Massachusetts at Boston College: The basics

So here we are, sitting at 0-3 (the only team in a BCS conference with that dishonor, and only one of two BCS-conference teams who are winless). The Eagles, seven-point favorites on Saturday, put forth their third clunker in a row and lost to basketball school Duke, 20-19.

This week, they will play another home game (and I’m sure it’ll be a *huge* crowd on hand); their opponent will be FCS squad UMass, a team which is in the process of being promoted to FBS.

There is no line for this game, but if I were to set one, it wouldn’t be what you think of an FBS/FCS matchup — which is to say, the FBS team is an outrageously-lopsided favorite.

To me, with the way BC has played so far this season, this is more like a matchup of two FCS teams, except one is ranked (UMass has made the Top 25 of the FCS polls). Boston College, on the other hand, has looked like they would lose to a high school team.

In my preseason assessment, this was regarded as the easiest game BC will play this season. With the way things have gone to this point, there is a distinct possibility that this may be the only game they win in 2011 if things do not improve.

Winning this game wouldn’t mean a whole hell of a lot, if that’s what BC finally manages to do. As aforementioned, UMass is in the FCS, and an FBS school beating an FCS school is expected, so BC won’t get any kudos. If they lose, however, that would drop them to 0-4 and will set the stage for a full-blown table-running this season. A table running of suck, that is. If they can’t beat UMass, then it’s doubtful they can beat anyone, and as such, they probably wouldn’t be favored in a single game going forward.

I’ll keep saying it: there are some good players on this team who are giving their best, but their superiors are so catastrophically incompetent that the Eagles are on track for their worst season since Ed Chlebek was running the show. Buckle up, because in the words of our very own head coach, “This could get ugly.”