Category Archives: Sports

Dismantling Demon Deacons

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Play BC’s first string for more than a quarter or two and they may put up career games, even against an accomplished ACC foe.

It’s not all Dillon on the ground. QB Anthony Brown threw for 304 yards and 5 touchdowns. BC photo

In the 41-34 victory over Wake Forest (2-1) yesterday, AJ Dillon continued to have great rushing stats, but it was quarterback Anthony Brown and wide receiver Jeff Smith who set personal career records. Dillon ran 33 times for 185 yards, including all 52 yards on 3 carries in the Eagles’ first series, ending in a 45-yard run for BC’s first touchdown. Brown became the first Eagle quarterback to throw for 5 touchdowns since Matt Ryan in 2007, also against Wake Forest. Smith caught 6 passes for 145 and 2 touchdowns, and also ran 3 times for 42 yards.

The game was played before 25,309 fans in the late afternoon, kickoff at 5:30 pm local time. The start of the game had been moved up 2 hours in recognition of the potential impact of Hurricane Florence, then making landfall on the North Carolina coast, about 200 miles away. The time change gave the Eagles a little leeway in being able to fly back to Boston that evening.

What I think are Wake ROTC students seem displeased at Ben Glines’s TD reception. BC photo

While the game was close on the scoreboard and most of the stat sheet, Wake Forest was pretty much gifted 2 touchdowns on special teams foulups. Late in the first quarter, Wake got the ball on BC’s 13 when Mike Walker fumbled a punt (his first fumble in 2 years). Three plays later, Wake scored the tying touchdown. Early in the second quarter, BC punter Grant Carlson mishandled the snap and his attempt to get off a kick was blocked. The ball bounced back into BC’s endzone, where it was recovered by Wake for a touchdown.

Overall, Wake Forest ran an incredible 105 plays to BC’s 69, making 27 first downs to BC’s 19, and was successful on 6 of 7 fourth-down conversions. Yardage was closer, as the Eagles gained 524 yards total offense and the Deacons gained 512 yards.

BC’s Brown threw for 304 yards, mostly on big plays. The Eagles never got into the red zone (inside the 20) in the game; they scored all their points on touchdowns and from outside the 20. The shortest touchdown play for BC was 27 yards.

Offensive players weren’t the only record-setters. Senior defensive end Wyatt Ray set a BC record with 4 sacks, and grad student linebacker Connor Strachan had a personal-best 13 tackles.

Here are video highlights.

The Eagles open the season 3-0, also for the first time since 2007. They get a bit of a break with this weekend off before heading out to Lafayette, Ind., to play Purdue of the Big 10. The Boilermakers are 0-2, having lost to Northwestern and Eastern Michigan. They play Missouri tomorrow.

Gamewatch is early. Striders serves breakfast, to much acclaim.

 

 

Old rugged rivalry

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BC plays Holy Cross in football Saturday. While BC played Holy Cross more times than any other team in its history, the last game between them was 1986, 32 years ago. At our gamewatch this past Saturday, I realized there are a lot of BC alumni who know very little about the rivalry that used to be.

Some of you are aware that, in June, I joined my classmates at BC in celebration of the 50th anniversary of our graduation. I had also developed a blog about our years at BC and some of what was happening around us at the time, in Boston and in the outside world. One of the blog posts on ProudRefrain.org was about the BC-Holy Cross rivalry during our time at BC. Below is an adapted version of that post.

1966 Sub Turri

If it was Thanksgiving weekend when we were students at BC, it was also BC-Holy Cross football . . . except once. While the first three BC-HC games took place on the traditional Turkey Saturday, the 1967 game was the following Saturday, December 2. (That season started late. First game wasn’t until September 23. Not sure if it was just calendar or something else.)

BC-HC football was also the season finale. There were only eight or nine bowl games back then — the iconic Rose, Sugar, Cotton, and Orange bowls, along with the newer and lesser Tangerine, Liberty, Bluebonnet, Sun, and Gator (and occasional Pasadena) bowls. Only 18 teams made it to bowl games then, far fewer than the 80 teams that will play in bowls this season. Most of the teams playing in bowls in the Sixties were southern schools with the Pac-8 and Big 10 meeting in the Rose Bowl. (After the 1943 Orange Bowl, the Eagles didn’t play in a bowl until the 1982 Tangerine Bowl.)

Always the final game and against Holy Cross, the age-old rival from nearby Worcester, the Friday night before the game featured a rally, the most expansive of the year. In our first couple of years, at least, the rally consisted of a parade of vehicles “adapted” to be floats carrying large signs (some of which carried somewhat blasphemous language, as at right). The parade would leave the area in front of McHugh Forum, proceed east down Beacon Street to Cleveland Circle, and return via Commonwealth Avenue to Upper Campus. (Permits? We don’t need no stinkin’ permits!)

The promo in The Heights for the 1964 rally promised “fiery speeches” and a bonfire in which the floats “will go up in flames and smoke.” I was home, in Western Mass, that Friday and didn’t attend the rally, so I cannot confirm the existence of a bonfire.

That November 24, 1964 issue of The Heights (published on a Tuesday) also carried an edition of The Infidel, a purported edition of a Holy Cross student newspaper. The lead article announced that Holy Cross had once again sought to forfeit the game against BC because of “fright.”

In 1964, the Eagles avenged a shutout defeat (9-0) the previous year by winning another low-scoring game 10-8 to finish the season 6-3 (best season record while we were there).

Team, fans, everybody leave the field at Alumni Stadium following 1964 win over Holy Cross. Caption in The Heights: “On to the Victory Dance!”

As sophomores, we saw classmate Brendan McCarthy, playing in his first varsity season, win the O’Melia award as top player in the BC-Holy Cross game. McCarthy’s 139 yards on 20 carries and 1 touchdown (on a very muddy Fitton Field) led the Eagles to a 35-0 rout of the Crusaders.

Preceding the 1966 game, Heights sportswriter and classmate Bob Ryan (retired Boston Globe sportswriter and four-time national sportswriter of the year) penned a column for the November 18 issue entitled “Cross Game Ain’t What It Used To Be.” In it he opined that, at least that year, the BC-HC rivalry was better on the hardwood, i.e., between the Eagles’ and Crusaders’ basketball teams. Holy Cross, however, decided to make it a rivalry that year, securing their only victory over BC while we were students, 32-26, in a “wide-open finale.”

Heights sportswriter and classmate Reid Oslin, in his article on the 1967 BC-Holy Cross game, called Fitton Field “The World’s Coldest Place.” Oh, I remember that one! The Eagles won 13-7 and quarterback and classmate Joe DiVito took home the O’Melia Award. [In an interesting allusion to the present, BC’s two wins to wrap up the 1967 season were over Holy Cross and UMass, the two teams with which they open this season.]

We played Holy Cross in football four times while we were students. In basketball, BC and Holy Cross met eight times on the court, twice each year. The greater frequency, and probably the ability to see players up close, made the basketball rivalry seem more intense. You could really see “villainry” in the opponent, cf. Keith Hochstein. By the way, BC’s record against the Cross in our years — 7-1.

The last BC-Holy Cross football game was played November 22, 1986. BC won 56-26 in its eighth-straight victory in the series. The Eagles had won 17 of the last 19 games in the series. The Crusaders had won two games in 1977 and 1978 by a total of six points.

Mauling Minutemen

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AJ Dillon runs with his first collegiate pass reception for BC’s first touchdown.

More than halfway through the first quarter, BC and UMass were tied 7-7 in the Eagles’ season opener at Alumni Stadium yesterday.

A little over 20 minutes later in gametime, the Eagles ran off the field at halftime leading 48-7. The game ended with BC on top 55-21.

The Eagles scored 34 points, gaining 267 yards, in the second quarter. At halftime, they had outgained UMass in total offense, 455 yards to 146 yards. The foot was lifted from the pedal in the second half, one might say, but BC finished with 622 yards total offense, nearly double the Minutemen’s 315 yards for the game.

Running back AJ Dillon played little more than the first half, gaining 98 yards on 20 carries. He also caught his first collegiate pass, for the Eagles’ first touchdown. Quarterback Anthony Brown, whose play was also limited, was 15 for 21 for 279 yards and four touchdowns, no interceptions, all in the first half. Both backup quarterbacks, EJ Perry (3-4-0) and Matt McDonald (2-2-0) played in the second half.

Here are video highlights.

BC played 66 members of the team during the game, essentially three entire squads on both offense and defense.

San Diego Eagles started the season off with good attendance at the gamewatch at Striders, San Diego.

Next up, after a long time, the Crusaders of College of the Holy Cross travel from Worcester to Chestnut Hill to play the Eagles this Saturday. It will be the 83rd game between the two, more than with any other team BC has played, but the first since 1986. For many years, the BC-HC game on Thanksgiving weekend was the finale to the season. BC leads the series 48-31-3. The teams will play again in 2020 in Alumni Stadium. Yesterday, Holy Cross, a member of the Patriot League and the FCS Division, lost its season opener to Colgate, 24-17.