Of the men’s sports at Boston College, the ones that get the most attention by far are football, basketball, and hockey. If you count club sports, then you can also add men’s lacrosse, a favorite of the blogosphere.

Aside from those, there are dozens of other Eagle teams of both genders (and some are co-ed, as a matter of fact). The sixth part of our wrap on the 2012-13 Boston College Eagles sports year takes us to the men’s non-revenue teams, some of which were notable in a good way – and some in a bad way.

Sailing, one of our other elite programs, will be featured in a subsequent article.

Baseball

Boston College baseball had arguably its worst season in program history in 2013, entering the final game of the season at 12-39 (4-24). With a Saturday loss in the finale, the Eagles would have their first-ever 40-loss season, which would be the first in the Atlantic Coast Conference since 2006.

The team’s batting average is one of the lowest in the nation, entering the season’s final game at just .209. Boston College has been outscored 313 to 169, a combination of ineffective offense and a 5.41 team ERA, and the team OPS is a meek .581, which demonstrates a lack of power and ability to get on base.

Hunter Gordon was the team’s best pitcher with a sub-3 ERA, while Matt Paré led the Eagles with a .266 batting average. It remains to be seen if coach Mike Gambino will be asked to go after three seasons.

Men’s Cross Country

BCXC ended its year long ago, but it was one worthy of note. The Eagles managed two second-place finishes, a 12th-place finish (out of 34) at the NCAA regionals, and a fourth-place finish (out of 14) at the IC4A Championship in New York City.

In late February, seven cross country Eagles, including two men, were named to the All-ACC Cross Country Academic Teams; those athletes were Anthony Bellitti and Tyler King.

Men’s Fencing

At the New England Intercollegiate Fencing Championships in late February, the women came very close to winning the event, while the men placed in fourth.

I’m not sure how to interpret all this, so see for yourself how they did.

Men’s Golf

Every year when breaking down the individual non-revenue sports, golf seems to be having a tough time, and such was the case again in 2012-13. This season, they were at least able to place second at the Hartford Hawks Invitational, but beyond that, they were unable to get above sixth place.

The Eagles came in 11th place in the ACC championship in April.

Men’s Skiing

Skiing results are as hard to come by as ever, but from what information exists about their 2013 season, it was a good one. Amongst the highlights of their season were strong performances at the UVM Carnival, the St. Lawrence Carnival, and the St. Anselm Carnival.

Men’s Soccer

Boston College football was a serious issue for long stretches of 2012, but fútbol was another matter. The men found themselves having another strong season, going 8-5-4 overall (3-2-3 ACC), tying for fourth place in the conference. BC flamed out in the first round of the ACC Tournament against Clemson, losing on penalty kicks, but they were still able to qualify for the 2012 NCAA Tournament.

In the big dance in November, the Eagles fell in a 1-0 loss to Northeastern.

Following the season, a number of accolades rolled in for this group. Kyle Bekker was taken third in the 2012 Major League Soccer SuperDraft and will play in his home region for Toronto FC. Bekker’s other honors included the NSCAA All-South Atlantic First Team, the All-ACC First Team, and being selected for the TopDrawerSoccer.com Team of the Season.

Also, Charlie Rugg was selected #19 overall in the MLS SuperDraft, going to the Los Angeles Galaxy. Derrick Boateng was ranked #17 on a list of Top 100 freshmen by TopDrawerSoccer.com. Chris Ager and Ryan Dunn were both named to the All-ACC Academic Team for men’s soccer.

Men’s Swimming

All indications were that Boston College men’s swimming wasn’t half bad in 2012-13, though not without a few peaks and valleys. In total, the Eagles racked up thirteen wins. Although they placed eighth out of nine teams in the ACC championship, the team broke twelve program records.

Men’s Tennis

Another tough year for Boston College men’s tennis as the Eagles ended up in last place in the ACC with a 5-16 (0-10) record. They ended the season on a twelve-event losing streak, going 4-77 (not a typo) in matches in that timeframe.

Men’s Track & Field

Events are still ongoing for this team, the most recent developments of which are as follows:

• The men finished fifth (out of 36) at at the New England Track & Field Championships earlier in May
• Tyler King set the third-fastest mark in program history in the 3000m steeplechase
• One member of the men’s track team, King, has qualified for the NCAA East Regional after this steeplechase performance – the race will be run next week

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

Things are going quite well for the top team in the Eastern Conference, the Pittsburgh Penguins, in the NHL’s Stanley Cup playoffs.

Prior to the game, ESPN.com did a feature on Boston College’s own Brooks Orpik, a defenseman for the Penguins. Scott Burnside’s piece, “Orpik Sets Tone for Pens in Many Ways,” talks of the ex-Eagle as a steadying force on Pittsburgh’s blue line, as well as a role model for other defensemen in their organization. There are a few more former Eagles sitting in Pittsburgh’s AHL affiliate, including recent Boston College champion and fellow defenseman Brian Dumoulin. Both had the benefit of being coached by Jerry York, so it’s no wonder why both are doing well.

As for the game on Friday night, Pittsburgh came through for a 4-3 win to double their series lead over the Ottawa Senators. Orpik was without any points in his 22 minutes on the ice in Game 2, but he blocked three shots, hit two Senators, and even took a boarding penalty for good measure.

On Saturday, the Chicago Blackhawks face the Detroit Red Wings — both teams with Eagles on the team or in the organization — in Game 2 of their series. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks will play Game 3; Rob Scuderi has had a good series so far for the defending champs.

Howard Smith-USA TODAY Sports

Steve Addazio and his new coaching staff strike again on the recruiting trail.

Once more, the Boston College Eagles football recruiting trail has run through its own backyard in eastern Massachusetts, and they’ve come away with one of their biggest commitments yet. On Friday, Connor Strachan, a four-star inside linebacker from down the road in Needham was the latest to join the Boston College recruiting class of 2014. The commitment has been confirmed by Rivals.

Strachan is considered by Rivals to be the 15th-best inside linebacker for the 2014 class. Approaching his senior season at St. Sebastian’s, Strachan is 6-0 and 240 pounds, and has a measured 40-yard dash time of an impressive 4.47 seconds.

His other FBS offers came from UConn, UMass, Wake Forest, Syracuse, and Virginia.

Boston College’s 2014 recruiting class is already up to nine names, and they continue to add quality with that quantity. Strachan is the fourth Massachusetts native to commit to play at BC in this particular class, with others still on the target list.

Both Rivals and 24/7 Sports have had this 2014 recruiting class for the Eagles rated in the top 30 nationally. It was notably good before Strachan joined, but with a four-star recruit added to the mix, Addazio’s first full recruiting class at Boston College is shaping up to be a strong one.

Andrew B. Fielding-USA TODAY Sports

Compared to nearly every other varsity sport fielded by Boston College in 2012-13, hockey was heavenly. On the men’s side, even though they did not have a season that lived up to their usual standards, they were still a respected team. Meanwhile, the women’s hockey team continues to establish itself as one of the elite programs in NCAA Division I.

Yet, the question remains: With all of the good the Eagles are doing, when will they finally break through and win the whole thing?

Pre-season

The Boston College Eagles women’s hockey team ended the 2011-12 season in Duluth, Minnesota, and not by random chance: that happens to have been the location of the Frozen Four that year. While in the frosty tundras of northern Minnesota, the Eagles lost to Wisconsin in the national semifinal. It was their second-straight trip to the Frozen Four, and their second-straight loss to Wisconsin in said game.

With a roster full of talent, Boston College saw no reason why it couldn’t clean up in its own conference and get back to the Frozen Four. Such a feat isn’t easy, but expectations remained high for the ladies entering the Fall of 2012 when the puck first dropped.

Regular Season and Playoffs

In a somewhat surprising turn of events, the Eagles’ season started with a thud. BC had two Hockey East games right off the bat, and they lost both of them: one was to the Boston University Terriers and the other was to the New Hampshire Wildcats. For good measure, BC lost an exhibition game to the Canadian Women’s Hockey League outfit in Boston in between. The Eagles beat UNH for their first win the night after losing to the Wildcats, and then split a doubleheader with Minnesota-Duluth at Conte Forum. The #5 team in the nation at the time, BC got off to a slightly rocky 1-3 start.

Boston College’s loss to the Bulldogs was their last in a long, long while. From that day on, the Eagles went on an eighteen-game unbeaten streak, a stretch which ended with thirteen wins in a row. It came to an end on January 19, almost three months later, at Mercyhurst in Erie, PA. Over that period, the Boston College ladies shot all the way up to #2 in the national polls. They also established themselves as a dominant offensive team, and by the year’s end, the Eagles would have the most goals scored in Hockey East and the second-highest goals per game in the nation behind the Minnesota Golden Gophers. Much of this was thanks to the outstanding play of women such as Alex Carpenter, Haley Skarupa, and Melissa Bizzari.

Following their Mercyhurst loss, the Eagles got right back up off the mat and proceeded to win their next four games in a row, eventually falling to Northeastern in the women’s Beanpot championship game. They had defeated Harvard in the first round on February 5, but fell to the Huskies on February 12; it was their 15th loss in 19 games against Northeastern in that competition.

Their sights were set higher than the Beanpot, however. After the title game defeat, Boston College showed even more resiliency and strung together another unbeaten streak, this one lasting six games and carrying into the Hockey East Tournament. As it turns out, that opening day loss to Boston University made all the difference, as the Eagles lost the conference regular-season crown by one point.

BC won its quarterfinal game of the 2013 Hockey East Tournament against Maine with a Haley Skarupa overtime goal, but in the semifinals, the Eagles fell once more to the Northeastern Huskies. Northeastern, in turn, lost the title game to those same pesky BU Terriers.

Despite their loss in the Hockey East Tournament, with a national ranking as high as theirs, their spot as an at-large bid in the eight-team field was assured. Boston College’s women were the fourth-overall seed in the 2013 NCAA Tournament, and hosted a home game against Harvard for the right to advance to the 2013 Frozen Four. The Eagles won it, 3-1, and punched their ticket to Minneapolis for their third-straight appearance in the women’s hockey national semifinals.

The bad news for BC is that their first-round draw was Minnesota, the undefeated #1 team in the nation, playing in its own hometown in front of its fans, and angling for history. And, for the third-straight year, the BC Eagles advanced only as far as the Frozen Four semifinal game with a 3-2 overtime loss. To their credit, the Eagles gave the best team in the nation everything they could handle and then some, but once again, a championship was not to be. The Gophers then went on to take down Boston University for the national title and the first-ever perfect season at 41-0-0.

Post-season and beyond

After the year ended, Alex Carpenter was rewarded for her 70-point season by being named a second-team All-American and New England’s Most Valuable Player in women’s college hockey. Both honors were deserved, as she was at the forefront of a very potent Eagle offensive attack. The fact still remains that she was just one of a number of good players on that end of the ice, with veteran goalie Corinne Boyles very respectably leading the way on the defensive end.

Katie King Crowley, head coach of the Eagles, was also named the women’s hockey Coach of the Year in New England and Hockey East Coach of the Year.

It doesn’t matter that this season didn’t end in a championship: clearly, nobody was beating Minnesota, anyway, and the Eagles still accomplished a great deal of good. 2012-13 was, by the numbers, their best season in program history and they have now established themselves as a consistently elite program with three-straight trips to the Frozen Four. Boyles may be graduating soon, but the offensive talent on this BC team is still young and elite. Expectations for 2013-14 will be just as high as they are now, and with good reason.

Greg M. Cooper-USA TODAY Sports

The Stanley Cup playoffs are getting good, and both games played on Thursday night involved ex-Boston College Eagles.

In the school’s hometown, the Boston Bruins outlasted the New York Rangers in a 3-2 overtime victory, with the Bruins taking a 1-0 series lead in the Eastern Conference semifinals. The local fans are probably quite pleased with the result this morning, though the former Eagles on the Rangers most likely do not share the enthusiasm. Chris Kreider did play in Game 1 as Ryane Clowe would appear to be out indefinitely; again, his defensive play (which was the primary concern of his Rangers coaches relative to his development) looked improved, with Kreider blocking two shots and totaling three hits in eleven and a half minutes.

Kreider’s teammate, Brian Boyle, played thirty shifts at center and won a majority of his faceoffs. Boyle’s defensive numbers were even better with the larger amount of ice time, blocking three shots and leveling five hits. He was also +1 for the game.

The Rangers and Bruins will be back in action for Game 2 on Sunday afternoon.

All the way out on the west coast, in a game that was probably (hopefully) not as slow for long stretches as Rangers-Bruins, a shocking finish came about. The Los Angeles Kings came back from a 3-2 deficit with less than two minutes to go to win, 4-3, in regulation. LA scored two power play goals in 22 seconds to tie and then take the lead, shoving the San Jose Sharks back to an 0-2 deficit as the series swings north to the Bay Area.

Ex-Eagle Rob Scuderi did not gather any points in the contest, and one of his only measurable contributions on the evening was two blocked shots in about 19 minutes on the ice.

Game 3 of that series will be on Saturday night.

On Friday night, Brooks Orpik and his Pittsburgh Penguins will look to take a 2-0 series lead over the visiting Ottawa Senators.

The 2013 Boston College Eagles baseball season began away from the Heights, and it will end away from the Heights. With the way things have gone this year, the sooner, the better.

With a three-game series at quasi-ACC, more-like-Big Ten foe Maryland last on the schedule, the end is very near. Short of salvaging any sort of pride by winning the series, it will be a blessing when the final out is recorded, so that Boston College baseball can begin picking up the pieces from its worst season in the program’s history.

At the moment, the Eagles are 11-38 (3-23) — for perspective, the second-worst ACC team’s overall record is Duke at 26-26, thirteen and a half games better than BC. In terms of conference wins, the ACC’s 11th-place team is 9-18, five and a half games clear. The Eagles aren’t merely the worst team in the conference at the moment: they’re the worst by miles.

When this season comes to an end for Boston College on Saturday — the series with the Terps runs from today, Thursday, through Saturday — it will go down as their worst ever, and one of the worst in the recent history of Atlantic Coast Conference. Maryland lost 39 games in 2010 with just five conference wins; with a series loss, however, the Eagles can become the first ACC team in seven years to clear the 40-loss mark (2006 Duke).

With any luck, Boston College Athletics will flush out the dead wood after Saturday to reboot the Eagles for 2014 and beyond, but for now, we just have to get through one more series.

Mark Dolejs-USA TODAY Sports

The Boston College Eagles men’s basketball team wasn’t the only hardwood-based program that’s in the middle of a rebuild. BC’s women were just as bad as the men in 2011-12, if not worse, and in 2012-13, the idea was getting some respect back for the program and moving things in the right direction.

With a new coach and some old faces, the Boston College women have started to do just that.

Pre-season

The 2011-12 year in Boston College basketball was atrocious by any standard or measure. While the men went 9-22, the women were 7-23, and some of their losses were downright nightmarish. It was the last season for Sylvia Crawley as head coach; her tenure was marked by a decline in the product and some strange occurrences, such as the team’s surprising decline of a WNIT bid (in which they would have been a top seed) on the grounds of team disunity, which created an actual outcry amongst some of the graduating seniors.

She was succeeded by Erik Johnson, then the head coach at Denver and a former Eagle assistant under Cathy Inglese. He was charged with the task of rebuilding a 23-loss basketball team from the ground up, but he did have some veteran help.

Regular season and ACC Tournament

Boston College’s two most prolific players during the 2012-13 regular season, Kristen Doherty and Katie Zenevitch, were both entering their junior years on the Heights. The third most prolific scorer, Kerri Shields, was a senior. Already, this group had upperclassman assistance that the men’s team did not, even though the guys ultimately won more games.

Erik Johnson’s tenure as BC head coach began ignominiously with a road loss to Boston University on November 9, but then things took a decided turn to the better as the Eagles would go on to win their next three games in a row: Holy Cross, BYU, and New Hampshire. BC then lost a low-scoring game to Sacred Heart, followed by a win against Portland the weekend of Thanksgiving. By the time BC alumni were done carving up their turkey leftovers, the Eagles were off to a 4-2 start.

The losses started piling up when the major conference segment of the non-conference schedule and the ACC schedule came through, though things never got quite as bad as the year prior. Back then, at one point in the season, Boston College had lost 11 games in a row and 15 of their last 17 games, with some 40+ point losses sprinkled in. This time around, the Eagles got throttled by the elite programs as one may expect, but they found their way to five ACC regular-season wins: at Virginia Tech, at Clemson, NC State, Virginia, and Georgia Tech. Though the losing streaks in conference play weren’t particularly long, there were plenty of them.

BC wrapped its regular season at 11-18 (5-13), taking it on the chin more than once and looking subpar in most statistical categories, but as it always does, hope lives again at the ACC Tournament. The Eagles were the #11 seed in 2013 and their draw in the first round was Virginia, a team they had beaten earlier in the year — BC had lost to UVA in the first round in 2012 by a 72-41 score. Like their male counterparts, the ladies found a way to take down their Thursday opponents in Greensboro and make it to the ACC quarterfinals with a 66-57 win over the Cavaliers.

In the Friday round, the Eagles played #16 North Carolina and gave the game a spirited effort, but lost, 62-57.

Post-season and beyond

Considering that the previous year’s women’s basketball team lost its first-round ACC Tournament game to Virginia by 31 points in a completely non-competitive game, 2013′s ACC Tournament was far more productive. The Eagles’ regular season was not without its bruises, and a grand total of 12 wins suggests that Johnson and company still have a great deal of work to do, but one can point to some steps in the right direction.

Next season, the Eagles are going to have Zenevitch (who is the second-leading scorer and the leading rebounder) and Doherty as seniors. They lose Kerri Shields, who led the team in three-point percentage, but upcoming sophomore Nicole Boudreau was right behind and has shown the ability to shoot from deep. Boudreau was named to the All-ACC Freshman team for her efforts.

With the ACC getting bigger and more dangerous, the ladies are going to have a tough road to keep climbing and getting better, but at the very least, one can say with some confidence that they did not get any worse last season and actually took a few strides forward. In 2013-14, those steps are going to have to get bigger in order to keep up in the new ACC.

Rob Grabowski-USA TODAY Sports

In a battle of teams with ex-Boston College Eagles on the rosters — not necessarily on the ice, but on the rosters — the home team struck first in the Stanley Cup playoffs’ second round.

That team was the Chicago Blackhawks, of which Ben Smith and Jimmy Hayes are typically part. Chicago won Game 1 of their Western Conference semifinal over the Detroit Red Wings of Patrick Eaves, 4-1. Neither Smith nor Hayes was in the lineup for the Hawks as the President’s Trophy winners look to march through the playoffs.

Eaves did play for the Red Wings, getting just ten minutes on the ice and firing a shot on goal. His contributions were perhaps more defensive, as he threw three hits and notched a takeaway.

On Thursday, the New York Rangers will take to the ice against the Boston Bruins to begin their Eastern Conference semifinal. Brian Boyle seems certain to play, and with Ryane Clowe still an uncertainty for the Blueshirts, Chris Kreider’s odds of appearing are also relatively strong. Elsewhere in the United States, Rob Scuderi’s Los Angeles Kings will try to take a 2-0 series lead over the San Jose Sharks.

In the AHL’s Calder Cup playoffs, Tommy Cross’s Providence Bruins are on the brink of eliminating the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins after a 2-1 overtime win. None of the four ex-Eagles on the Penguins recorded a point, nor did Cross, but if the Bruins polish this series off, it means a trip to the Eastern Conference final.

Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

If you’re looking for incisive NBA analysis, then you done stumbled upon the wrong sports blog (though the associate editor knows a great deal more about pro basketball than the editor), but neither of us are ignorant to the fact that we have ex-Boston College Eagles in the Association. One of them happens to have played in the 2013 NBA playoffs, but that run is now over.

Reggie Jackson was a star here at Boston College, and when Oklahoma City Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook went down with an injury, it was his time to shine.

Unfortunately for him and his team, they were eliminated by the Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday night after an 88-84 loss. The Thunder, the defending Western Conference champions from last season, held on for just five games in the second round of the playoffs and their road ends in the Western Conference semifinals.

In the Game 5 defeat, Jackson played 42 minutes — only Kevin Durant played more on his team — and went 7-for-15 from the floor, scoring 16 points and grabbing nine rebounds. In fact, Jackson led the Thunder in rebounds for the game. He also had a perfectly infinite assist/turnover ratio, assisting five times and not turning the ball over at all, which is impressive for 42 minutes of court time. Jackson was cold from outside the arc, making just one of his five shots from long-range, though his one make tightened the game late.

Reggie saw heavy minutes for the Thunder since the Westbrook injury and he acquitted himself well, posting a double-double in Game 3 and shooting 50% from the floor for the series.

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