Spring Practice Update

Great video here from NECN and the Globe on the start of spring practice. I can't freaking wait for this season.

Interesting tidbit--if you pause the video at the 1:25 mark, you can see what appears to be 80% of our first-team offensive line, at least as of right now. Looks like Gosder Cherilus at LT (a move I was calling for prior to last season), Kevin Sheridan at C (no surprise), Tom Anevski at RG, and Carlos Huggins at RT. I'm a little disappointed that Pat Sheil (unless that's him at LG) and Richard Lapham haven't been able to break into the first team yet, but they're young and they've got plenty of time.

Matt Ryan looks pretty good on his feet, too.


Disturbing Google Phrase of the Week: As I've talked about before, I use a tool called SiteMeter to track traffic to the blog. Among other things, it tells me what phrases people type into Google to stumble across my site. Usually they're related to BC sports, but for some unknown reason I do also get a lot of traffic from foreigners looking for schoolgirl pictures. I'm not sure why (probably has something to do with my posts like this one and this one). Still, nothing prepared me for the latest disturbing Google phrase - some dude in Ipswich, England searching for "Gerbe for men". Apparently I'm the #1 hit. I can only hope that it's some kind of designer cologne.

Two More Wins

Horrible first period, but we kept it together and came away with the 4-0 win. BC has now scored 18 goals and given up 1 in its last 4 NCAA regional games.

Congrats to Cory Schneider on the regional MVP award and to him, Brian Boyle, Joe Rooney, and Brock Bradford on being named to the all-regional team.

Next up - the one team that scared me coming into this tournament, the Fighting Sioux of North Dakota. We'll need to play a lot better a week from Thursday than we did this weekend in order to get past ND. Still, let's worry about that tomorrow, and celebrate our second consecutive Frozen Four appearance and 6th in the last 9 years. Simply awesome.

One Down, Three to Go

Although we looked shaky at times yesterday (particularly in the second period), we fought through St. Lawrence's goonery and held on for the W yesterday. Now we get a familiar foe, the Miami-Ohio Red Hawks, who surprisingly knocked off UNH in yesterday's early game. I'm not necessarily expecting a repeat of last year's 5-0 win over UMO in the tournament's first round, but you have to love our chances to make a second consecutive Frozen Four. BC is hotter than any team in the country right now and I simply don't think that Miami is in the same class. This isn't to say that we shouldn't be careful, as there have been a lot of upsets and near-upsets (Notre Dame-UAH, Minnesota-Air Force) in this tournament, but I'm very confident in our chances.

Prediction: BC 4, Miami-Ohio 1

As far as yesterday goes, I was a bit concerned for some time about how the team was reacting to SLU's physical play--at stretches we appeared to be looking out for hits rather than simply playing our game--but aside from the 2nd period I thought overall the team played reasonably well. It bears mentioning that BC screwed up on several odd-man rushes, and the score easily could've been 5- or 6-1. Good performances as usual from the likes of Cory Schneider, Brian Boyle, and Nate Gerbe; and I also thought Andrew Orpik turned in a very solid performance (his first shift notwithstanding).

Nice article on Kyle Kucharski, who had a very good game yesterday, from the Saugus Advertiser

Preview of today's game from the Herald

CHAMPS!!!

Now that my body is no longer in shakes from the weekend (for a brief recap of my St. Patrick's Day activities, I refer you here), HOCKEY EAST CHAMPS BABY!!! Great game and incredible tournament from the guys, who took down UNH 5-2 on Saturday night (in a game that wasn't nearly that close in my opinion). Brock Bradford, the porno-named wonder, netted 6 goals in 4 tournament games, good for tournament MVP and Hockey East player of the week honors; Corey Schneider also picked up the defensive POTW award.

Great victory, the 10th in a row for what has to be the hottest team in the country right now. The Eagles will now head to Manchester on Saturday to face St. Lawrence in the first round of the NCAA tournament in a 2-3 matchup; hosts UNH and familiar NCAA tournament foe Miami-Ohio will square off in the other game at the Verizon Center. Honestly, BC should have little trouble with this bracket. I'll have more on it later in the week.

Tough loss on Saturday for the hoops team, who put up a valiant effort against an excellent Georgetown team but fell just short. Honestly, this has to be considered the best coaching season of Al Skinner's tenure at BC. Simply making the tournament was a huge accomplishment after the Sean Williams debacle, but Skinner's coaching and Jared Dudley's leadership brought the team to a 4th consecutive NCAA tournament appearance and a first-round victory over a solid Texas Tech team. Bravo, guys, and best of luck to Dudley in the NBA and Sean Marshall in a pro career in Europe.

On another down note, word has it today that Brian Toal has undergone shoulder surgery, will miss all of spring practice and is about 50-50 on being able to play this season. Recovery time is 3-6 months so he'll be able to go if needed, but if the staff decides that he and BC will be better served by letting him heal up and go in 2008, they can go that route. While Toal is a special player, as deep and as talented as BC's LB corps is, we should be able to go without him; if needed, his redshirt can always be burned midseason a la Ryan Glasper last year.

I'll leave you with some of the famous BC Law Girl pictures, courtesy of Barstool Sports. I won't comment on the controversy other than to say that anyone who has a problem with this is an douche who prefers the company of men to that of women. Good night and go Eagles.

St. Paddy's Day...

Well, here it is folks.

BC-Georgetown at 5:50 pm.

BC-New Hampshire at 7 pm.

On St. Patrick's Day.


For the record, BC has won at least its last 2 games on the day of the wearin' of the green. Over Maine last year in the Hockey East semifinals, and over UPIenn in the first round of the '05 NCAA hoops tournament.

No reason this streak is gonna stop now. We're taking both of these games tomorrow. Especially the hockey game. Prediction: BC 4, UNH 1.

Don't get me wrong, though. The Hoyas are going down too.

Tomorrow's gonna be a great day.

Sucks to BU

Texas Tech thoughts

Really solid effort from the guys, especially in the first and last 10 minutes of the game.

You had to love how both Dudley as an individual and the team as a whole responded to his foul trouble. Being forced to sit the ACC Player of the Year for considerable stretches generally isn't a recipe for tournament success, but the team stepped up. Great game from Tyrese Rice, and excellent contributions from John Oates in the first half (where'd those 3s come from??) and Sean Marshall in the second. And of course Dudley himself, who despite picking up his 3rd foul with a few minutes remaining in the first half managed to avoid picking up another and finished the game with 19 points and 7 boards in 32 minutes. The team defense was very sloppy at times, but we did enough on the offensive side of the ball that it didn't hurt us. I would've liked to see some more minutes for Shamari Spears.

Georgetown is up next, and it's gonna be a very tough game. They looked sloppy early on against Belmont, but they won't make the same mistake against a team that has enough talent to really punish them for it. BC can win this game, but we need to play much better than we did today--you can't count on Oates getting 11 points every game, 6 of which came on momentum-shifting 3s.

That's a worry for tomorrow, though. Today is a day to celebrate. Well done, guys.

Raiders, Terriers, and Hoyas, Oh My

Another huge weekend for BC sports is almost upon us, as the hoops team prepares to open NCAA tournament play against Bobby Knight's Texas Tech Red Raiders while the hockey team is set for another matchup, the 5th of the season, against archrival BU in the Hockey East semifinals. A win over the Raiders in the 12:35 pm game on Thursday would in all likelihood set up a meeting with former Big East foe Georgetown on Saturday.

For the first time in years, we at BC can't complain about our seeding or placement in the NCAA hoops tournament. A 7 seed is fair (although some at Texas Tech are lamenting the missed opportunity for a first-round matchup with another 7 seed and Knight's former employers, Indiana) and playing in Winston-Salem with UNC in our bracket (and safely on the other side) can only help us--it's a short trip, the players will be familiar with the surroundings from having played at Wake Forest, and hopefully a crowd that will likely be overwhelmingly clad in Carolina Blue will also pull for their conference bretheren. After several consecutive years of getting screwed, I'm relieved here.

I'll have more on the game later this week, but until then ATLEagle, Angry Eagle, and Double-T Nation should have some insight.

As for hockey, well, we all knew it would come to this. BC-BU, for a shot at the Hockey East title as well as a possible 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Although I won't be at the game, my non-presence ensures that I will be there on Saturday to see us take on either UNH or a red-hot UMass team.

(Oh yeah, Saturday. If we beat Texas Tech and BU, BC will be playing for a Hockey East tournament title and a Sweet Sixteen berth....both on St. Patrick's Day. Throw in an afternoon Dropkick Murphys concert at Agganis Arena and the fact that I stopped off at the New Hampshire state discount liquor store yesterday on the way back from Vermont and I doubt I'll remember seeing us lift the HEA banner.)

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Very interesting article on EagleAction yesterday on the areas of recruiting responsibility for each of the new coaches. Some of it was old news, but a lot is new information. To sum up:


Spaz - "spot recruiter" for Mass., involvement with all defensive recruits

Logan - Involvement with all offensive recruits, particularly QBs

McGovern - North Jersey, Long Island

Siravo - North Shore of Mass., Connecticut, SE Pennsylvania outside of Philly, Rhode Island, Virginia, involvement with all recruits as recruiting coordinator

Turner - Northern Florida, eastern Pennsylvania including Philly

Sirmans - Western PA, South Jersey, Ohio, "spot recruiter" in Michigan and Indiana

Yanowsky - Illinois, Carolinas, central Florida, Houston area

Commisiong - Western Mass, NY state outside Long Island, northwest NJ

Day - Maryland, DC, southern Florida, Georgia


A couple thoughts:

-I'd like to get a guy in California, or at the very least the LA metro area; it'd also be nice if Yanowsky can scout the Dallas area as well; Commisiong seems to have the lightest load of anyone currently so perhaps he could also take SoCal

-Boston and the immediate suburbs as well as the South Shore weren't mentioned in the article, my guess is Siravo will take them since he has most of the rest of New England; Commisiong would also be a possibility

-Siravo seems to have a lot on his plate so my guess is that his responsibility for Virginia won't include the DC suburbs in the northern part of the state, and that Day will take these. The state of Virginia as a whole is a potential gold mine for BC and I'd like to get at least 2 coaches working there

-One of the first and most telling recruiting tests for the new staff will be DT Masengo Kabongo from Fairfield, CT, and consequently I love the fact that Connecticut falls under the responsibility of Siravo, who I have the highest hopes for of any coach on the staff as a recruiter

-The Tidewater region of Virginia and the Carolinas always seem to produce a ton of dual-threat QBs, and conveniently enough this is Logan's home region and area of expertise...I think we'll do well there, starting with Tommy Reamon, a QB from Newport News whose coach, a longtime friend of Logan's, has compared him favorably to the Vick brothers (who attended the same high school as Reamon) at the same stage of development and who has mentioned BC as one of his leaders

-Day is going to be thrown right into the fire...his areas of responsibility are all crucial to BC's success. Georgia and the DC metro area in particular are both places we need to start tapping into

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All I got for now, but I'll have more on the Texas Tech and BU games as the week progresses.

Also, if anyone is making the trip to Winston-Salem, say hi to this guy for me:

Tournament Time; First '08 Recruit

Both BC winter teams kick off conference tournament play this weekend, with the hockey team taking the ice tonight against Northeastern in a best-2-out-of-3 series while the hoops team will face the winner of this afternoon's Maryland-Miami game tomorrow in Tampa.

The contrast between the notes on which the two teams enter their conference tournaments could not be more apparent. The hockey team is red-hot right now, probably the hottest team in the country. Where just 2 weeks ago they were in serious danger of not even making the NCAA tournament, we now have a decent chance to sew up a #1 seed. Back-to-back-to-back sweeps of Maine, Lowell, and New Hampshire have re-ignited the offense and given the team a huge amount of momentum heading into the postseason. Even the special teams unit, traditionally the bane of BC's existence, is playing as well as anyone in the country--the power play unit, which has been horrible most of the year, has scored at an astonishing 28.6% rate over the last 9 games and the penalty kill, which has been great all year, came up huge against UNH, particularly late in the second period of Friday night's game in Durham, shortly after the Wildcats, who had dominated the period, pulled back to 2-1 down and promptly went a man up with about 2:40 remaining in the stanza. BC woke up, kept the puck in UNH's zone for virtually the entire 2 minutes, and didn't allow UNH to even set up its power play until about 30 seconds remained on the penalty; even then, they got just one shot off. The penalty kill was the turning point of the game, the weekend, and perhaps even the season for these Eagles, who are tied with Michigan at 9th in the current pairwise rankings (using a .03 road win bonus, which is generally accepted to be more or less accurate) but could easily move up with a strong showing in the tournament and have to be considered one of the heavy favorites for the national crown.

There is some concern on the defensive side of things due to injuries. Carl Sneep and Anthony Aiello are both expected to miss this weekend, and Sneep may miss the entire HEA tournament with a high ankle sprain. Although an article in today's Patriot Ledger indicates that Brian Boyle may switch to the blue line until one of the two returns, I don't see it happening. The defense did fine in the UNH series, allowing just 3 goals in 2 games (one of which was a fluke), without both guys. Sure, Cory Schneider had to stand on his head the entire weekend, but I have little doubt the defense will settle down.

At the end of the day, I don't see Northeastern putting up much of a fight this weekend. Yes, the Huskies traditionally give BC problems--in Matthews Arena, which is one of the most hostile atmospheres in the country. But Northeastern hasn't won in Conte Forum (or, for that matter, beaten BC on neutral ice) since November 13, 1998. I don't see them breaking that streak tonight or tomorrow. BC will sew it up on Friday night and get an extra day of rest over its rivals, each of whom will go 3 games this weekend.

Predictions:
Thursday - BC 4, Northeastern 1
Friday - BC 5, Northeastern 0

Other HEA quarterfinal predictions:
UNH over Providence in 3
Vermont over BU in 3
Maine over UMass in 3

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The hoops team, meanwhile, finds itself stumbling into the ACC tournament. Although Jared Dudley was rewarded yesterday with well-deserved ACC Player of the Year honors, the team has dropped 4 of its last 5. None of the losses were particularly bad from a standpoint of who we lost to, but nonetheless the team's form is troubling.

We may have caught a break, however. As I was writing the first part of this post, a 12-19 Miami team managed to knock off #17 Maryland and BC will now face a weak Hurricanes squad tomorrow. The Eagles have already beaten the 'Canes twice this year, 82-63 in Chestnut Hill and 75-68 in Coral Gables. I don't see us losing tomorrow. Miami's emotional win today will catch up to them against a rested and focused BC squad. BC will win tomorrow, and that likely means another shot at UNC--call me crazy, but I think we'll give them another run for their money and maybe even pull off the upset this time.

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Finally, the football team has landed its first 2008 recruit, Everett High School athlete Isaac Johnson. Johnson, who is expected to play RB at BC, is the first recruit in over 30 years to BC from Everett, traditionally one of the top HS programs in the state. Tom O'Brien refused to even try to recruit the place, which would have allowed Diamond Ferri to go to Syracuse had Diamond Ferri been born in the first place, which he wasn't. This is a sign of very good things to come for BC. Look for us to add at least 1, probably 2 more RB recruits in this class, but people who have watched Johnson play say he could be a Top 250 recruit in the 2008 class.

UMass-Durham

Big night in Hockey East tonight as BC heads up to Durham to face the UNH Wildcats. By my reasoning we probably need 1-2 points from this weekend to sew up an NCAA tournament bid regardless of how we do in the HEA tournament. UNH has already clinched the Hockey East regular season title and will be looking to lock up a #1 NCAA seed this weekend; BC on the other hand needs just a point to lock up the #2 seed in the Hockey East tournament (although this would be a mixed blessing, as it would likely mean facing a hot Northeastern team that usually plays BC tough in the HEA quarterfinals).

In any event, I'm picturing 3 points for BC this weekend. UNH is faltering somewhat (having lost 7-1 at Providence in their last outing) and BC is rounding into form at just the right time, much like last year (I told you to have faith). UNH is always a tough place to play and I can't wait for my first game at the Whitt, but I think February HEA player of the month Nate Gerbe has a huge weekend and this team takes care of business.

Predictions:
Friday - BC 1, UNH 1
Saturday - BC 3, UNH 2