those opportunities will go through Matthews Arena. Oh, boy, I want to believe so bad. Things are looking up for BC and Northeastern’s missing their best player; surely there’s some magic to be had, right? The Huskies are vulnerable, surely...

My heart tells me it can be done but my head tells me it might not be this week. Northeastern’s got a lot of firepower and is one of the only teams to have a goalie that can match ours. We’ll have BC keeping it interesting in this one, but the Huskies take the win at home 4-2.