Weekly Kickoff: ACC Tournament, NFL Draft, and Record-Breaking Recruits

Welcome to the Weekly Kickoff! Let’s take a look at what happened last week with Boston College Athletics and what we can look forward to this week.

Playoff time for BC WLax!

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Boston College women’s lacrosse played an incredible game last Thursday to upset undefeated #1 Syracuse and claimed the ACC regular season crown for the Eagles. That earned 1-seed will be vital to their success in this week’s conference tournament.

BC begins play on Wednesday April 26 at 11am when they take on the winner of Louisville/Duke, a game that BC will be heavily favored to win. If they advance, that’s followed by the conference semifinals on Friday at 1pm against either Virginia or Notre Dame, both of which are ranked top-15 nationally. They’ll still be favored, but that one won’t be so easy. Notre Dame took BC to the absolute brink a few weeks ago and it took a 5-goal 4th quarter comeback for the Eagles to get the eventual win. Boston College is at least avoiding the Syracuse-UNC slugfest on the other side of the semifinal bracket, though.

Finally, if Boston College wins its first two games, they will advance to the ACC championship, likely against either Syracuse or UNC. There’s a lot on the line in this tournament for NCAA tournament seeding and bragging rights within college lacrosse’s best conference, so you should expect some intense match-ups and interesting games.

Zay Flowers will attend the NFL Draft Round 1 on Thursday night

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The 2023 NFL Draft begins this Thursday April 27 at 8pm ET in Kansas City. Boston College WR Zay Flowers accepted an invitation to attend the draft in-person and is expected to have his name called in the first round, possibly even as the first WR off the board. BC has never had a wide receiver drafted in even the first three rounds in its program’s history, so Flowers’s selection will be historic for the Eagles. There has been a lot of smoke from a lot of different teams that may be interested in taking Zay with their first round selection, including the Kansas City Chiefs after they invited him to workout with reigning NFL MVP Patrick Mahomes.

Birdball building back momentum

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Boston College baseball ended their slump this past weekend with a series sweep of the North Carolina Tarheels down in Chapel Hill. UNC was ranked #16 in the country and BC hadn’t ever won a series down there in its entire history, so this sweep was a big boost for the Eagles. Since entering the national top-10 for the first time in program history back in the beginning of April, BC went on to get swept by Louisville, lose a series to Duke at home, and get blown out 12-1 by #15 UConn. They did manage to win the Beanpot during that stretch in a close 5-4 game over Harvard, but it hadlargely been disappointing results for the Eagles in that span. A huge victory over North Carolina should quell the flames for now.

#11 Boston College will travel down to URI on Tuesday, host UMass Lowell on Wednesday, then host an ACC series with Clemson over the weekend. Clemson, while not ranked, is still a tough squad and can’t be taken lightly. BC needs to rack up these quality wins if they want to position themselves well for the NCAA tournament.

Record-breaking hockey recruits

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Some news that should excite BC hockey fans everywhere is coming out of the USNTDP. Boston College commit Gabe Perreault set a new single-season USA Hockey National Team Development Program points record on Saturday with a three goal, two assist performance that got him up all the way to 121 points. That total surpassed the previous record of 117 set by the Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews in 2015. The only other players in his stratosphere are NHL superstars Matthews and the Devils’ Jack Hughes, followed by fellow BC commit Will Smith with 110 points this season. Both NHLers were #1 overall picks in their respective drafts, so there are a lot of good signs about the potential of this incoming Boston College freshman class.