Afternoon Quickie: Womens’ Teams Crushed; BC-UVA Preview
By Joe Micik
Wednesday night was entirely forgettable for the #4 women’s hockey team and the women’s basketball team.
We begin with hockey, mostly because we expect a better effort than the one Eagles fans heard about. The ladies went down the road to play Boston University in a Hockey East game, and sorry to say, they got bludgeoned to the tune of a 6-0 defeat at the hands of the Terriers. It was their first shutout loss on the road since 2010.
When you get thoroughly dressed-down like this, it’s hard to say it wasn’t a team loss. They all are, but this one in particular seems to say it. What makes matters worse is that it was BU that delivered the thrashing.
Had the Eagles tied or won, they would have gone back ahead of Northeastern for first in the conference. Speaking of, the Eagles and Huskies play each other next Tuesday, but not in a conference game, for it is the Beanpot.
The women’s basketball team’s struggles have been overshadowed by the much more public problems of the men. It may be hard to believe, but they are actually doing worse, and they continued their winless ACC stretch with a loss at #25 North Carolina. The lady Eagles fell, 77-46, and are now 5-15 (0-7).
BC was pretty much never in the game. For their next contest, they have to play a 17-3, #8 Miami Hurricanes team, which means that 0-8 is quite possible.
Boston College men’s basketball’s ACC schedule has played out thus so far: blowout loss at top ten team, two respectable wins, two ugly losses. It could be three in a row as they head to Charlottesville to play #19 Virginia (ESPNU, 9pm). Boston College are approximately 17.5-point underdogs.
Simply put, the Wahoos are having an excellent season so far. They’re 15-3, and though they have lost two of their last three games, keep in mind that they were to #6 Duke and a very desperate Virginia Tech team. Virginia looks like a strong candidate for a first-round bye in the ACC Tournament.
About the only thing that looks like potential good news for the Eagles is that the Cavaliers do not score a lot of points. In fact, they average only 64.3 points per game (BC: 61.2). Boston College does not have the shooting at this point to win high-scoring games, but in a low-scoring game, they could be competitive.
The problem is that Virginia plays defense and teams tend not to score much off of them. As a matter of fact, they are the second-best scoring defense team in the nation behind Wisconsin, allowing only about 50 per game.
BC could cover the spread, as the pace of this game figures to be quite slow, but winning will take a special effort and the Eagles are a longshot tonight.