Boston College heads into its Week 3 game against Maine with a fresh win in its pocket, but Mason McKenzie isn’t letting anyone in the building get too far ahead of themselves.
The Eagles beat Rutgers to pick up their first victory of the season, and the mood around the program has certainly lifted. Still, McKenzie made it clear that one good result doesn’t change the bigger picture.
“The energy is always higher after a win,” McKenzie said. “So I think it’s just, we have to do a good job of staying focused at times, too.
Like, we won one game. We’re not anything special yet.
So we just got to go out there and still work, and then good things will happen as well.”
That mindset carries extra weight this week with Maine on the schedule. BC is a heavy favorite over the FCS program, and ESPN’s matchup predictor gives the Eagles a 96.9 percent chance to win, while Maine sits at 3.1 percent.
McKenzie, though, pushed back hard against the idea that the Black Bears should be brushed aside.
“There’s no reason to sleep on anybody,” McKenzie said. “I know a lot of guys on our team are from the FCS.
Like Anthony Palano played at South Dakota State. He’s an FCS guy, and now he’s one of the best players on our team.
So, I mean, there’s a lot of guys on this team that have come from that level and are good contributors on the team.”
“I think that is just an eye opener to not really take anybody for granted, because you never know what could happen, and there’s a lot of good football players everywhere.”
Bill O’Brien has been hammering the same point all week. Boston College only gets 12 guaranteed chances to make the work count, and he’s made it clear that none of them can be treated lightly.
“This is Boston College, so we need to understand that every opportunity [is important],” O’Brien said. “It was a great job last Friday, but we only got 12, so every game is vitally important to us.
No game is any more important than any other game. You can say, ‘Oh, he’s full of it on that.’
I don’t really care what you say. Every single game at BC is very, very important.”
“It’s not like baseball where there’s 162 games, or NBA basketball where there’s 82 games. Only 12 guaranteed opportunities. So there should be no problem being ready to play on Saturday.”
That’s the tone inside the program right now: keep it at 1-0, keep it locked in, and don’t let the opponent’s label change the approach. Safety Carter Davis echoed that same mentality, saying the wins all count the same whether they come in a row or not.
“Every win is big,” Davis said. “It don’t matter if it’s back-to-back, one at a time, like, it doesn’t matter.
Like every win is big. We want to collect our wins.
We stay here in a race to prove it to ourselves, and to prove to ourselves that we are who we are and who we want to be. And just taking it one day at a time.
Each win is counted the same.”
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