We find ourselves here once again. For the eighth-straight time, the Boston College women’s lacrosse program has made it to the Final Four. It’s been an incredible feat of consistency, and the Eagles are primed to defend their 2024 national title, this time on home turf at Gillette Stadium. The semifinal game against Northwestern will be played on Friday May 23 at 5:30pm. If the Eagles defeat the Wildcats, they will face either North Carolina or Florida in the national title game on Sunday May 25 at 12pm.
To read more about how BC’s season played out overall, you can take a look at our NCAA Tournament preview from earlier this month. Now let’s talk about this Final Four.
BC vs Northwestern
When you go to eight straight Final Fours, you tend to form rivalries. And that’s exactly what’s happened between Boston College and the Northwestern Wildcats. These two squads met in the 2023 national championship game, which NU took 18-6 and was punctuated by a late empty-net Northwestern goal rather than them letting the clock run out. BC had their revenge the following year, though, defeating Northwestern in the 2024 national championship game in a 14-13 nailbiter that featured a 6-goal Eagles comeback. So it’s only natural that these teams would face off against each other in the NCAA tournament for the third-straight year, this time in the national semifinal.
These two teams already met this season, way back in February. Boston College won that game in Illinois, 13-9, behind a very balanced scoring attack and an incredible defensive performance. The key feature of these Northwestern teams is usually their offense, and they sure are bringing a tough offense to Foxboro on Friday. NU’s Madison Taylor is the nation’s leader in goals with 105 total, just two more than BC’s Rachel Clark. The third place player has just 89, so these two players are in a class all by themselves nationally.
Madison Taylor also leads the nation in points by almost a 20-point margin. She is a dominant force on the field and orchestrated a Northwestern offense that was #7 in the country this season despite featuring only one primary goal-scorer. While Rachel Clark has been lifted by a terrific supporting cast around her that has been able to elevate BC’s offense to an elite level, NU’s offense runs completely through Taylor. If you combined the goal totals from NU’s 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-leading goal scorers, you still would not reach the total that Taylor has scored all by herself. But she still has managed to involve her teammates all over the field to create a dynamic offense that has led them to another elite season.
Madison Taylor is a machine, and it will be hugely important for the Eagles defense to stop her. In the NCAA tournament alone, Taylor scored 10 goals and 1 assist against Michigan, and then 6 goals and 4 assists against Penn. Incredible offensive output.
Once you get past the flashy offense, you realize that Northwestern also boasts the #3 defense in the country. You can attribute a lot of this to their offensive dominance and their incredibly impressive .643 draw control win rate, which is #4 in the nation. Wildcat goalie Delaney Sweitzer is also one of the best in the nation, posting a .482 save percentage. Even if the Eagles manage to win draw controls, they will have their hands full with the best defense they’ve faced outside of UNC.
Prediction
With BC having some early struggles against Stony Brook and Yale already in this tournament, it will be crucial for the Eagles to get out to a hot start against Northwestern. If NU gets the upper hand, it will be much more difficult to make goal-scoring runs like BC did against Yale to put the game away. When Yale and Stony Brook won several draw controls in a row, the stalwart BC defense was mostly able to stifle them and prevent the game from getting out of hand. But against the deadly Madison Taylor, stopping the bleeding will be much more difficult. Especially after watching her drop 10 goals on Michigan goalie Erin O’Grady, who has the 2nd-best save percentage in the NCAA, in a game that NU won 15-7.
That being said, Boston College has the most balanced offensive attack in the nation and can go on scoring runs unlike anybody else. And with an incredible defense on the other end of the field, they should be able to limit NU’s ball movement and focus in on stopping an unbalanced NU attack. In their regular season match-up, Madison Taylor was limited to just 3 goals and 3 assists and the NU offense only managed to score 9 goals total, despite winning the draw control battle 15-10. BC has the formula to defeat Northwestern, but with two elite teams at the top of their game, anything can happen.
Prediction: Boston College 12, Northwestern 11
National Championship Game
North Carolina
The favorites. And another bitter rival. UNC is undefeated this season, a perfect 20-0 entering the Final Four. Boston College is 19-2, with their only two losses coming against UNC in the regular season (12-11) and in the ACC title game (14-12). It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but the Tarheels have been just a tad better than the Eagles this season.
Of course UNC and BC clash yearly in conference play, but they are also no strangers to meeting in the Final Four. North Carolina won the 2022 national championship game over Charlotte North and Boston College in a brutal finish. BC eked out an 11-10 win over UNC in the 2021 Final Four on the way to the program’s first ever national championship. And even going back to 2019, the Eagles defeated the Tarheels in a one-goal game in the Final Four. All three of those match-ups were decided by just one goal, which goes to show you how close these two programs have been over the past several years. And how, despite two losses to UNC earlier this season, Boston College is still a huge threat to win a back-to-back national titles.
Now that the conference tournaments and first few rounds of the NCAA tournament are over, North Carolina has established themselves statistically as the nation’s #1 offense and #1 defense. That number on offense has just recently pushed them over BC, as UNC demolished Clemson and Princeton in the NCAA tournament, but both teams are still very close. The Tarheels offense is led by sisters Ashley and Chloe Humphrey. Freshman Chloe leads the team in goals with 79 total (4th in the nation), while older sister and grad student Ashley leads the team in points with 113 (4th in the nation).
It’s a goal-scoring duo that’s 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. Except in games against BC, UNC has scored at least 17 goals in each of their last seven games. BC held them to 12 and 14 goals in each of their two match-ups, respectively.
The North Carolina defense is what they truly hang their hats on. UNC has allowed just under 7 goals per game this season to its opponents. The only teams that have been able to score 10+ goals on the Tarheels this season are #2 Boston College (12, 14) and #3 Northwestern (12). For comparison, though BC boasts the nation’s #2 defense, the Eagles just let up 11 goals to Yale and have seen UNC, Virginia, and Duke get to at least 10 goals this season. It’s not a crucial distinction, seeing as BC won all of those games (except against UNC), but it does illustrate just how dominant this North Carolina defense has been.
If these two teams end up facing off for the 2025 national championship, you should expect fireworks. They always play each other close and the games almost always end in dramatic fashion.
Florida
Florida is a heavy underdog to North Carolina in their Final Four match-up, despite being the #4 seed in the tournament. The Gators also reached the Final Four last season but fell to Northwestern, 15-11. They have the country’s #6 offense and #6 defense, but play in the SEC, who has not been a power conference in women’s lacrosse akin to the ACC or Big Ten. In the tournament’s earlier rounds, they barely scraped by both Stanford and Duke, teams that UNC and BC had no trouble trouncing in the regular season. Nonetheless, Florida has worked their way through the bracket and find themselves in Foxboro with a chance to win a national title.
We’ve talked a lot about balanced scoring attacks from BC and UNC, but Florida’s is truly balanced. Junior attacker Gianna Monaco leads the team in goals with 73, which is #9 in the nation. But her supporting cast is very deep, with seven other teammates having racked up at least 20 goals this season. And they really excel at getting past tough goalies, boasting the nation’s #2 shot percentage, making every offensive opportunity count. On the defensive side, they are elite at clearing the ball and have a solid goalie in net. But Florida struggles to secure draw controls against better competition and some of their strengths are simply superseded by even better strengths of UNC’s. It will be an uphill battle for the Gators if they want to upset the Tarheels on Friday.