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NEWTON, Mass. -- If Boston College were to have any chance of upsetting No. 8 Florida State on Saturday, coach Steve Addazio knew they needed to slow the game down.

The Seminoles’ offense was too good, with too many weapons, for the Eagles to win a shootout. To have a shot at the upset, BC needed to turn it into a physical, knock-down, drag-out affair.

And through the end of the first quarter, the home team was successful beyond its fans’ wildest dreams. The Eagles were dominating on both lines of scrimmage, getting great push on offense and breaking into the backfield on defense.

“I talked to you earlier in the week and I said every play works if you execute,” BC right tackle and co-captain Ian White said. “If you look at the first half, we executed our plays and ran the ball physically like we wanted to do. We had the game where we wanted it.”

The defense forced FSU to go three-and-out on its first possession, Kevin Pierre-Louis knocking down a Jameis Winston pass at the line of scrimmage, Spenser Rositano breaking up another pass and Kaleb Ramsey sacking Winston on third-and-10.

Then it was the offense’s turn.

Andre Williams & Co. took great advantage of their first possession, methodically running the ball down the field with power formations often including three tight ends and a fullback. And when they got to the doorstep, with a third-and-2 at the FSU 6-yard line, offensive coordinator Ryan Day dialed up play-action.

Chase Rettig faked the handoff to Williams, then looked for fullback Jake Sinkovec in the right flat. Sinkovec was covered, so Rettig looked back across the field and found tight end C.J. Parsons in the left side of the end zone for a touchdown.

But the Eagles weren’t able to sustain their physical dominance beyond the first quarter, which ended with them up 14-3. Late in the second quarter, the tide turned when FSU scored two touchdowns in the last 1:49.

The big plays, including a 56-yard TD pass from Winston to Rashad Greene and a 55-yard TD pass from Winston to Kenny Shaw, doomed the Eagles.

Asked what he would take away from the 48-34 loss, Addazio was blunt.

“That’s what’s so important in this message: I told them, ‘Don’t walk out of here with a smile on your face, thinking you got some moral victory. Because you didn’t. We lost the game,'" he said. “Bottle the feeling of what it takes to win, with the effort and the intensity and with laying it all on the line and with no guarantee that success is going to follow it. Bottle that, and you’ll win your share of games. That’s what we need to hang on to.

“Don’t let people tell you, ‘Oh boy, you played Florida State nose up.’ Who cares? We didn’t come out there to play them nose up. I heard that crap early in the media. People asking me about, ‘What are you gonna do to keep it close?’ I had all I could do not to explode. What do you think, you coach or play to keep it close? What are you talking about here? You play to win.

“We played that game physically enough to win it. We let up too many big plays and that cost us a football game. And it didn’t have to happen. I don’t care who the heck we played.”

Offense hits high

While it will probably get lost some in the end result, the BC offense had its biggest output of the season on Saturday.

“I thought we executed a great game plan offensively,” Addazio said. “We played a really outstanding team. We played one of the best defenses in the country and we had probably our, really, best offensive day in terms of the whole nine yards.”

The Eagles finished with 397 yards of total offense, 200 yards rushing and 197 passing. A couple of BC players set personal marks in the loss.

Williams had 28 carries for 149 yards, going more than 2,000 rushing yards for his career. His 2,067 yards is good for 13th all-time in BC history.

His quarterback also set a mark, Rettig establishing a career high with four touchdown passes. The senior finished 18-for-28 for 197 yards and the four TDs. He also had two interceptions, including a pass intended for Alex Amidon that instead ended up in the arms of P.J. Williams for a 20-yard pick-six.

Rettig hit C.J. Parsons for 6- and 17-yard TDs -- the first two of Parsons’ career -- both times throwing back across the formation to find the tight end. He also hit fullback Jake Sinkovec for a 3-yard score and found Myles Willis running free up the BC sideline for a 52-yard TD.

The TD catch was the first of Willis’ career. The true freshman finished with three catches for 65 yards, three carries for 6 yards and two kick returns for 89 yards, including a 71-yard return to set up a field goal.

Abdesmad injured

Junior defensive tackle Mehdi Abdesmad suffered a left leg injury early in the third quarter and left the game. He didn’t return, replaced on the line by Brian Mihalik.

“That might be one of the worst things, to see one of your teammates have to leave the field because he’s hurt,” defensive end Kasim Edebali said. “Mehdi just looked at us and said, ‘Let’s go, do this.’ That was another boost. That just got my heart fired up. I had to play for him, everybody had to play for him. We’re the BC defense, that’s what we’re about.”

Prior to the injury, Abdesmad had three tackles and a sack. He also very nearly prevented Winston’s miraculous, 55-yard touchdown as time expired in the first half, just missing the quarterback on a free rush up the middle.

Addazio said he didn’t have an update on Abdesmad after the game but said he was concerned and that losing the 6-foot-7, 278-pounder would be a major hit to the defense.

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.

NEWTON, Mass. -- Many things go into deciding the outcome of a college football game.

There are carefully crafted game plans going in and in-game adjustments once the rubber hits the turf. There are things the teams can control (effort, execution) and things they can’t (bad bounces, questionable calls by officials).

And sometimes, there are just miraculous plays made by tremendous players.

Unfortunately for the Eagles, Jameis Winston is a tremendous player. And he made a truly miraculous (Eagles fans, read: disastrous) play to put No. 8 Florida State on top for good Saturday afternoon.

“It was devastating giving up that big play before the half,” BC coach Steve Addazio said after the 48-34 loss. “We had that kid on the ground.”

The BC offense, playing it safe, went three-and-out in its final possession of the first half, giving FSU the ball at its own 40 with no timeouts and 50 seconds to go 'til halftime. Winston was sacked on the first play, losing nine yards when Kasim Edebali came around the right end of the line and brought him to the ground.

Devonta Freeman picked up 14 yards on the next play, but the clock was ticking down. Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two.

It didn’t seem like Winston would be able to get another play off, but somehow he managed to get his offense set and took the shotgun snap with the clock at 1.

Immediately, the pocket collapsed around him. Mehdi Abdesmad came flying up the middle, but Winston saw him and expertly side-stepped the 6-foot-7, 278-pounder.

Backup linebacker Mike Strizak came around the left side and reached for the QB, but Winston slipped him with a shove of his right arm and stepped up and to the right to find space. His eyes darted downfield and found Kenny Shaw running up the right sideline, with a step on Spenser Rositano.

Winston stepped into a throw from the 41, letting it fly just before absorbing a big blow from linebacker Steven Daniels.

Shaw leaped to make the catch over Rositano’s outstretched arms, falling to the ground just inside the right pylon. Florida State’s sideline went berserk, and the air completely went out of an Alumni Stadium crowd that had been hoping for an upset after a two-touchdown first quarter for the hosts established an 11-point lead going into the second quarter.

“It is upsetting, but we’re in a football game and we’re playing a fast, athletic team that hits big plays,” Edebali said. “When that happens, all you gotta do is come back to the sideline or come back to the locker room, make the proper corrections and keep playing. If you get influenced by that, you shouldn’t be playing football. You gotta forget, you gotta keep playing, and you gotta keep staying motivated.”

Some teams would quit when hit with that kind of body blow, coming a second away from going into the locker room tied with an overwhelming favorite only to see a superior athlete make a spectacular play to give his team a seven-point lead.

To their credit, the Eagles didn’t quit.

Myles Willis returned the opening kickoff of the second half 71 yards, leading to a field goal. When Florida State responded with another scoring drive and then another, the Eagles kept fighting even though the results they were hoping for refused to surface.

“I thought our team played with a lot of pride, a lot of toughness and made plays,” Addazio said. “But I also told them that there’s no moral victories in football. And while I’m proud of their effort -- and I really am proud of their effort -- I want them to absorb that feeling of what it takes to compete with a top-eight team in the country.

“That’s what it’s supposed to be. That’s how you play. That what goes into major college football and winning. ... Feel that, bottle that and understand that and move that forward and then those wins will come.”

Florida State ended up with 489 yards of total offense, Winston providing 67 yards on the ground and 330 yards and four touchdowns through the air. Though BC sacked him four times, the redshirt freshman took care of the ball for the most part (his one interception coming on a deflection) and the Seminoles finished plus-one in takeaways.

“He’s an athletic kid. He makes good decisions. He’s fast,” Edebali said of Winston. “But that couldn’t change our game plan. We still tried to pressure him a lot, and we did that. But he got away a couple times, broke a couple tackles and hit the big plays. We’ve gotta make sure as a defense that can’t happen.”

Chase Rettig tried to rally the BC offense, but the senior’s four passing TDs (a career high) were offset by two interceptions, one returned for a touchdown, and the Eagles were never able to get closer than 24-20 in the second half.

There were a lot of things the Eagles didn’t do and a lot of things the Seminoles did do. Ultimately, a careful observer could point to many different plays as the tipping point.

But Winston’s great escape and rocket of a TD throw to Shaw -- the QB, in a veteran move, told reporters afterward his wideout made the play happen -- is sure to stand out.

“It was kinda painful to see,” said linebacker Kevin Pierre-Louis, on the sideline for the play, “because I saw the guys just hustling, grinding and trying to bring him down, and he just used his athleticism on that play and he was able to capitalize on that mistake by us.”

Winston made the play, and FSU delivered the knockout blow.

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.

NEWTON, Mass. -- Boston College put up a fight but was clearly out of its weight class as it lost 48-34 to visiting No. 8 Florida State at Alumni Stadium on Saturday.

How it happened: BC started strong, using a 14-point first quarter to take an 11-point lead over FSU. But the wheels came off right before the half, as the Seminoles scored two touchdowns in the final two minutes, including a 55-yard TD from Jameis Winston to Kenny Shaw as time expired.

The visitors never trailed again.

The letdown meant the Eagles wasted a 28-carry, 149-yard effort by Andre Williams.

What it means: The Eagles fall to 2-2 with the loss, 1-1 in the ACC. Florida State improves to 4-0, 2-0 in the ACC, and has won eight straight conference games dating to last season.

BC has lost five straight games against top 10 teams and 11 straight against Top 25 teams.

Up next: BC will host the Army Black Knights on Saturday at 1 p.m. Last season, Army won at home 34-31 after quarterback Trent Steelman ran for a 29-yard TD with 45 seconds left.

It was one of only two wins for Army in 2012.

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.

It might be football season, but thanks to an NCAA rule change, Steve Donahue and his college basketball coaching brethren can start working on the hardwood earlier than ever before.

The new rule states college hoops teams now can start practice 42 days before their first game, which for Boston College is Nov. 8. That means Donahue could get his Eagles on the court as soon as Friday.

There's plenty of work to be done before the season tips off at Providence.

ESPN Insider recently ranked the toughest nonconference schedules in college hoops for the 2013-14 season. BC came in at No. 4 in that exercise.

"This one shocked me, and I had to take a second look," ESPN Insider Jeff Goodman wrote. "However, there aren't a lot of cupcakes on the 13-game nonleague slate."

BC will play at Auburn, Harvard, Providence, Purdue and USC, and faces off with UConn, UMass and VCU on neutral courts.

After he heard the highlights of the Eagles' nonconference schedule at the Coaches vs. Cancer Tip-off Breakfast on Thursday morning to promote the Nov. 10 tripleheader at TD Garden -- with BC taking on UMass, BU taking on Northeastern and Harvard taking on Holy Cross -- new Celtics coach (and former Butler coach) Brad Stevens had to weigh in.

"Most of these guys need to fire the guys that are scheduling their games," he joked. "Just an FYI. Steve, I don't know about that schedule. I thought you were gonna keep going, Steve. I was like, 'Goll-y, what are you doing?'"

Donahue was asked about his team's stiff nonleague slate.

"I believe a team with an overall losing record can make the NCAA tournament now," he said. "Now that sounds crazy, but with these mega-conferences now ... "

Donahue believes some of the beefed-up conferences will be so brutal that a strong nonconference performance might be enough to boost a team with a so-so conference record into the postseason.

"When a 9-7 Boise State from the Mountain West makes the NCAA tournament and an 11-7 Virginia from the ACC doesn't, I think in my position, I gotta wake up," Donahue said. "And that's what we did. We analyzed really our schedule. ... I don't want to be 12-1 [in the nonconference] with an RPI in triple digits and then have to win 13 games in the ACC."

And then there's the entertainment factor, which can't be dismissed.

"The other reason for me is I want to attract as many teams as we can that will excite our fan base," the BC coach said.

It's not like the rest of the Eagles' schedule is getting any easier, as Goodman noted Thursday morning.

"You've got [to be], I think, finally maybe going into the year feeling comfortable with what you have in terms of talent and depth," Goodman, the event emcee, said. "And now the ACC rewards you by adding Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame. Three perennial top-25 programs."

"Louisville next year," Donahue added.

"Louisville next year," Goodman agreed, as the audience laughed, "but we won't get ahead of ourselves."

"It's in my mind, trust me," Donahue said, drawing more laughs.

"I thought you guys take it one day at a time, one game at a time?" Goodman joked.

"I try," Donahue said.

It's just that in college basketball these days, it's not always possible to focus on only the here and now. After all, there's a lot to look forward to.

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.

His team banged up, the momentum of a 2-0 start blunted by a 35-7 loss to USC in Los Angeles this past weekend, Boston College coach Steve Addazio said this bye week couldn’t have come at a better time for the Eagles.

“We're disappointed,” Addazio said Wednesday, according to a transcript of his weekly ACC conference call with reporters. “We felt like we could have played better for sure, and our focus right now in the bye week is to concentrate on fundamentals, concentrate on really being exact in our execution and really fitting exactly to our personnel the best that we can, maximizing ourselves on both sides of the ball.

“We're getting ready to play a great Florida State team that's very, very talented and will be a great challenge for us. But certainly those challenges are what drive you.”

BC (2-1, 1-0 ACC) struggled on both sides of the ball against the Trojans, giving up 521 yards of total offense while mustering only 184. With only 7 points against USC, BC’s scoring average fell from 24 points per game after Week 2 to 18.3 PPG, which is good for 106th nationally.

“We didn't really have a great opportunity to get going offensively,” Addazio said. “We had some moments, but we really only had 21 snaps in the first half, and our average starting position for the game was around the 21-yard line, so it was quite a bit of the long field.

“On defense we struggled getting off the field and didn't feel like we played great as a team, complementing each other, but there were moments there that you saw some more of the progress. But when you play a good team, you have to play much more consistently and execute at a much higher level against a very, very talented team, especially on the road in California.”

The Eagles weren’t able to do that, and now that they have picked through the USC game film their job is to find a way to turn negatives into positives in the future.

With the first of two open dates this season on Saturday, Addazio and the Eagles can spend extra time preparing for their next opponent, No. 8 Florida State. The 2-0 Seminoles host FCS foe Bethune-Cookman at Doak Campbell Stadium on Saturday (6 p.m. ET).

The Eagles’ plan for the week is designed to give the team a head start on prepping for the Seminoles’ visit.

“We started today,” Addazio said Wednesday. “We'll be working tomorrow, and then Friday is like a game-week Tuesday for us. We wanted to have a really good, physical, hard-nosed, first-second down, full-padded, go-get-it deal on Friday, so that puts us one day up.”

And while he said the Eagles will have an added focus on fundamentals this week, Addazio made it clear they won’t only be working on themselves.

“We're working on Florida State,” Addazio said, “but what we're paying attention to is our fundamentals and our execution level in practice, and really getting a higher level of attention to detail in practice because I am just a big believer that what you see on that practice field is ultimately what you'll see on Saturday.

“When you play really talented teams, the mistakes that you make get magnified, and they get hidden sometimes when a team is a matchup team. But when a team has got great talent, those same mistakes, they come at you like gangbusters. We've got to eliminate those errors, whether they be mental or whether they be physical. We've got to play at a much higher level of execution because the margin for error is very, very small.”

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.

Samantha Ponder and David Pollock preview the matchup between USC and Boston College (Saturday, 3 p.m. ET).

The Eagles’ wake-up call for Tuesday’s practice was early -- before 6 a.m. early.

But at least one Boston College (2-0, 1-0 ACC) player was up before then, ready to get out onto the practice field to prepare for USC (1-1, 0-1 Pac-12).

Ian White could tell Chase Rettig is fired up for this week, a homecoming for the Sierra Madre, Calif., native, when he looked at his phone and saw a message from the quarterback.

“Wake-up was at like 5:45 or something like that and at 5:20 I get a text from Chase, ‘Let’s go boys, this is our week. This is when we’ve really gotta show ourselves,’” White said after practice on Wednesday. “He’s really excited for this game. He’s always that type of leader, he’ll shoot texts and stuff like that. But this was 40 minutes before wake-up at 5 in the morning.

“He was ready to go.”

While he didn’t display much emotion in his post-practice huddle with reporters Wednesday, Rettig said he’s looking forward to playing in Los Angeles.

“It’ll be fun,” he said. “I grew up going to USC games and UCLA games. So it’ll be fun to go back home and see some family and my family will be able to see me play live.”

BC coach Steve Addazio said there’s no doubt Rettig has “a burn inside” this week.

“Who wouldn't?” the coach said on his weekly ACC conference call. “You're going home to play. I think any competitor has that feeling. So I know he does, and, yes, I can see it in his eyes. He's still going to keep his personality, [so] he's not over the top. But I can't imagine there is a more excited guy getting on that plane tomorrow.”

Though some players going home to play might find themselves facing a favorite team from childhood, that’s not the case with Rettig.

“I was just an Oregon State fan growing up,” the 6-foot-3, 206-pound signal-caller said. “My mom was a Beaver, so that’s who I rooted for.”

Rettig said USC coach Lane Kiffin recruited him while he was at Tennessee, but soon after the offer came from the Volunteers the QB committed to BC. He hasn’t spent much time on it since, and wasn’t interested in reminiscing about the recruiting process on Wednesday.

There’s too much work to do.

USC fell out of the AP Top 25 after a shocking 10-7 home loss to Washington State, but the Trojans gave up only 222 yards of total offense and didn’t allow an offensive touchdown (the Cougars kicked a field goal and scored on a 70-yard interception return for a TD).

Meanwhile, new coordinator Clancy Pendergast’s D leads the nation in rushing defense by allowing just 15 yards per game. The Trojans gave up only 7 yards on 22 attempts to the Cougars.

Coming off a week when lead back Andre Williams piled up 35 carries for 204 yards, BC will no doubt attempt to test that strength. But Ryan Day won’t be stubborn, and if he needs to call more on Rettig he’s shown he will do so.

In the opener against Villanova, Rettig threw 30 times, completing 23 passes for 285 yards and two TDs. He threw just 14 passes in Week 2, with the run game hammering away at the Wake Forest defense.

While USC has been dominant against the run game, it has been just OK against the passing game. The Trojans rank 60th in the country in passing defense, giving up 211.5 yards a game through the first two weeks.

Addazio expects Rettig to play well versus USC.

“Obviously he has to play a great game on Saturday,” he said. “He knows it. Your quarterback is the guy. He's got to play a great game. He's got to get the ball out of his hands and be efficient, and on top of what he's doing and be a leader. I think he'll be all of those things.”

One thing USC does very well is pressure the quarterback. The Trojans lead the country with 11 sacks in their first two games, with three players with two or more sacks already (George Uko with three, and Morgan Breslin and Leonard Williams with two).

If Rettig is able to find Alex Amidon, Spiffy Evans or Dan Crimmins for big gains through the air Saturday, some USC fans -- already grumbling because of the unsettled QB situation, though Kiffin did name Cody Kessler the starter this week, and unusually meek offensive output (18.5 PPG, down from 32.1 PPG in 2012) to date -- might wonder aloud why the Trojans can’t get guys like the San Clemente High grad.

Of course, if the hometown teams had put on a full-court press in recruiting back when Rettig was a four-star prospect ranked the No. 10 pocket passer in the Class of 2010, they might have been able to keep him home. But they didn’t, and he didn’t. The rest, as they say, is history.

Rettig comes home as a four-year starter at BC, and perhaps with a bit of a chip on his shoulder.

“It’s exciting to go back,” Rettig said. “I was kind of an under-recruited kid back home. It’s not like I wanted to go to school in California, per se, but obviously when you don’t get seen [during recruiting] and then you come back you just want good things to happen.”

The senior would like nothing better than to help his team win this game, on the road, against a top-tier college football program. And he swears that’s what he’s focused on, even though he’s going to play just 20-odd minutes from home.

“You can’t really look at it like, ‘Oh, you’re going back home. Oh, your whole family’s gonna be there,’” he said. “It’s all about the team and trying to put our team in the best position to be successful on the field.

“It’ll be fun to just be back, but the most important thing is just singing our fight song at the end of the game.”

For Rettig, clearly there’s no wake-up call required for this matchup.

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.

It’s all about resiliency.

When Boston College goes to Los Angeles to play USC on Saturday (3 p.m. ET on Pac-12 Network), it will be facing a top-tier football program in hostile territory.

Until a shocking 10-7 home loss to Washington State in Week 2, the Trojans (1-1, 0-1 Pac-12) were a Top 25 team (at No. 25). And while they aren’t ranked anymore, losing that status didn’t take away any of the talent Lane Kiffin and his staff have at their disposal.

The Trojans are first in the country in run defense (allowing just 15.0 yards per game) and in sacks (with 11) through two weeks. They have playmakers on both sides of the ball, including reigning Biletnikoff Award winner Marqise Lee at wide receiver and running back Tre Madden (16th nationally with 130 yards a game) on offense and defensive lineman George Uko (three sacks) and linebacker Morgan Breslin (two sacks) on defense.

“They’re just all the best recruits in the country at every position,” BC QB Chase Rettig said, referring to the Trojans’ D. “So they’ve got a lot of talent. The first two teams have kind of struggled moving the ball against them, so we have our game plan and we’re gonna try to execute it the best we can.”

BC doesn’t have the level of talent that USC does, so to overcome that gap the Eagles (2-0, 1-0 ACC) will rely on their hard-nosed approach. On their ability to battle, to bounce back up after getting knocked down and keep pushing forward.

“I think we need to go out and be who we are. Just go play really hard and be really gritty,” Addazio said in his weekly media session on Monday. “I told our team, ‘Let’s go out there are play as hard as we can play, get the game into the fourth quarter and go after the win.’”

The Eagles aren’t getting caught up in their opponent’s circumstances, aren’t concerned with Kiffin’s job security or with the debate over whether Max Wittek or Cody Kessler should be leading the Trojans’ scuffling offense (18.5 PPG in 2013 after 32.1 PPG in 2012). Addazio was asked if he’d rather not be facing a team after a big upset, when it’ll be looking for a bounce-back win.

“You know, you do think about all of those things,” he said. “Like you do, I do. But sometimes then I say to myself, you know what? Who knows? I don’t walk in those shoes. Here’s what I do know, I try to work on the knowns.

“The knowns are they’re as talented a football team as I’ve seen in a long time. … That football team right there? Wow. That’s all I can tell you. Wow.”

After watching the tape of USC’s first two games, Addazio said he thought the Trojans’ opponents really competed.

“I think that you really have to have that mindset,” he said. “To go out there, you’ve gotta just kinda have a resiliency about you and just keep hammering away. You’ve gotta play good on defense and against this great defense that they have you’ve gotta kinda be resilient and realize that you’ve gotta get this thing into the fourth quarter to give yourself a chance to win.”

The Eagles can’t afford to fall behind, because they won’t be able to catch up against the Trojans’ D, and they’ll have to be creative on offense to move the chains.

It’s been just about impossible to run against USC so far this season, with just five first downs allowed rushing in two games. But that doesn’t mean offensive coordinator Ryan Day won’t try to see if Andre Williams can have another big day running the football after he managed 204 yards against Wake Forest.

“We just want to try to consume clock and get our defense off the field and give them a chance to rest,” Rettig said of the Eagles’ power run game. “Obviously Andre running hard and breaking tackles, that’ll be a major factor in it. Hopefully we can pick up a lot of first downs and continue to work the clock.”

The Eagles have put a renewed focus on pass protection this week, after giving up three sacks to Wake Forest in Week 2.

“If we screw something up in the game, we spend a little more time on it out here,” right tackle Ian White said on Shea Field after practice Wednesday. “Running the ball is all about getting looks and then just being nasty. Once you understand the looks, it’s all mental and it’s all toughness. In the pass game, we have to spend a little bit more time.

“A couple of the sacks, we’d have guys engaged and then just in our minds we click, like, ‘That’s a side shot,’ like, ‘We can crush them there,’ and then it knocks them off the block for the sack kind of thing. So it’s kind of finding that balance between you want to hit the guy as hard as you can but also your job is just to keep him off the quarterback so use good technique.”

White, a fifth-year senior co-captain, said the Eagles have had a good week of practice. On Wednesday, they worked with a noise simulator blaring to try to recreate the loud atmosphere they’ll encounter in the Coliseum.

“Already by the end, I was so sick of it,” White said of listening to the USC fight song. “I would rather just hear crowd noise. To listen to their stuff is a little extra motivation.”

Not that they needed that to push them.

“You can definitely see the extra fire from going to play at USC,” White said. “Especially on the offense. I mean, you hear about their offensive struggles but their defense is an NFL defense. I mean, they run an NFL scheme, they have NFL players, they’re gonna look pretty getting off the bus, so you can see the extra fire under us to really get in gear.”

The Eagles will need all the horsepower, and will power, they can muster to come out of the Coliseum with a win.

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.

There are going to be times this season when BC’s aggressive style on D gets it burned.

But when Wake Forest QB Tanner Price found Michael Campanaro running up the middle of the field, down the left hash marks, for a 30-yard touchdown, it wasn’t because the Eagles had been too aggressive. Campanaro, an all-ACC wideout, simply beat Bryce Jones on the route and got inside position in the one-on-one matchup.

“We’ll go back to the film and see what happened, what I could’ve done better,” Jones said of the play after the game, “but it was a good ball and he made a good catch. … He’s a good player, so things are gonna happen.”

“We’ve got some things we want to tighten up on defense,” Eagles coach Steve Addazio said after the 24-10 win over Wake Forest on Friday night. “So every once in awhile, because we’re so multiple, we have some blown assignments and some guys all of a sudden get behind us deep. So we’re a work in progress with that too, now.

“I told you that from day one: When you do what we do, you’re gonna have some guys that are gonna hit you deep sometimes. We’ve had that happen. And we just roll. Just roll with it.”

Jones certainly rolled with it on Friday night. The Campanaro touchdown pulled Wake Forest even on the scoreboard, at 7-all. But after Chase Rettig and the offense drove for a Nate Freese field goal, Jones got a shot at redeeming himself.

“We had to make a play, especially after the catch that Campanaro had on me,” Jones said.

With time ticking down in the first quarter, Price tried a pitch around the left side of the line but the ball bounced away. Jones dove into the fray, and came up with the ball -- but without his helmet -- to give BC possession at the Wake 22-yard line.

Rettig converted the turnover into points immediately, stepping up in the pocket to elude the Wake rush and finding Spiffy Evans running across the field from left to right for the 22-yard TD.

And when Price tried to bring his team back later in the quarter, hitting Campanaro for 16 and 19 yards on consecutive plays, Jones made his presence known again. Price tried to hit Campanaro again on the next play, but the 6-foot-1, 166-pound sophomore from University Heights, Ohio, stepped in front of the pass for the interception, his second in two games this season.

“One of the things of playing defensive back and that the coaches always say, ‘You’ve gotta play the next play,’” Jones said. “So that’s what I did. I just put it behind me and was fortunate enough to have the fumble recovery, come back and on Campanaro have an interception and just make a tackle for a loss.

“It’s just the coaches putting me in the right place at the right time to be able to make a play for the team.”

Through two weeks, the BC defense has allowed only two scores in five opponent trips into the red zone. Villanova managed one touchdown in three red zone trips, while Wake Forest could produce only a field goal in two red zone trips.

With two fumble recoveries and an interception against Wake Forest as opposed to one interception (on a failed flea-flicker) for the Eagles, BC continued its strong start in turnover margin. Addazio’s crew has produced seven turnovers (three fumbles and four interceptions) and committed only two (a fumble in the Villanova game and the INT in the Wake game), for a turnover margin of 2.50 per game.

That’s tied for seventh nationally and second in the ACC (behind Georgia Tech, which has played only one game).

And with six sacks through their first two games in 2013, the Eagles have already tied their season total from 2012. The half-dozen quarterback drops are good for a tie for 15th nationally and fourth in the ACC.

Jones said the aggressive mentality brought in by Addazio and defensive coordinator Don Brown and the attention to detail paid by all the coaches has really helped the Eagles.

“One thing we talk about is organized chaos,” Jones said. “We’re moving fast and we’re all buying into it, so it all works out. We’re a lot more aggressive, as you can see with these games.”

“Our program, we have a philosophy,” Addazio said. “We start with defense, we try to put our best players on defense, and that is the starting point of the peg of our program. And then we build it. … That’s our philosophy. It’s by design.”

Of course, it helps when players like Jones -- who played in all 12 games as a freshman last season, with just 15 tackles to show for it -- show they’re capable of both making plays and, maybe more importantly, rolling with the consequences of that philosophy.

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.

Two weeks into the Steve Addazio era, and already Boston College has matched its win total (two) from the last year of the Frank Spaziani era.

And while he was careful to caution that there’s still a long way to go, Addazio couldn’t help but be pleased with what he’s seen so far from his Eagles (2-0, 1-0 ACC).

“The kids are playing hard, the kids are playing together like a team, they’re fighting hard. They’re doing a lot of good things for Week 2,” he said after the 24-10 win over Wake Forest on Friday night. “I thought our team really progressed from Week 1, and that’s ultimately the goal is to get better each week. We’ve got a lot of football ahead of us.

“We’ve got a big game this week and we’ve got a chance to fight to be 3-0, and that’s all you can ask for.”

Week 3 brings the first road trip of the season for BC, with the Eagles flying to Southern California to take on USC (1-1, 0-1 Pac-12).

The Trojans fell out of the AP Top 25 after an unsightly 10-7 home loss to Washington State on Saturday, but Lane Kiffin & Co. remain the toughest test to date for BC.

“We’re not naive, we’ve got a lot ahead of us right now,” Addazio said. “We’ve got a really awfully tough game. We’re flying out to California on Thursday, we’re playing a great football program on the road. And that’s another learning opportunity for our team -- we’ve gotta go on the road together for the first time. And not just on the road, but across the country.”

Going from the sometimes-shaky 24-14 win over FCS Villanova to the at-times-dominant 24-10 win over Wake Forest, the Eagles’ new head coach saw a lot he liked.

“I thought we took a step forward from learning how to prepare like a big-time football team,” Addazio said. “I thought we took a step forward [because] we came out with more confidence and [didn’t] wait for someone else to make a play. And guys had to stand up and be accountable. Those are all really important pieces in the building of everything right now.”

The Trojans’ defense has produced 11 sacks through two games, best in the nation. Junior defensive lineman George Uko leads USC with three sacks, and linebacker Morgan Breslin and defensive lineman Leonard Williams each have two sacks.

With that in mind, protecting quarterback Chase Rettig will likely be a key topic in Chestnut Hill this week. Especially after the offensive line had a few hiccups against Wake Forest in Week 2, giving up three sacks and losing left tackle Matt Patchan to a hip injury in the second half.

“Are there things we need to get better at?” Addazio said postgame. “Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know why our protection buckled today, but it did. I thought we had great play-action but I thought our drop-back game … we just didn’t look clean in there. That’s something I want to continue to work on.”

Rettig threw only 14 passes on Friday night, going 7-for-14 for 123 yards with two touchdowns and an interception, as the Eagles focused on running the ball in an attempt to control the clock and wear down the Demon Deacons’ defense. Andre Williams, coming off a week without practice as he nursed a hamstring injury and a cold, carried the ball 35 times for a career-high 204 yards and a touchdown in the win.

It was the fewest passing attempts for Rettig since 2011, when he had 13 against NC State and 12 against Maryland. In 2012, Rettig never had fewer than 29 passing attempts.

But the senior didn’t mind ceding the spotlight to Williams, choosing to instead focus on the result for BC.

“It’s awesome to be 2-0,” Rettig said. “It just is a credit to our hard work. We’ve just gotta continue to work really hard. We’re gonna get out of it what we put in.

“The best thing about being 2-0, our coaches always tell us, is we’ve got a chance to be 3-0.”

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.

NEWTON, Mass. -- Andre Williams was in the open field, rumbling up the right sideline late in the third quarter with the Eagles up 17-7 when he saw a Wake Forest defensive back cutting off his path to the end zone.

He could’ve veered out of bounds, content to take his 15-plus yards and a first down inside the red zone. Instead, Williams lowered his shoulder and delivered a big blow.

“It was intentional,” Williams said of the hit he dished out on the play. “I never want to be the type of back that is gonna run out of bounds. I always want to punish the DBs because the next play, it could be play-action and that DB is a little fazed and [Alex] Amidon will make a big play.

“I’m a big running back, I’m 230 pounds, and I just have to be true to myself and realize that I can punish people, I can wear down the defense, and that’s just the role I’m gonna embrace.”

While the hit was impressive, that’s only a part of what he produced in BC’s 24-10 win on Friday night. Williams carried the ball 35 times for a career-high 204 yards and a touchdown (which he produced two plays after delivering that blow in the third quarter).

And he did it all after not practicing during the short week.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that the senior tailback had to leave last week’s game against Villanova with a hamstring strain, as the preparation for Wake Forest got underway, the 6-foot, 227-pounder found himself under the weather with a chest cold, too.

Boston College coach Steve Addazio revealed after the game that the Eagles held him out of practice this week, in hopes that the hamstring would heal and the cold would dissipate enough to allow him to play against the Demon Deacons.

They’re glad now that they did.

“Andre ran really hard,” Addazio said. “And that was important. Andre knew that it was important for him to come to this game and get on that field and overcome the hamstring strain that he had and have the night that he had. He needed to do that. And he did it, to his credit, he did it. That was important, because the team was counting on him.”

The Eagles finished with 314 yards of total offense, meaning Williams alone accounted for almost two-thirds of the total.

“I thought our offense really punched hard and really wore down their defense and had a really great, critical last drive to just keep moving the chains,” Addazio said.

With BC leading 24-10 and just more than five minutes to go in the game, the Eagles got the ball back. Their strategy wasn’t hard to figure out on that final drive, as Williams got the ball eight straight plays, grinding out yards and letting time tick off the clock.

“That’s the beautiful thing about having a run game, is that you can do that,” Addazio said. “The run game is a funny thing. It’s not something that you can just all of a sudden show up and think you’re gonna have a run game. Sometimes it can be a little maddening. When you’re not hitting it when you want to hit it right. But you keep pounding at the rock, pounding at the rock and the rock cracked.”

After it was over and the Eagles had moved to 2-0 for the first time since 2010 and matched their win total from all of 2012, Williams was asked if this was his most satisfying game.

The tailback hesitated before answering.

“I don’t know if it’s the most satisfying game, because I’m sure there’s a lot of football left to be played,” he said. “And the next one is gonna be sweeter when we’re 3-0.”

True to form, Williams wasn’t thinking that enough’s enough. He wants more.

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.

NEWTON, Mass. -- It was a pivotal moment.

The Eagles were pinned deep in their own territory after Wake Forest nose guard Nikita Whitlock blocked a Nate Freese punt and Brandon Chubb recovered the ball at the BC 3-yard line with 52 seconds to go in the half.

The Eagles had built a 17-7 lead, mostly by taking advantage of Wake Forest's mistakes. Now the defense had to keep Tanner Price & Co. out of the end zone and hold them to three points to try to regain some of the momentum that they’d built earlier in the evening.

As Wake Forest lined up, the noise level in Alumni Stadium built up higher and higher.

Don Brown’s defense stopped Josh Harris at the 1 on first down, then stood him up for no gain on second down. On third down, Price looked to pass and had a wideout open in the back of the end zone but wasn’t able to get it to him, skipping it in as Kasim Edebali came flying at him in the backfield.

That made it fourth-and-goal from the 1, and Wake Forest coach Jim Grobe had a decision to make. Take the field goal and make it a one-score game, or go for the touchdown. He decided to go for the end zone.

BC stacked the line of scrimmage and dug in. The fans got loud. And while Wake Forest had been full of tricks all night, there were none coming on this play. Price handed it off to Harris, who tried to stuff it up the middle. But Mehdi Abdesmad met him in the backfield and slowed him down enough for his teammates to join in and stand him up for no gain.

The Eagles took over on downs, preserved the lead and took back momentum for the second half.

“I was proud of the way our defense played,” BC head coach Steve Addazio said after the 24-10 win. “They held that unbelievable goal-line stand, which was really incredibly important for us, obviously. Played real strong all night.”

Edebali said the pumped-up crowd, announced at 32,465, helped fuel the defense for that critical series.

“It was amazing,” the fifth-year senior captain said. “It was a Friday night game, and the student section was wild. I think the energy that was going on in the stadium went over us. We were creating energy the whole game, we played really tough and physical. And then got after them.

“We executed a little bit better on the goal line. We took a lot of energy and momentum that was created throughout the whole game [and used it] on that goal-line stand.”

No one-trick birds of prey, the Eagles made another goal-line stand later in the game, holding the Demon Deacons to a field goal after they had first-and-goal from the BC 4 in the fourth quarter.

But it was that first stand that was most crucial.

“When we blocked the punt at the end of the half, we’ve got to get that in,” Grobe told reporters after the game. “We’ve got to have a better mentality when we’re down there -- and that’s us as coaches, that’s not the kids. We’ve just got to do the things that we need to do down in the red zone, especially short-yardage stuff.”

For the game, the Eagles held the Demon Deacons to just 246 yards of total offense and 10 points. They forced three turnovers (though Price helped, with two of them coming on fumbles from wayward pitches) and produced two sacks (allowing them to tie their season total of six from 2012 in the first two weeks of 2013).

“Our plan to win starts with playing great defense,” Addazio said. “You want to win, you want to build your program, you’ve gotta play great defense. You’ve gotta play great defense and you’ve gotta have a run game.”

The Eagles did that, too, on Friday night. Senior tailback Andre Williams had a career-high 204 yards rushing on 35 carries.

“You play great defense when you complement your defense,” Addazio said. “One of the good things I think that we’re doing, people say ‘Oh, you run the ball.’ Don Brown’s sitting there at the end of the game saying, ‘I love what we do.’ Because our offense complements your defense.”

With the win, BC starts the season 2-0 for the first time since 2010, when the Eagles opened with wins over Weber State and Kent State. It’s also the first time the Eagles have won their ACC opener since 2007, when they beat Wake Forest to open the season.

While they’ll celebrate the win this weekend, the Eagles aren’t close to overconfident. They know it’s early. They know they have a stiff test awaiting them next week, when they fly to Southern California to take on No. 25 USC.

“I’m proud of the fact of where we are,” Addazio said. “We’re 2-0 and that’s great. That’s great. We’re fighting, we’re scratching, we’re clawing. And that’s fantastic, but we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

But after matching their win total from 2012 in the first two weeks of the 2013 season, fighting through adversity to come out on top in both weeks, the Eagles seem to be taking on the personality of their new coaching staff, led by Addazio. They’re fighting hard.

And that can only be a good sign for the rest of the season, when the level of play and caliber of opponent picks up.

“I thought the resounding thing here was that we played hard, we played physical, we played like a team,” Addazio said. “When one was down, the other was up. We complemented each other. Our kids had great resilience and great will, which I think is critically important. As important as anything right now.”

In the pivotal moments of this young season, Addazio’s Eagles have passed their tests with flying colors.

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.

NEWTON, Mass. -- Boston College improved to 2-0 on the young season with a 24-10 win in its Atlantic Coast Conference opener against visiting Wake Forest.

How it happened: It would be hard to imagine a better start for the Eagles.

After winning the coin toss, head coach Steve Addazio decided to defer to the second half. Then on Wake Forest’s second play from scrimmage Josh Harris couldn’t handle Tanner Price’s pitch and the ball squirted away, and Spenser Rositano fell on it.

That gave BC the ball at the Wake Forest 27-yard line. Andre Williams got the ball on first down, picking up a yard. On second down, Chase Rettig faked the handoff to Williams, spun quickly and hit Alex Amidon on the left side of the line on a wide receiver screen.

Amidon used blocks from Dan Crimmins and Spiffy Evans to scamper around the left end and up the sideline for a 26-yard score. The drive took all of 29 seconds.

And while Wake Forest came back to tie the score at 7, the BC defense made two big goal-line stands and its offense scored the next 17 points to open up a lead the Eagles wouldn’t relinquish.

What it means: BC has won its first two games for the first time since 2010, when it started 2-0 with wins against Weber State and Kent State.

The Eagles won their ACC opener for the first time since 2007, that win also coming against Wake Forest.

Up next: The Eagles hit the road for the first time in 2013, traveling across the country to play No. 25 USC (3 p.m. ET on Pac-12 Network) in the Los Angeles Coliseum in Week 3.

Lane Kiffin and the Trojans opened the season with a 30-13 win at Hawaii, and play Washington State at home on Saturday.

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.

NEWTON, Mass. -- If there was one thing that gave Boston College coach Steve Addazio agita in the run-up to the 2013 season, it was the lack of depth at key positions.

Though BC has some veteran players on its roster, including at the skill positions, there’s just not much experienced depth behind those veterans.

So when senior tailback Andre Williams had to leave the Eagles’ season-opening 24-14 win against Villanova in the third quarter with a hamstring injury, the alarm bells were ringing pretty loudly.

“I don’t have an all-the-way update, other than to say that I think Andre just got a little bit of a hamstring strain,” Addazio said in his postgame news conference. “Is it dehydration? Is it ... ? I don’t know that yet. We wanted to be real careful there. We didn’t want to make that situation worse.”

Before he left the game, Williams had carried 23 times for 114 yards, including a 26-yard touchdown to put Boston College ahead 21-14 in the third quarter. The Eagles wouldn’t trail again.

With Williams on the sideline, still in full pads but carrying his helmet instead of wearing it, true freshman Tyler Rouse shared carries with sophomore David Dudeck the rest of the way.

“We felt like, let’s see if we can hang in there,” Addazio said. “We played Tyler Rouse in there, the freshman. I think he’s gonna be a heck of a player. ... That’s just one more little bit of odds, you know? You’re trying to close a game out right now and now you’ve got a true freshman handling the ball, right? Nothing’s easy.

“But you know what, he came out of that thing and that situation, he’ll really grow from that now. He’s got real innate toughness and he’s got speed.”

Rouse carried the ball eight times for 14 yards, while Dudeck had four carries for 5 yards.

With Wake Forest coming to Chestnut Hill for a Week 2 ACC matchup on Friday night, the Eagles may have to rely on Dudeck, Rouse and fellow true freshman Myles Willis if Williams isn’t ready to go.

“That’s just the way it’s gonna be,” Addazio said. “Hopefully Andre will be fine and we’ll roll.”

Amidon making plays



After the year he had in 2012, BC fans shouldn’t be surprised by anything Alex Amidon does anymore.

And aside from an unusual fumble that stunted one BC drive, nothing the Greenfield, Mass., native did on Saturday qualifies as a shock.

The senior wideout picked up where he left off, catching a career-high 13 passes for 146 yards and a TD on Saturday. It’s the eighth career game with 100-plus yards receiving for Amidon, tying Brian Brennan and Rich Gunnell for most in BC history.

His 49-yard TD haul from QB Chase Rettig turned the momentum in the game, as the speedy Amidon got behind the Nova defense and ran free down the right hash marks to bring BC back even on the opening drive of the second half.

“You’ve gotta have your big-time players, they’ve gotta make plays,” Addazio said. “For us to be successful, Nate Freese has gotta be the kicker he was today, Alex Amidon has gotta be the pass-catcher -- unfortunately we put that one on the ground there -- and Chase has gotta make his plays. Those guys did a pretty good job with that.

“Our guys have to make their plays. We don’t have an abundance of playmakers, so the ones we have have gotta make their plays.”

With the Wildcats attempting to stop the run by stacking the box, perhaps the Eagles’ best playmaker often found himself in one-on-one coverage.

“I wasn’t surprised at all,” Amidon said. “We go into this big personnel, and they stack the box and it was just one-on-one with me and the guy outside. We kind of anticipated that happening, so I wasn’t surprised.”

His quarterback was, though.

“I was definitely surprised that they had single coverage,” Rettig said. “On film they played a lot of man coverage, sometimes press, sometimes off. So that was part of our game plan, that we would go in and when they would clog the box up with eight or nine guys, we’d be able to hopefully have that guy eight or nine yards off him, just quick throw to Alex and pick up six or seven yards.

“And it has a chance to be a big play if he breaks one tackle.”

Feathered friend

For the first time in 47 years, the Eagles will have an actual eagle at their games this season, through a partnership with Zoo New England. The 9-year-old male eagle was on the field for the national anthem Saturday, tethered to his handler’s arm (which was in a protective sleeve). BC is holding a social media contest to choose a name for the bird.

The Eagles held a similar contest for the last live eagle to be at BC athletic events, with students selecting the name “Margo” -- a combination of the school’s colors, maroon and gold.

Bringing back the live eagle mascot is just one of a handful of changes to the game-day experience in Chestnut Hill this season, along with new tailgating options, a new hospitality tent outside Alumni Stadium and a new route for the team’s traditional “Eagle Walk,” which now starts at Gasson Hall in BC’s Middle Campus, comes down the stairs adjacent to Conte Forum and then winds its way along Campanella Way to Alumni’s Gate E.

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.

NEWTON, Mass. -- It’s just one game. It’s just Week 1 of a 12-week season. So how much could a win in the opener really mean to Boston College and its new head coach, Steve Addazio?

The 24-14 win over FCS foe Villanova meant a lot more than 8.3 percent of the schedule.

It meant a goal the Eagles had set since they first started preparing for the season -- to win the opener -- had been accomplished. It meant that for the first time in what feels like a long time, the Eagles have a winning record.

They had lost the opener in each of the past two seasons, starting each season playing catch-up from the get-go.

They even started Saturday’s matchup that way, losing the opening coin toss before quickly falling behind 14-7 in the first quarter and ending the first half that way.

If ever a team needed to flip the script, it was these Eagles. And luckily for them, whatever was said in the newly renovated home locker room at Alumni Stadium worked.

The proverbial coin landed in their favor from the third quarter on. And that led to an actual coin landing in Addazio’s possession after the game.

But before we get to the happy scrum on the field after the horn sounded, let’s go to the locker room at halftime.

“We had to make some adjustments at halftime on both sides of the ball,” Addazio said. “We had to shore some things up. We had far and away too many missed assignments on defense in the first half of the game, guys not in the right place. We had a good opening drive on offense and then they started really coming at us with a lot loaded in the box.”

The Eagles were outgained in the first half, 234 to 144. They allowed the Wildcats 160 rushing yards in the first two quarters, while managing only 45 yards of their own on the ground.

The Wildcats scored on a 47-yard fake punt, with Jamal Abdur-Rahman ducking as a BC player barreled by to chase a fake and then sprinting the other way to paydirt. And BC’s new defense was burned by dual-threat quarterback John Robertson for long runs and by his receivers for long runs after the catch.

It seemed like the Eagles finally had bottomed out when they produced a 2-10 record in 2012, their worst showing since the 1978 team went 0-11, and their coach was fired. But maybe, just maybe, the true bottoming-out moment was walking back into the locker room after 30 minutes of action trailing an FCS opponent at home.

“In the first half we just started off a little slow,” junior cornerback Manny Asprilla said. “When we went into the locker room before the second half we just, like, told each other to calm down and relax and we’ll get things rolling, we’ll get it together.

“So when we came out in the second half we had a mindset that we were just going to come out and play as hard as we could, and we did.”

The Eagles got the ball first to start the third quarter, and Chase Rettig and the offense made certain to make it count. The senior signal-caller moved the chains with short passes to running back David Dudeck and fullback Bobby Wolford, then used the threat of play-action to hit a big play.

With the Wildcats concerned about the run, wideout Alex Amidon got open behind the defense on a post pattern and Rettig hit him for a 49-yard TD that tied the game at 14. That swung the momentum, which had been favoring the visitors, back the Eagles’ way.

And after the defense forced the Wildcats to punt on their next two drives, Rettig and the offense put BC on top to stay. Wolford caught a short pass out of the backfield and found open field, running around the right side for 34 yards. And on the next play, Andre Williams hit an opening and rumbled down the right sideline for a 26-yard, game-winning TD.

Senior linebacker Kevin Pierre-Louis, who led all BC players with 10 tackles and added one of three BC sacks on the day, said the way the Eagles rallied to win meant a lot.

“It’s very encouraging,” he said. “To face a little adversity in the beginning and overcome that proves that we can do that game in and game out. Pretty much we just got that out of the way. Now it’s time to correct the mistakes, which is a lot easier to correct after a win, and then move on from there.”

To Asprilla, an Everett, Mass., product, the win meant a return to normalcy.

“I’ve already been here for two years; this is my third year here and we started off every year 0-1,” he said. “When I first got here I had never been 0-1 in my life, so now that we’re 1-0 in my third year it actually feels great. I’m not trying to have another 2-10 year, but it’s just the start.”

Asked what it meant to win his first game as coach of the Eagles, Addazio put the focus on his players.



“It was special for our kids,” he said. “I’ve been coaching a long time -- I just want to have some good moments happen for these players. They came off a very, very disappointing season. They haven’t had a ton of things to be excited about.

“They worked really hard. They had total belief in what we were doing. It was total buy-in. Never one time, did we ever, ever have anybody that gave anything less than 100 percent commitment, buy-in. All you do is you hope and you pray that that will result in some positive feedback.”

It took a while, but they finally got some in the second half.

The defense settled down and allowed Robertson & Co. to gain only 121 yards of offense in the second half. Don Brown’s bunch also forced three turnovers, including interceptions by Asprilla and Sean Sylvia and a fumble recovery by Kasim Edebali. Meanwhile, Rettig and the offense piled up 269 yards and scored 17 unanswered points.

While it was just Week 1 and they were facing Villanova, a potential top FCS team but not Clemson or Florida State by any stretch of the imagination, there were things to take away from the performance. The team showed a measure of resolve to battle back after the break. Players like Wolford (six catches for 84 yards and a TD) and Josh Keyes (forced fumble) made plays that suggest they could be important contributors this season.

Of course, that’s not to suggest the Eagles think Saturday’s performance was anywhere close to good enough going forward.

“Hey, we know what we’ve got ahead of us,” Addazio said. “No one here’s delusional. But we’re gonna take that start. And that’s really important. For me, what was special was I just watched our team sing the fight song and I just saw smiles on guys’ faces. And that’s what makes it all worthwhile.”

And in the postgame scrum on the Alumni Stadium turf, Addazio got something to take home with him, too.

The Eagles lost the opening coin flip, fell behind and then rallied to win. Afterward, referee Ron Cherry found Addazio in the mass of bodies and pressed something into his hand.

It was the ceremonial coin he used for the pregame toss, resting on a square of felt in a small plastic box.

“I really appreciated that,” Addazio said of the gesture, the memento from his first win as Eagles coach. “It meant a lot.”

Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.