These are some familiar faces!
On Friday evening, the Boston College women’s lacrosse team will face off against the Syracuse Orange down in Cary, North Carolina in 2024’s NCAA Final Four. It marks the seventh-straight time that the Eagles have made it to the Final Four and it will be the third time in four seasons that they will face off against the Orange on the national stage. It’s been an incredible run for head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein’s squad and something that is possibly unparalleled in Boston College athletics history. So let’s break down how the team got here and what lies ahead for them in their pursuit of another national championship.
Photo by Erica Denhoff/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Season Recap
As has become the norm, Boston College fielded a team this season that is elite in all phases of the game and heated up just in time for the postseason. The Eagles boast both a top-5 scoring offense and a top-5 scoring defense, even without a dominant goal-scorer like Charlotte North or Jenn Medjid that they’ve had in recent years.
Rachel Clark sits atop the BC leaderboard in goals scored, but she leads what is truly a multi-headed offensive monster. Kayla Martello, Emma LoPinto, Belle Smith, Cassidy Weeks, Mckenna Davis, and Andrea Reynolds all join Clark to form an offense that is simply beautiful to watch and dangerous for opponents to defend. The way they pass the ball in and out of the zone, drive towards the net to create space, and find open slashers is on a truly advanced level that has led them to score the 4th-most goals per game in the nation.
The BC defense is led by veteran defenders Sydney Scales and Becky Browndorf and is backed by stalwart goaltender Shea Dolce, now in her sophomore season. Dolce was named the ACC Goaltender of the Year and Scales was named ACC Defender of the Year in 2024, and for good reason. This Eagles defense is #5 in the nation statistically and had some really impressive performances that got the team to this point, like their stifling wins over Syracuse and Notre Dame in the ACC Tournament when they didn’t let up more than 8 goals in any contest, or their big 14-9 win over Michigan last week to send BC to the Final Four. And the performances of midfielders like Belle Smith (2024 ACC Midfielder of the Year) and Shea Baker shouldn’t be discounted either, as they’ve led a crucial effort on ground balls and forced turnovers that have fully swung some important games. This team is gritty all the way through and will fight to the bitter end.
These Eagles really got cooking after their close 15-14 loss to Notre Dame back in March. The #8 Irish stole a back-and-forth game in the final seconds of regulation to give the Eagles their second loss of the season. After BC had just dropped a game to Northwestern a couple of weeks prior, it looked like they might struggle against tougher opponents now that they lacked a top-tier goal-scorer. But instead of getting down on themselves, the Eagles rallied. Back-to-back wins over top-20 opponents (including one against rival UNC) set the Eagles back on course later that month. And despite suffering another close loss late in the season to Virginia, BC really got juiced up when they took down #2 Syracuse in the final week of the regular season, an 11-10 overtime slugfest.
That OT win propelled Boston College to a run in the ACC Tournament, where they rode their tough defense to revenge over Notre Dame and then another win over Syracuse in the ACC Championship, winning the program’s second-straight conference title. And they haven’t let up since then, taking down some tough NCAA Tournament competition in Princeton and Michigan to make it back to lacrosse’s biggest stage.
Photo by Grant Halverson/NCAA Photos via Getty Images
Semifinal Preview
It’s hard to imagine BC WLax in a Final Four these days without a match-up against the Syracuse Orange. Cuse was on the losing end of 2021’s National Championship game when Charlotte North led an incredible 4th quarter comeback to deliver Boston College their first-ever NCAA title in the sport. And then last season the Eagles beat the Orange again, this time in the national semifinal before falling to Northwestern in the 2023 title game. Throw in a few more ACC Tournament match-ups and close regular season fights and you’ve got yourself a pretty intense rivalry these past few years that Boston College has mostly dominated, going 7-2 against SU since 2021.
Where: WakeMed Soccer Park, Cary, NC
When: Friday May 24th at 5:30pm ET
How to Watch: The semifinal game will be broadcasted on ESPNU and can be streamed on the ESPN app
Similar to Boston College, this Cuse squad is missing their top-goal scorer from last season (Meaghan Tyrell) but is making up for it with a breadth of offensive firepower. Meaghan’s sister Emma now leads the Orange with 70 goals and has a lot of support from a number of other attackers, with seven Orange players scoring at least 20 goals this season. Syracuse’s offensive statistics throughout the regular season weren’t quite as impressive as Boston College’s, but they’ve really heated up in the playoffs. SU has been outscoring tough opponents by 10+ goals in the 2024 postseason, including a 19-9 win against Yale, one of the best defenses in the nation. But Syracuse has only managed a 10-goal and an 8-goal performance against the Eagles so far this year, losing both times, so they certainly have their work cut out for them moving forward.
The Orange defense has put up some really incredible performances this season, too. They held Virginia to just 4 goals in the ACC semifinal, UNC to just 5 goals in the regular season, and even #6 Maryland to 9 goals in an OT loss back in February. All it takes is a hot goaltender and a few scrappy plays to flip a close result for the Orange to get their revenge on Boston College.
National Championship Game Preview
If Boston College makes the 2024 national title game, there are going to be some strong emotions.
First of all, it will mark the seventh-straight season that BC will have played in the women’s lacrosse NCAA Championship game. That kind of consistency and postseason performance gets more and more impressive every year. Head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein has basically become a living legend in a very short amount of time.
Secondly, the opponent on the other side of the bracket may very well be the Northwestern Wildcats. The same Northwestern Wildcats that defeated Boston College in last season’s national title game and ran up the score to an ugly 18-6 final. I’m absolutely certain that the players and staff from last year’s BC squad have not forgotten about that.
Where: WakeMed Soccer Park, Cary, NC
When: Sunday May 24th at 12:00pm ET
How to Watch: The national championship game will be broadcasted on ESPN and can be streamed on the ESPN app
Northwestern is once again the bonafide #1 seed in this year’s tournament, just like they were last season. Northwestern beat BC in a close regular season game this year, too, just like last season. And the Wildcats have absolutely trounced their two opponents by 13 goals each to get to the Final Four, an even more impressive run than their run last year. Everything about this looks scary.
The Wildcats are once again one of the best scoring offenses in the nation, led by super-duper senior Izzy Scane in her 6th season. But her teammate, sophomore Madison Taylor, looks primed to take over the program after Scane’s final run. Those two have combined for 200+ points between them this season and have led an absolutely electric scoring offense to dominate the Big Ten. The Wildcats are winners of nine-straight games and claimed the Big Ten conference title during that streak, and they haven’t scored fewer than 10 goals in ANY game this season. Most recently, Northwestern decimated #9 Penn and #12 Denver by 13-goals apiece in the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament.
The Northwestern defense hasn’t been anything to write home about, but they haven’t needed to be. NU’s offense is so dominant that they can routinely let up 12-14 goals and still win games. Boston College will need to quell this two-headed monster if they want any chance of claiming a second trophy this year.
#10 Florida is the team that NU will face in their semifinal match-up, a team that somehow has averaged an even higher number of goals per game this season than the Wildcats. The Gators are winners of an incredible 20-straight games and haven’t lost since their match-up against UNC back in mid-February. A lot of that can be explained by how weak of a conference the SEC is compared to the ACC and Big Ten, but the Gators have proved the doubters wrong so far with big wins over #16 UNC, #7 Virginia, and #13 Maryland to get to the 2024 Final Four.
Florida is led by an even wider group of goal-scorers than any of the teams we mentioned above. Nine Gators have at least 20 goals scored this season, while not a single one of them is even in the top-50 in the nation in total goals. It’s been a true team effort down in Gainesville that has led UF to claim the title of top offense in the country. While their scoring has dipped slightly in the NCAA tournament, they have still been racking up at least 13 goals in each contest and have defeated each of their opponents by at least 5 goals.
The Florida defense has been incredible this season, too. They’re a top-5 unit in the country and have let up 10+ goals in only one game in the past two months, when they crushed #18 James Madison, 21-11. The Gators have been backstopped by sophomore goalie Elyse Finnelle, who is one of the national leaders in save percentage, and the team has one of the best draw control percentages in the nation to boot. ACC foes UNC and Virginia only managed 8 goals each against the Gators’ stout defense, so it has become clear that their style of play can dominate opponents outside of just the SEC. While Northwestern is the favorite in this match-up, Florida should certainly present them with a tough challenge.
The athletes on all four of these teams are some of the most impressive college players in the nation. Boston College has certainly earned their place among the greats thus far, but it will take some serious guts to complete this run and claim a second national title for the program. Go Eagles!