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Cavaliers To Face Boston College in ACC Tournament
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The Virginia field hockey team will face Boston College in the first round of the ACC Tournament for the second consecutive year as the Cavaliers earned the fifth seed in the 2007 Championships. This year’s tournament, hosted by the Eagles, starts Thursday, November 1 and once again features six of the top-20 sides in the nation. Virginia is ranked 11th in the womensfieldhockey.com poll and 19th in the STX/NFHCA poll while the Eagles are 14th in both polls. The Cavaliers (10-8, 1-4 ACC) and the Eagles (12-7, 1-4 ACC) will meet in the first game of the weekend at 1 p.m. and will be followed by No. 3 Wake Forest vs. No. 6 Duke. Top-ranked UNC is the top seed while No. 2 Maryland is seeded second. Wake Forest, ranked third nationally, is seeded third while No. 10/12 Duke is the sixth seed.
Virginia defeated Boston College (12-7, 1-4 ACC) 2-1 in the first round of the tournament last year after falling 1-0 in the regular season on the road. Earlier this year on September 22, the Cavaliers dropped a 2-1 decision in Charlottesville as the Eagles rallied to score the final two goals of the game for the victory. The BC win moved the Eagles ahead in the series 5-4. Boston College is averaging 2.73 goals per game while the Cavaliers are allowing only 2.06 goals per game while at the other end of the pitch Virginia averages 2.11 goals per game and the Eagles are allowing only 1.58 goals per game. Both teams are averaging just over six short corners per game (BC, 6.37; UVa, 6.28).
The Cavaliers have faced the seventh-toughest schedule in the nation; all six schools in the ACC have schedules ranked in the top-10. Virginia has a slight edge in the RPI (14th, .590; BC is 18th, .586). Virginia is 12-24 in ACC Tournament history and has a record of 1-4 as the No. 5 seed. Last year’s victory was only the second time in history that the fifth seed had won a game at the ACC Championships.
The second game of the tournament features Wake Forest against Duke; the Demon Deacons defeated the Blue Devils 4-2 in their only meeting in 2007.
The winner of the BC/UVa match will face top-ranked and top-seeded North Carolina in the semifinals on Friday, November 3 at 4 p.m. The Cavaliers lost to the Tar Heels 3-0 in Charlottesville on October 14 despite holding UNC well below the Heels’ average number of shots and short corners per game.