Half a year removed from winning its first-ever national championship, Boston College lacrosse released its 2022 schedule. It’s a stacked 16-game slate with the program’s most high-profile opener in years.
BC will host Northwestern on Feb. 12. The Wildcats are coming off their second Final Four appearance since 2014. An Izzy Scane-led Northwestern was punched in the mouth by Syracuse in the national semifinal. If the Wildcats had triumphed against the Orange, they would have squared off against BC in the National Championship.
Instead, the programs will meet for the first time since 2019. They both reached the Final Four that season as well. BC pulled away in the March 9 contest, beating Northwestern, 22-17, in Evanston.
Unfortunately for the Wildcats, Scane, a Tewaaraton Award finalist who piled up 98 goals in 2021, was ruled out for the season with an ACL tear and won’t be available for this year’s game. Still, it will be a pivotal ACC-Big Ten matchup with two of the game’s best coaches on the sideline.
Here’s BC’s complete 2022 schedule:
Note: *denotes ACC play
Feb. 12 vs. Northwestern
Feb. 16 at UMass
→ BC pummeled the Minutewoman last year, 19-7. Jenn Medjid led the team with five goals, and the Eagles outscored UMass, 7-1, in the second half. The year before, though, UMass snapped the Eagles’ 36-game regular season win streak that dated back to April 8, 2017. In total, it spanned 1,036 days.
Feb. 19 vs. Boston University
Feb. 23 at Virginia*
→ The Eagles’ ACC opener is against a UVA team that started 2021 5-0 before losing nine of its last 14 games, including a second-round NCAA Tournament game to Notre Dame. The Cavaliers are on the rise, though. And they bring back their top-two leading goal scorers from last year: attackers Ashlyn McGovern and Lillie Kloak.
Feb. 26 at Brown
March 5 at Louisville*
March 9 at Denver
→ This marks the end of a four-game road trip for BC. Denver lost its opener last year to Colorado before rattling off 15 consecutive wins and making the NCAA Tournament. The Pioneers bested Stanford in a back-and-forth, first-round affair but then were blown out by Northwestern two days later.
March 13 vs. Yale
March 19 vs. North Carolina*
→ Ah, yes. UNC. Since the start of the 2018 season, the Eagles have alternated wins and losses against the Tar Heels, twice losing to them in the ACC Championship but twice beating them in the Final Four. BC is 4-3 against UNC in that stretch. Before that, BC had won just two games in a series that started back in 1997. Last season, the Eagles handed top overall seed UNC its lone defeat. BC managed to score 11 goals against the Tar Heels’ top-ranked scoring defense and held on for an 11-10 Final Four win.
March 26 at Pitt*
→ This is Pitt’s first year with a women’s lacrosse team. The Panthers are the ninth team in the ACC.
March 30 vs. Dartmouth
April 2 vs. Virginia Tech*
April 9 vs. Notre Dame*
→ The end of a three-game homestand comes against a Notre Dame team that the Eagles defeated three times last season. BC first swept the Irish in an ACC doubleheader. Goalie Rachel Hall registered, at the time, a season-high 11 stops in the Eagles’ opening win. Then, a few days later, the Eagles staked themselves to another early lead, and Charlotte North helped BC put Notre Dame away with six goals and 10 draw controls. The Eagles maintained bragging rights with a 21-10 victory in the Elite Eight.
April 12 at Harvard
April 16 at Duke*
April 23 vs. Syracuse*
→ The game everyone will have circled on their calendars. A rematch of the 2021 National Championship. It’s even more intriguing now that former BC assistant coach Kayla Treanor is Syracuse’s head coach. Not only that, but Kenzie Kent, former BC’s women’s hockey and lacrosse star, is an assistant coach for Treanor. Meanwhile, Sam Apuzzo, Kent’s college teammate, has climbed the ranks and now is an assistant coach for BC. The Eagles prevailed in last year’s title game, 16-10, after outsourcing Syracuse, 7-2, in the second half. North set a new NCAA single-season record for goals in the win.
April 27-May 1: ACC Tournament*
