"This year, we are just concentrating on our game and no one else's. We all know as a team that if we bring our A-game, we can beat anybody in the country."
This type of positive attitude shown by sophomore defender Meghan Nadolski, as well as by the rest of her teammates, has turned this year's women's soccer team into the best Boston College has had in the last eight years.
During a weekend when football and hockey match with Notre Dame hogged all of the headlines, the BC women's soccer team had its own agenda to worry about.
As well as the team has played this year (19th in the country going into this weekend), the team still found itself fourth in the Big East behind Miami, UConn, and St. John's, with less than a week to go before the Big East Tournament.
The two games this weekend against conference rivals and ACC-moving mates Miami and Virginia Tech were very important in deciding the seed BC will have entering the tournament.
"We know how good these teams are and how crucial these two games are to our season. The fact that they will also be switching conferences with us won't make these games any more important than they already are," said Nadolski.
Fortunately for the team, it was able to move closer to being the top seed in the Big East by notching a 1-0 win over the Hokies.
BC, who has been known this season for its aggressive play out of the gates, continued that trend against the Hokies. The Eagles had the Hokies on their toes for the entire first half, not allowing them to even get one shot on net.
Although their first few good offensive chances came up empty, the Eagles finally broke through at 15:36 when sophomore Katie McGregor found senior Sarah Rahko with a perfect cross to the top of the 18-yard box. Rahko just needed a few steps to set up her sixth goal of the season.
That was all the Eagles needed as BC's defense played an outstanding game. The game was very physical on the defensive end. Both teams were issued yellow cards in the first half.
The game ended on a sour note when Hokies forward Morgann Wagner was ejected from the game for kicking a fallen BC player after the ball had been cleared. But thanks to the hard-nosed tackling of Erin Docherty and April Joy Milado, the Eagles were able to contain the Hokies' offense, allowing just one shot on goal for the entire game.
Although Kate Taylor didn't have much action in the game, when she did have some, she shined. The one shot Virginia Tech was able to muster came with 14 minutes left in the game, when a Hokie forward squeaked through the middle of the field and broke in alone on Taylor. But this was all for naught, as Taylor was able to make a miraculous diving kick save to preserve the Eagles' one-goal lead. It was her seventh shutout of the year.
A day earlier, BC again kept with its winning ways with a 3-0 trouncing of Miami. McGregor, who owns the team lead with 31 points this season, led the BC attack by contributing on each goal: two she scored herself and one she assisted.
The Eagles scored early and often against the Big East point-leading Hurricanes. Just four minutes into the game, McGregor blasted a rebound off the cross bar from fellow sophomore Lindsey McArdle into the back of the net.
It took BC just nine minutes more to double its lead, when senior Beth Totman took a McGregor pass and deposited it into the far side of the net, giving her 11 on the season. The goal makes her the team's second-leading scorer behind McGregor.
The Eagles ended their scoring in the 23rd minute when Totman returned the favor and set up McGregor for her 13th goal of the season.
The two wins put the Eagles at 13-2-2 and 3-2-1 in the Big East, which places them in prime position for one of the top spots in the Big East Tournament, as well as a good seed in the NCAA Tournament taking place in a little over two weeks.
The Eagles hope to continue their four-game winning streak when they finish their regular season.
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