The Women’s NCAA tournament bracket was released yesterday and once again the Eagles were absent. Not exactly surprising, given BC’s 3-9-6 record, going 0-6-4 in ACC play. But what those numbers don’t tell you is that the Eagles drew No. 3 UNC 1-1 in their final game and ended their season on a four-game undefeated streak, tying their final four ACC opponents. Granted, the Eagles finished 13th in the ACC, with four points and a winning percentage of .333—not exactly the kind of numbers you write home about.
Overall, the season went as expected. The Eagles did manage to avoid finishing last in the ACC, proving the ACC Preseason Poll wrong. But they only finished three points above Syracuse, who also went winless in the ACC. The Eagles have four ACC wins in the past five years, a sharp decline compared to the six wins in 2018, the season before Head Coach Jason Lowe was hired.
Which brings us to the big news. The Eagles released Lowe five days after the conclusion of the regular season. The announcement noted that the search for “the next head women’s coach would begin immediately.” Likely, the program will want to have their candidate in place before the start of the spring season, to allow both the players and coach to begin to get to know each other and start building for the 2024 season. Lowe himself was hired in January 2019, giving a rough timeline for when the Eagles might expect their coaching announcement.
Whoever the new coach ends up being, they’ll inherit plenty of talent and plenty of questions. Below is a look at some of the most pressing issues facing the incoming coach and the Eagles next season. It’s also a look at what went wrong this season, though, with a new coach, that’s not as pressing as next season’s message of a blank slate.
SECONDARY SCORING + CHANCES
Ella Richards had seven goals this season. Aislin Streicek had four. Claire Mensi and Sophia Lowenberg each had two. Beyond that, Bella Douglas and Hanna Schmelzle had a goal apiece. That was it for the Eagles, scoring just 18 goals this season compared to opponents 32. Part of the Eagles troubles this season wasn’t that they couldn’t find the back of the net…it was that they couldn’t find the back of the net enough.
Looking at shots taken, the divide between ACC threats and the bottom of the table becomes clear. The top five teams in the ACC took the most shots. The shots to ACC ranking aren’t a perfect match up—the top five teams are actually reversed with Pitt shooting the most of the top five and FSU the least—but it’s clear that there’s a connection between shooting and securing points in the ACC.
Florida State finished first in the ACC and had 304 shots. Notre Dame was second with 312, Clemson third with 355, UNC fourth with 386, and Pitt finished fifth with 401. BC finished 13th overall in the ACC and was 11th in shots generated with 154. Pitt, having the most shots but finishing fifth, speaks to the second half of the creation argument: teams must also be efficient in finishing their chances. Winning teams are creative but also ruthlessly efficient, creating and putting away a high volume of dangerous chances.
Another measure of chances generated, or at least how much stress an offense puts on the back line, is corners generated. Once again, the data tells the story. The top five teams in the ACC also finished in the top five in terms of corners generated. Pitt once again led—likely a product of their high volume of shots—with 175 total corners. Florida State and Notre Dame finished fourth and fifth in corners with 107 and 106 respectively. The Eagles, as one might guess, finished 10th in corners with 70 over the course of the season.
All of these numbers reveal that Richards and Streicek cannot be the only producers on the Eagles next year. To win the ACC, or even finish .500, BC will need Richards to continue to be seven or eight or more goal scorer. But they’ll need more productivity from their wingers and central attacking midfielders. Richards, Streicek, and Andi Barth will all be seniors next year. Sydney Segalla will be a junior, and, although a holding midfielder by trade, Lowenberg, who can play up top or be a threat on a set piece, will also be a junior. That’s plenty of experience that needs to break through and create—and finish!—chances for the Eagles.
This year, while the Eagles had spells of controlling the midfield, a large part of their headaches could be found in the team’s inability to connect with the forwards and breakthrough on goal. While the defense and holding midfielders had a strong connection, the Eagles faced two choices up top: have Richards drop lower to play wide or try and take the ball wide, with the option to spring Segalla, or have Streicek dribble center. Given that Notre Dame put up 1.5 times the number of corners the Eagles did and Florida State created nearly two times the number of shots, the Eagles offense has an uphill climb ahead of them.
For reference: Virginia finished 7th in the ACC with Virginia Tech finishing 8th. Virginia finished with 271 shots and 98 corners. Virginia Tech wrapped up their season with 204 shots and 94 corners. If the Eagles are shooting to be middle of the pack, those are the numbers their offense needs to shoot for. And that’s going to take more than a two-dimensional offense plan that revolves around one player scoring buckets of goals up top.
INTANGIBLES: Holding a Lead, Mentality, the Next Level
The Eagles biggest struggle this season was the plateau. On the surface, nothing seemed to be wrong with BC. The Eagles had speed, depth, the ability to play players in different roles, a pure goal scorer in Richards, and a stalwart goaltender in Willebrandt. The defense was strong too, benefitting from the breakout play of Douglas, a freshman who played with poise throughout a trial by fire season. Anchored by veteran defender Mensi and junior Sarai Costello, the Eagles might not have been a first in the ACC team, but they certainly shouldn’t have ended conference play with no wins.
Part of the problem lies in the Eagles inability to hold a lead. Of the games where the Eagles scored first (eight total), their record is 3-1-4 ties. Of those three wins, two were clean sheets. Meaning, that on the season, the only time the Eagles managed to hold onto a lead when scoring first was on senior day against Sacred Heart. Scoring second didn’t do the Eagles any favors either, with them seeing a tie against Dartmouth and a loss to Virginia Tech. To round out the record, the Eagles were also shut out five times.
The situation isn’t necessarily dire: after Florida State routed them 6-0 the Eagles responded with four consecutive ties, including one against the No. 3 ranked team in the country. But stopping the bleeding and not getting hurt in the first place are two different things. Several times the Eagles came out pushing for a goal, found one, and then would lose the lead in the second half and have to settle for a tie. Throughout the season there was the sense that fans, and to a lesser extent the players, were simply waiting for the opposing team to score. The prediction wasn’t a win, it was that at some point the Eagles would let in a goal (at best) or two and the win would slip away.
A lack of killer instinct can be hidden with a technically perfect defense or a midfield that can control the tempo of the game and keep opponents out wide. The larger issue for the Eagles was a deeper uncertainty about where they wanted to keep ACC opponents. With several freshmen winning starting positions or underclassmen having regular minutes for the first time, mistakes were made at the top of the box, on the wings, and in the middle of the field. Games often felt like BC was daring a team to beat them in a specific way…and then weren’t at all surprised when said team did.
In their last four games, the Eagles went up four times only to concede a goal and end a game in a tie. The winning mentality or at least, the mentality to take their play to the next level and close out a game, just isn’t there yet for BC. Able to be ruthless and put teams like UNC or Louisville on their heels, the Eagles couldn’t keep them there and couldn’t find a way to regain control after conceding a goal. Hence the plateau. It’s one thing to have a blowout loss and come back and play for four straight draws. It would have been another if the Eagles had managed to turn even one of those ties into a win. The Diego Simeone quote has been used before but part of the Eagles problem this year is that “the game [was being] played with a knife between their teeth” but it wasn’t being used against the opponent.
THE UPSIDE
It’s clear the Eagles needed this refresh as issues like a lack of efficiency and creativity have been persistent throughout the past few years. One ACC win each season for four years and zero this year signals larger, structural issues that go beyond recruited talent. (And to be fair to Lowe, he did bring the highest ranked recruiting class in program history to the Heights.) With talent up and down the pitch, new tactics might shake the old mentality of “it doesn’t matter how hard we play, it always ends in a tie.”
There are big questions the new coach will have to answer: how does one replace Wiebke Willebrandt, one of the brightest stars for the Eagles? With Laura Gouvin, Emily Sapienza, and Sonia Walk all being seniors, how does one replace that triangle in the midfield? (An easy answer is the new coach does not play Lowe’s favored 4-3-3.) How quickly can the offense be overhauled and turned into a team that shoots more often, along with a better selection of shots? How long does it take the new coach to instill a killer instinct in the players and to teach the backline to step up on oncoming forwards instead of giving them the time and space to choose their shot?
In a nutshell: Little things and big things went wrong this year. The overall system the Eagles were playing didn’t feed the ball into dangerous areas often enough to create the chances BC so desperately needed. While defensively sound, the inexperience and rotation between Kenna Thomas and Ava McNeil along with the freshman Douglas meant mistakes were bound to happen. With the lack of offensive firepower, however, those mistakes became insurmountable and contributed to growing frustration. Little fixes like tightening up, marking players closer, and huge structural changes like playing for more possession would have made a difference this season.
Ultimately, the biggest negative to the season was the lack of clear progress and an inability of the Eagles team to find a way to an ACC win (and to win against non-conference opponents like Michigan and South Carolina.) The biggest positive is that next season will be an entirely new slate with zero expectations placed upon it since, realistically, the Eagles can only go up. Let the new era begin.
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