Boston College will open up its season in a non-traditional way: with the ACC moving to 20 games and the advent of the ACC Network, seven conference showdowns will be played in the first two days of the 2019-20 campaign. The Eagles are included, facing Wake Forest at home Nov. 6.
After that, it’s back to the normal non-conference slate, with three power-conference opponents and some notable mid-major foes on the docket.
The out-of-conference schedule doesn’t look very daunting, with the major-conference counterparts largely not poised for big years. Northwestern comes to Chestnut Hill on Dec. 3 as part of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge, and the Wildcats are primed for the Big Ten basement. BC will face California, which went 8-23 in the 2018-19 season and was debated as one of the worst major-conference teams ever a season ago, on Dec. 21 to close it’s non-conference as part of the first-ever Al Attles Classic at the Chase Center in San Francisco.
BC’s final power-conference challenge will come from DePaul, which went 19-17 and was runner-up in the CBI last year. The Blue Demons have finished last or tied for last in the Big East the last three seasons and in nine of the last 11 years and will need help from incoming transfers to help improve of a campaign with some positives despite another appearances at the conference’s bottom.
South Florida, the winners of the 2019 CBI, feature as one of the other highlights on the Boston College slate. The Eagles will head south to battle the Bulls on Nov. 10, the team’s first non-conference game of the year. BC will also get two 2019 NCAA Tournament teams from mid-major conferences at home, Belmont and Saint Louis, on Nov. 16 and 27, respectively, which will be going through transitions of their own this winter.
All in all, this is a pretty weak list of opponents, but Boston College is not in a position to schedule the nation’s best right now. The Eagles went 14-17 (5-13) last season, a step back from its above-.500 overall record and 7-11 ACC mark for the 2017-18 year. It’s more important for the squad to get experience and confidence under its belt first, then an increase in opposition quality can come.
