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You figured they'd be cutting it close, but the 10-8-1 Boston College women's soccer team narrowly missed out on making this year's NCAA Tournament field. While watching the NCAA Selection Show, the writing was on the wall that BC would miss out after the selection committee paired Northeastern-Boston University, Connecticut-New Hampshire and Harvard-Central Connecticut State in first round matchups.
This snaps a nine-year consecutive NCAA Tournament streak for head coach Alison Foley and the Eagles.
With a 10-8-1 record and an RPI of 47, BC was right on the bubble for an at-large berth. Arkansas (8-6-6, RPI 41), Georgetown (11-3-4, 42) Oklahoma (9-7-3, 44) and San Diego (10-7-2, 51) were among the last few teams to qualify for this year's Tournament field.
Last season, the Eagles finished the regular season with an identical 10-8-1 record, before stringing together three NCAA Tournament wins--Northeastern 2-0, Nebraska 4-1 and Illinois 4-1--to advance to the national quarterfinals. BC would fall to No. 3 Florida State, 4-0, finishing a game away from the College Cup.
Things may have broken a different way had BC been given a chance to win another game or two in the conference championship, but for some reason the ACC decided to qualify only four of the conference's 14 teams as part of its pick-a-different-conference-championship-format-for-each-sport roulette.
In all, six ACC schools qualified for this year's NCAA Women's Soccer Championship: Florida State (18-1-1), Virginia (18-2-0), Virginia Tech (14-5-0), Notre Dame (12-5-2), North Carolina (12-3-2), Clemson (13-3-2). That's down two from eight a year ago.
Disappointing to be sure, but between the season-ending injury to star forward McKenzie Meehan and all the home turf issues, I guess we can just chalk this up to a lost season.