With our season wrap-up now complete, today is the last day for Soaring to Glory to cover the 2012-13 Boston College Eagles season across all sports. Starting tomorrow is the BC football summer series as we launch the 2013-14 year on this parcel of internet real estate.

My associate editor and I wanted to fit in one more riveting discussion before the big transition to the summer. In it, we weave from Boston College football to baseball to Kyle’s forthcoming road test and sitcoms we don’t like. How can we go wrong?

Joe: My best and worst sports moments of the 2012-13 Boston College academic year are out in the open, but what were your one or two favorite moments of the year?

Kyle: I really gotta think my favorite moment was the whole hiring of new head football coach Steve Addazio and the recruiting process that followed it. There is renewed excitement on the Heights about football. The coaches are engaged in recruiting and aren’t waiting ’til the summer to do it like our previous mustache in charge. Marcus Outlow and now Connor Strachan are BC recruits who will make instant impact at RB and ILB, respectively. Plus, DE Harold Landry just picked up an FSU offer, but is solid on BC. I can’t believe it, honestly, as I REALLY wanted Bob Diaco, but Addazio is earning his paycheck in a big way.

Next best memory will be from BC basketball, and no, it is not the Olivier Hanlan game against Georgia Tech. Rather, it is the one-point loss to Duke. Despite the fact we lost, coming close is representative of the improvements the team made through the second half. The team at the end of the year is not the one that achieved embarrassment against Bryant, but instead is an ACC team on the rise with a young backcourt and a late first-round pick at the 4. Plus, the transfer from Notre Dame (Alex Dragicevich) looks like a solid prospect at the 3.

Joe: I think Addazio has gotten most BC fans on board at this point. Before we get to the next obvious area of discussion, let’s get into the recruiting for a moment because this is an important topic.

I will not say anything bad about the guys we have here now or the kids coming in this year; they wear maroon and gold so I support them. Make no mistake, however: recruiting was very difficult under Spaz, especially towards the end, because the program was getting tired and stale, and what up-and-comer would want to hitch their wagon to a meteorite burning up in the atmosphere? With years of recruiting neglect and poor player development, I would have said that it might take several years at least just for BC to return to respectability. Spaz decimated the program and it seemed like it would be a long time before we were “back.”

Now, we’ve got a 2014 class that’s tracking Top 25/30 if this keeps up, and I think there’s at least a shot BC sneaks into a bowl this year. If Addazio’s recruiting stays at around this level in upcoming seasons, BC might be respectable again sooner than expected. Your thoughts on that?

The conversation continues on the next page

For so long, all we have had to talk about here are bad things that have happened in Boston College sports in the last few years. Aside from the occasional hockey championship, it’s been football this and losing that, rebuilding here and Spaz there.

This is the time when we finally get to discuss and highlight some of the best things that have happened this past year, and there were plenty. Things seem to finally be heading in the right direction, so this list may be harder to choose one year from now, but there is more than enough to celebrate from this year.

#5
March 16, 2013: Women’s hockey makes third-straight Frozen Four

Making the Frozen Four is a big deal, whether it’s in men’s hockey or women’s hockey. Getting to three in a row is a sign that your program is in the national elite.

Boston College women’s hockey did that in March when they beat Harvard in the national quarterfinals. The Eagles had another great season, rising as high as #2 in the national polls and earning one of the top four seeds in the 2013 NCAA Tournament.

Unfortunately, BC’s season ended against Minnesota in the national semifinals, but just getting to the Frozen Four was another big accomplishment for this talented team and program on the rise.

Michael Ivins-USA TODAY Sports

Although there is a sense that the tide is turning in Boston College sports these days, there were still more than a few sour moments from which to choose during the 2012-13 school year.

Even some Eagles sports one would not expect to have lousy events did, but you know what they say: take the good with the bad and all that.

Dishonorable Mention
December 4, 2012: Boston College basketball loses fifth-straight game to Harvard

Being embarrassed by the Harvard Crimson on our own home court is becoming old hat around here. It is so common, in fact, that it only gets a dishonorable mention.

In early December, the Eagles lost by 16 points to the Crimson at Conte Forum, making it five losses in a row to the Ivy school from Cambridge.

One thing we know for certain is that BC will not lose another home game to Harvard in 2013-14: the game will be on the road next time.

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.

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.

John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

After the sort of season that the Boston College Eagles men’s basketball team had in the 2011-12 season, there was nowhere for them to go but up. A 33-game season is sometimes rocky and not without its highs and lows, and though the Eagles’ 2012-13 net result was nothing special, it was a step in the right direction.

Preseason

The 2011-12 Eagles finished at 9-22, getting blasted by the NC State Wolfpack in their final game of the season at the ACC Tournament. It had been a very rough reboot season full of nightmarish results. The prevailing sentiment entering the 2012-13 campaign was that things could not possibly get much worse, because they were already as bad as they could get. And seriously, when you’re getting rocked by Holy Cross, UMass, and Boston University, things probably aren’t going well.

Head coach Steve Donahue and anyone who followed this team knew that the group needed to take a step forward this past year. There was plenty of real estate in front of them, after all. The Eagles’ slow rise would, in their view, be helped by two things: the entry of two new strong freshmen in Olivier Hanlan and Joe Rahon, and the new-found experience of the sophomore nucleus, which includes Ryan Anderson and Dennis Clifford.

Boston College did suffer some attrition prior to the start of the season, however, and that generated some worry that perhaps the team’s progress would be stunted or even nullified. Amongst the departures were Matt Humphrey and Jordan Daniels, both of whom saw starting time in 2011-12. How would the Eagles get on without them, many asked.

The answer was perhaps not so clear in September and October of last year, but it became very much so as the year went on.

David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

The pairings for the next ACC-Big Ten Challenge have been announced, and in these newly-expanded conferences, there was some doubt as to who the Boston College Eagles might play. On Wednesday, we found out that the draw is the Purdue Boilermakers.

The Eagles will head out to West Lafayette, Indiana on December 4 for their second consecutive Challenge road game as they hope to continue their new win streak.

This will be the teams’ first-ever meeting in this annual event, and only the third meeting all-time between Boston College and Purdue. The first of those meetings came on December 28, 1978 as the Eagles lost to the Boilermakers in the Honolulu Classic, 82-54, and the second was a 71-64 loss on November 26, 2008 at Madison Square Garden in the NIT Season Tip-Off semifinals.

Both teams had down years last season, though heading in different directions. The Eagles were 16-17 in 2012-13, a seven-game improvement over their reset season the previous year, while the Boilermakers went 16-18, a six-win drop after losing some key players in the offseason. Each school will be starting from about the same spot in the Fall of 2013, which makes this an intriguing matchup.

Boston College has historically done very well in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge since joining the conference in the mid-2000s, improving their record to 6-1 after defeating Penn State in State College last year. On the other hand, Purdue started this event at 2-6 over their first eight games, but they have now won four years in a row. Last year, Purdue beat Clemson 73-61 on the road at Littlejohn Coliseum.

Several high-profile matchups in this year’s upcoming Challenge include North Carolina vs. Michigan State, Duke vs. Michigan, and Syracuse vs. Indiana.

Jeremy Brevard-USA TODAY Sports

Boston College’s basketball’s opening tip for the 2013-14 season is about seven months away, but schedule details have flooded out over the last few days. Earlier this week, the Atlantic Coast Conference released home and away opponents for each team in the conference, and now, new information with regards to the non-conference schedule has emerged.

The Heights had a conversation with Eagles coach Steve Donahue in which he revealed some of BC’s opponents. The highlights of that interview:

• Boston College is attempting to schedule VCU at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn
• The school is also trying to arrange for a contest against UMass at the TD Garden
• It is confirmed that BC will play at Southern California, at Harvard, at Auburn, and at Providence (the likely season opener in November).

Prior to this, we knew that the Eagles would be participating in the 2K Sports Classic Benefiting The Wounded Warrior Project, which will include teams such as Indiana, UConn, and Washington. If the ACC-Big Ten Challenge is extended into next season, BC could play Minnesota, last year’s 8th-place team, or some other school in the middle of the conference last season.

In any event, the possibility exists for not only a sturdy non-conference schedule, but for an exciting one. Before even talking about ACC play and all of the challenges that brings, Boston College could end up playing games at the Barclays Center, Madison Square Garden (2K Sports finals, if they get there), and the TD Garden. Additionally, they’ll be making a west coast swing to USC, which is no doubt a hit with the California players on the Eagles’ roster. BC will have a notable season against the Trojans, playing against them in Los Angeles in both football and basketball.

2013-14 will also be the first time in about a decade or so that the Eagles didn’t open the season with a creampuff opponent: at Providence will not be an easy game.

Not all of these opponents were great teams last season, but so far, it looks like there will road games against major-conference opponents, high-profile games at neutral sites, and a tough ACC schedule. Without knowing the rest of the schedule details, it is becoming clear that BC is getting serious about strength of schedule for next season, believing (as they should) that they can and should be a bubble team at a minimum. BC’s non-conference schedule was weak in 2012-13, coming in 211th, but it should be much higher next year.

Richard Mackson-USA TODAY Sports

For those with major reading comprehension issues — in which case you probably wouldn’t be here, anyway — the name of this site is Soaring to Glory. It was inspired by the slogan for Boston College’s 2008 graduating class, and every BC ’08 has that phrase along the back of their Superfan shirt. Anyone with that shirt who was a freshman remembers the atmosphere surrounding BC basketball in early 2005 for the “juice the ‘Cuse” game, before, during, and after. Both of those Big East teams were ranked, and when BC won, the students rushed the court.

Boston College, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, and Notre Dame all had some epic battles in the Big East back in the days of yore, and now, those days have come upon the Atlantic Coast Conference. In early 2014, BC basketball will play all three of those teams on the hardwood for the first time since the 2004-05 season, as well as a number of familiar ACC faces.

2013-14 ACC Home Opponents
Syracuse, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Florida State, Clemson, Duke, Maryland, Pittsburgh

2013-14 ACC Road Opponents
Syracuse, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Miami, North Carolina, Wake Forest, NC State, Virginia

In no way did this website ever oppose Boston College’s membership in the ACC, but it has consistently regarded talk of a return to what’s left of the Big East as foolish, yet one must admit there is a certain nostalgia attached to seeing this slate. (Unless you got to BC after 2005, that is.)

Yes, a majority of the teams BC will play are previous ACC members with whom the Eagles have become very familiar over the years, but basketball in this conference is going to get even better next season with some excellent programs joining, and watching the new faces on the Conte Forum floor again will take a lot of us back to another time and place. It has been a long time — almost a decade — since we saw these teams face-to-face, but will the excitement be the same as before? Only time will tell.

On a related note, it will have taken at least nine years, but with any luck, BC will finally get to avenge their loss to Notre Dame after starting that last Big East season 20-0.

Jeremy Brevard-USA TODAY Sports

Another new player for the Boston College basketball team has made it official and joined the 2013 class.

Tuesday saw the commitment of shooting guard Darryl Hicks, a 3-star recruit (Rivals) from Louisville, Kentucky. ESPN rated him as a 2-star recruit. His measurables are 6-foot-3 and 185 pounds.

The in/out chart for the 2013-14 season now looks as follows:

At one point, Hicks compiled an impressive offer list, which included Indiana, Arizona, and Florida State. Many of those were put on the board during or prior to 2011, after which Hicks narrowed his options to Western Kentucky and BC. There is word that he suffered a foot injury at some point later in his high school playing career, which might explain why his options narrowed with some big-time programs falling by the wayside.

Hicks is a finalist for Kentucky’s Mr. Basketball award in 2013 and helped lead his high school to a state championship as a junior.

Hicks is a recruit who has been regarded by some to have had more than 2 or 3-star talent, but the recruiting services do not see him that way now. If one chooses to look at this recruitment optimistically, if Hicks can round back into form, Steve Donahue may have gotten a steal. Obviously, Hicks as a guard at 6-3 does not help solve Boston College’s issues with size, but there is also the possibility that the Eagles are not done with this class (and that more spots might open due to roster attrition).

Welcome to Boston College.