Boston College 71st In Bill Connolly's Newest SP+ Rankings
Earlier this week Bill Connolly revealed his rankings on returning production in 2020. This is an important statistic for determining the effectiveness and ceiling for a team heading in to the new season. This morning Connolly plugged all his data together and came up with his 2020 SP+ rankings.
Connolly made his rankings based on three factors: returning production, recruiting results and recent history. Boston College ranks 71st overall in his current rankings. This is actually a jump of ten spots from the end of the regular season last year when BC was ranked 82nd.
BC has to be tricky to measure in all of these rankings with a grain of salt given that a) BC hired a new head coach and that is not reflective in his system and b) adding Phil Jurkovec and the possibly of other transfers could greatly affect how this season goes for the Eagles.
Say what you will, but by the final five weeks of the seasons Connolly claims SP+ was correct on 58% of the games against the spread.
Here is a breakdown of BC's schedule and how they fall on Connolly's SP+
| Team | Ranking |
|---|---|
Syracuse | 95 |
Ohio | 67 |
Kansas | 113 |
Purdue | 46 |
Clemson | 3 |
Louisville | 41 |
Virginia Tech | 32 |
NC State | 62 |
Florida State | 26 |
UNC | 17 |
Wake Forest | 81 |
A few thoughts:
* SP+ loves Florida State, while they are certainly a team that recruits well and can only get better with Willie Taggart gone, but a borderline Top 25 is quite the jump.
* Louisville seems too low. Malik Cunningham might be the 2nd best quarterback in the ACC on paper right now, and Javian Hawkins one of the best RBs. Satterfield had them take a big jump in 2019, and they could be a top 25 team in 2020.
* Kansas is going to take a major step back this season. After beating BC badly at home, Les Miles is going to have a major rebuild ahead of him this year. If Hafley has BC playing better, especially on defense the Eagles shouldn't have the issues against the Jayhawks that they had last year.