It’s been yet another fantastic season for the Boston College women’s lacrosse program while they’ve defended their 2024 national title. The Eagles sit at #2 in national rankings after finishing the regular season with a 15-1 record, their only loss coming against undefeated #1 North Carolina. Now, with the ACC tournament beginning on Wednesday, the intensity is about to really ratchet up. BC is also defending back-to-back ACC titles and this tournament could end up pitting them against #1 UNC one final time before the NCAA tournament. Let’s get into it.
2025 Season Recap
When BC got an early season victory over #3 Northwestern, 13-9, it was an omen of good things to come for the Eagles. That game featured hat tricks by sophomores Molly Driscoll and Kylee Colbert, two breakout players this season that are a testament to the longevity of excellence that head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein is building at Boston College. They defeated the team that crushed them in the 2023 national championship game and took them down to the wire in the 2024 title game, proving that they were once again ready to compete to defend their title.
As always, the ACC was a juggernaut in women’s lacrosse this season. Seven of the top sixteen teams in the country play in the ACC, including new member #13 Stanford. But the Eagles are playing at such a high level that they basically just trounced through the competition anyway. Outside of their one-goal loss to UNC, the Boston College team has won all of their games against ACC competition by at least six goals, and usually by much more.
In just the past month, Boston College defeated #13 Stanford by eight goals, #7 Virginia by thirteen goals, and #16 Syracuse by fifteen goals. BC’s offense has been on an absolute tear and has too much talent for most opponents to handle.
Senior attacker Rachel Clark is the star of the show, averaging almost five goals per game, which is #2 in the nation. Her fellow senior Emma LoPinto has been a scoring machine herself, putting in 58 goals this season, good for #7 in the nation. These two have led Boston College’s offense to be the best in the nation, as the Eagles scored 26 more goals than any other team in the country this year (18+ per game).
The supporting cast on offense around Clark and LoPinto has been terrific, too, including great performances from longtime Eagle Mckenna Davis, Brown transfer Mia Mascone, and breakout sophomore talents, Molly Driscoll and Kylee Colbert, who all have dozens of goals each this season.
BC also leads the ACC in draw control percentage and has the #2 scoring defense in the conference, behind only UNC. The Eagles defense is definitely helped by the sheer amount of goals that they score and the draws that they win, but it also is led by a stalwart goalie in net, junior Shea Dolce. It seems like just yesterday that Dolce was a freshman phenom taking over the reigns so early in her collegiate career, but she’s come a long way since then.
After backstopping the national championship team last season and making that iconic kick save in the natty, Dolce has not slowed down. She is #1 in the nation in Save Percentage and #2 in the nation in Goals Against Average, behind only UNC’s Betty Nelson. Opponents don’t get lots of opportunities to shoot on net against Boston College, but when they do, Dolce is an elite shot-blocker.
Boston College is once again set up extremely well to make deep postseason runs in the 2025 ACC and NCAA tournaments. BC is excellent in all phases of the game and have proved themselves to be in a class above most of the country. They will still have plenty of adversity to face, though, with long-time enemies North Carolina and Northwestern ready to fight for a title themselves, among a few other contenders.
ACC Tournament Preview
First up in the bracket, BC will rematch against #7 Virginia, after the Eagles defeated the Cavaliers, 24-11, just a few weeks ago. Despite being ranked #7 in the nation, UVA is the 7-seed in the ACC tournament due to an early season loss versus Stanford and a recent one-goal loss to Syracuse.
In their first match-up against Virginia, BC took a commanding lead right away, scoring four unanswered goals (two from Rachel Clark) to open the first quarter. UVA managed to bring the score back within one goal midway through the second quarter, but then the Eagles scored seven more unanswered goals and never came close to being caught again. Virginia is a good draw control team and can put up big numbers on offense on any given day, but BC should still be a solid favorite in this one.
If they win, BC will then face either #8 Duke or #14 Clemson in the second round, both of which are top-15 teams themselves. The Eagles defeated Duke, 19-10, back in February, and they did not face off against Clemson in the regular season. Clemson has a top-10 defense and a top-20 offense, both better than Duke over the course of the season. But the Blue Devils are a clutch team, winning many of their games by thin margins, including a one-goal victory over Clemson in March. The Tigers with their elite defense are probably the tougher opponent for BC, but the Eagles should be solid favorites over either team.
Finally, if BC makes it to the championship round, all signs point towards a rematch with undefeated #1 North Carolina. UNC has been a longtime foil for Acacia Walker-Weinstein’s teams ever since she got to Chestnut Hill and started competing for national championships. The Tarheels have won three national titles since 2013, including the 2022 title they won over BC. They’ve also faced off in plenty of ACC tournament games over the years, including when BC won their first ever conference championship in 2023.
UNC is back to dominant status after a very brief hiatus. From 2009 to 2022, North Carolina had not gone more than one year without making an NCAA Final Four. But after they missed out in both 2023 and 2024, the Tarheels are back in a serious way.
UNC is undefeated this season with wins over #2 BC, #3 Northwestern, #4 Florida, #7 Virginia, #8 Duke, #11 James Madison, #14 Clemson, and #16 Syracuse. They have the #1 scoring defense in the nation and the #2 scoring offense. Everything about this team is elite.
The Tarheels offense is led by sisters Ashley and Chloe Humphrey. Freshman Chloe leads the team in goals with 64 total (3rd in the nation), while older sister and grad student Ashley leads the team in points with 84 (5th in the nation). It’s a goal-scoring duo that’s almost on par with BC’s combination of Clark and LoPinto. And their supporting cast is just as impressive as BC’s, with several players up and down the roster that can make an impact.
On defense, UNC is even more impressive. Nobody in the nation stops goals better than the Tarheels. They clear the ball from the defensive zone at a top-3 rate nationally, while their goalie Betty Nelson has the 4th-highest save percentage in the country.
UNC held the high-powered BC offense to just 11 goals on April 5th, mostly snuffing out the Eagles two leaders with Clark and LoPinto scoring just four goals between them. BC only managed 18 total shots on goal in that game against two goalies, Nelson and Lexi Zenk. Dolce faced a similar number of shots on her side and saved about half of them, but she’s used to getting more help on the other end of the field. BC won the draw control battle, but the UNC defense repeatedly stifled them and forced several extra turnovers. It was an incredibly close game that could have gone either way, and I would expect a similar level of competitiveness if they face off again in the ACC title game.
You can view the full ACC tournament bracket here. BC opens the tournament against Virginia on Wednesday April 23rd at 5pm ET in Charlotte, North Carolina.