Looking Back At Our 2018-2019 Boston College Prop Bets

Last summer, we put together an intriguing list of 2018-2019 Boston College prop bets — for entertainment purposes only, of course — to gauge how the upcoming year in BC Athletics was going to be.

The answer ended up being... well, pretty bad, actually! But let’s check back in and see how we did anyway. We’ll have a new list for 2019-2020 before the start of the athletics calendar!

Pick #1
Which is greater: AJ Dillon Touchdowns or BC Men’s Basketball Wins

The Consensus: Men’s Basketball
The Result: Men’s Basketball, 14-11
The Verdict: CORRECT (1-0)

Thanks in no small part to injuries, Dillon ended the year with 11 touchdowns (10 rushing, 1 receiving). Men’s Basketball continued to disappoint after a decent start, but ended the year with a 14-17 record to take the decision over Dillon.

Pick #2
Over/Under 0.5: Number of NCAA Championships

The Consensus: Over 0.5
The Result: 0
The Verdict: NOPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE (1-1)

Women’s Lacrosse and Women’s Hockey both seemed like lights-out options to be at least in the discussion of being favorites for the national title, but WLAX was the only one that got close. And it seems impossible to believe now, but Men’s Hockey appeared to be back in title contention as well. Sigh.

Pick #3
Over/Under 5.5: Number Of NCAA Titles Plus Conference Regular Season Titles Plus Conference Tournament Titles

The Consensus: Under 5.5
The Result: 1 (!!)
The Verdict: CORRECT (2-1)

This one really puts a magnifying glass on how badly things went this year. Boston College, as a university, won exactly one thing the entire season: A WLAX ACC regular season title. Men’s and Women’s Hockey both went 0-fer — not even claiming a Beanpot — and no one else was really in the ballpark. Yikes.

Pick #4:
Which is greater: Softball Home Runs or Football Passing Touchdowns

The Consensus: Football
The Result: Football, 25-19
The Verdict: CORRECT (3-1)

Softball stayed roughly even on what they had done the previous season, clubbing 19 home runs after hitting 20 in 2018. But football really stepped up the passing game year over year, going from 14 touchdowns through the air in 2017 to 25 last season in what turned out to be a remarkably balanced offense — the Eagles had 25 passing TDs to go with 23 rushing.

Pick #5:
Over/Under 1.5: Number of top individual awards

The Consensus: Over 1.5
The Result: 0
The Verdict: INCORRECT (3-2)

Looking back on this I feel like 1.5 was a little too high to set this O/U, but both Women’s Lacrosse and Women’s Hockey were probably odds-on favorites to win their respective awards again. In the end, both squads had finalists (with WLAX actually having two), but neither sport saw a player take the trophy. And needless to say, no other sport was in the discussion.

Pick #6:
Which is greater: WIH Top Scorer vs. MIH Top Two Scorers

The Consensus: WIH Top Scorer
The Result: MIH Top Two Scorers, 36+26 = 62 to 48
The Verdict: INCORRECT (3-3)

A reasonably close pick here saw MIH’s David Cotton (23-13—36) and Logan Hutsko (6-20—26) outscore WIH’s top scorer Daryl Watts (22-26—48). The entire women’s hockey team saw a pretty sizable drop in scoring year-over-year, while the men’s top two were slightly up from 2017-2018. That was enough for the men’s team to take the matchup.

Pick #7:
Who wins more games in their first season: Jason Kennedy (VB) or Joanna Bernabei-McNamee (WBB)?

The Consensus: WBB’s Joanna Bernabei-McNamee
The Result: VB’s Jason Kennedy, 15-15 to 14-16
The Verdict: INCORRECT (3-4)

The voters had a lot of faith in Women’s Basketball’s Coach Bernabei-McNamee, and with good reason: the WBB Eagles looked like a new team this year, and while they didn’t quite crack the .500 mark, JBM doubled the team’s win total in her first season and already has an impressive recruiting pipeline on its way in.

What’s even more impressive is that new volleyball head coach Jason Kennedy eclipsed JBM’s mark, reaching .500 with the volleyball program out of absolutely nowhere for the first time since 2004 — back when BC had not yet joined the ACC. Both of these programs were rare bright spots in the athletics season for their year-over-year improvement and seem to have bright futures ahead.

Pick #8:
Over/Under 1.5: Number of NCAA tournament games played for BC Soccer (Men’s + Women’s)

The Consensus: Over 1.5
The Result: 1
The Verdict: INCORRECT (3-5)

Men’s Soccer had a very disappointing year at 4-8-4, but Women’s Soccer was pretty good, posting a 14-5-1 record overall, with the 5th loss coming in the NCAA tournament. Unfortunately, that loss prevented them from getting to a second game, making this prop the 4th straight incorrect pick for the voters.

Pick #9:
Which is greater: Number of WIH Losses Plus WLAX Losses OR Number of football weeks in the Top 25 plus wins over Top 25 teams

The Consensus: WIH Losses + WLAX Losses
The Result: WIH Losses + WLAX Losses, 14-3... Or 14-4? Or 14-5?
The Verdict: CORRECT (4-5)

Okay, this was a pretty complicated one, but it was very, very not close. Women’s Hockey looked like they would have one of their best teams in history, but ended up with a wildly disappointing year with a whopping 12 losses. WLAX added two of their own (in the ACC Championship and NCAA Championship games, because #WeAreBC) for a total of 14.

The football team was ranked for either 3 or 4 weeks, depending on which poll you’re looking at, and didn’t beat any team that was ranked at the time that we beat them... unless you want to count the First Responder Bowl which was SERVPRO’d out of existence after the Eagles went up 7-0 in the first quarter over #25 Boise State.

To which I say: It absolutely counts. Fight me.

Pick #10:
Who scores more 3 point field goals: BC Football or Nik Popovic

The Consensus: BC Football
The Result: Nik Popovic, 11-6
The Verdict: INCORRECT (4-6)

Pop upped his 3 point output from 5 to 11 last year, which was solid enough. But did you know that Boston College football only made 6 (!!) field goals this season on only 9 attempts? What the hell? Hopefully BC’s new kicker transfer can make a big difference for us this season.

Pick #11:
Over/Under 1.5: Number of Beanpots (MIH, WIH, BASE)

The Consensus: Over 1.5
The Result: 0
The Verdict: INCORRECT (4-7)

God FREAKING damn it. Why do we do this to ourselves?

Pick #12:
Which happens first: Football’s 2nd loss or MIH’s 1st win

The Consensus: MIH’s 1st Win
The Result: Football’s 2nd Loss: October 6th to November 3rd
The Verdict: INCORRECT (4-8)

This said a lot more about how rough the start was for Men’s Hockey than it did anything about BC Football. Men’s Hockey’s season was basically over almost before it even began, with a miserable 0-6-0 start that didn’t give us a win until the month of freaking November.

Football, on the other hand, had a roughly-as-expected start with the 2nd loss coming to NC State before rattling off three big ACC wins in a row to climb to 17th in the polls.

Pick #13:
Which is greater: Basketball wins (MBB + WBB) or Men’s Hockey wins

The Consensus: Basketball
The Result: Basketball, 14+14 = 28 to 14
The Verdict: CORRECT (5-8)

Well, nobody did all that well this year, did they, Women’s Basketball’s improvement notwithstanding... But all three teams came out with 14 wins on the season, meaning that the combined basketball programs easily took this point, as the voters predicted.

Keep an eye out before September for our 2019-2020 prop bets — and hey, maybe things won’t be so existentially miserable this year!