Boston College junior Alex Amidon was named ACC Receiver of the Week after he caught eight passes for a career-high 193 yards and two touchdowns in Saturday’s 45-31 loss to 17th-ranked Clemson.

The 5-foot-11, 186-pounder from Greenfield recorded the most receiving yards for a BC player since Gerard Phelan had 226 against Miami on Nov. 23, 1984.

Amidon had the second-highest single-game yardage total by an ACC receiver this season. The No. 1 performance also occurred Saturday in Chestnut Hill, as Clemson’s DeAndre Hopkins had 197 yards worth of receptions.

Amidon has more than 100 receiving yards in three of BC’s games this season and is averaging 139.8 per game, ranking him fourth among FBS players.

Clemson quarterback Tajh Boyd goes over BC safety Sean Sylvia (19) to score a touchdown in the first quarter of Saturday's game in Chestnut Hill. (AP)

After three games and one win over an FCS opponent, Boston College had yet to find a spark offensively, especially early on. However, against the most dynamic offense they’ve seen this season, the Eagles did just that in the early going of their 45-31 loss to Clemson on Saturday at Alumni Stadium.

The Eagles led 21-17 late in the first half before Clemson turned on the jets as quarterback Tahj Boyd and the Tigers racked up 576 yards of offense, finishing the game on a 28-10 run. The Eagles showed they could do some damage on offense, but they couldn’t keep up with this type of performance from the Tigers, something Eagles coach Frank Spaziani knew well going into the game.

“Those Clemson payers are very good players and they’ve done it to a lot of people,” Spaziani said. “I don’t think we were too complicated. If anything, we tried to make sure we were fundamentally sound and not be too vanilla but also got our guys lined up and let recognition go.”

Junior quarterback Chase Rettig finished the day 25-of-43 for 341 yards and three touchdowns with two interceptions. BC’s solid aerial attack produced a career-high 193 yards receiving for junior Alex Amidon (the third-highest total in school history). Where BC struggled, though, was in its attempt to establish a consistent ground attack. The Eagles finished the day with 51 rushing yards on 28 attempts, good for an average of 1.8 yards per carry.

“Any game where we’re moving the ball well is a fun game to be in, regardless of what they’re doing on the other side,” Rettig said of the high-scoring affair. “It puts a little edge on it, when it goes back and forth. It was fun, but we just have to do better, execute better.”

Clemson had a chance pull away from BC early, bursting out to a 17-7 lead with momentum after scoring on the first play of the second quarter. However, after his offense sputtered once again, BC sophomore safety Sean Sylvia picked off a deep bomb from Boyd that triggered two straight scoring drives from the Eagles. It was a huge stop for the BC defense that spent much of the game trying to contain the Tigers and give its offense a chance to respond.

“It kind of puts more on our shoulders because the offense is putting points on the board,” Sylvia said. “We have to take more ownership, start stopping some people.”

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Boston College senior Nick Clancy earned ACC Linebacker of the Week honors after recording a career-high 24 tackles (14 solo) in Saturday’s 22-13 loss to Northwestern.

Clancy, a 6-foot-3, 232-pounder from Plainfield, Ill., recorded the second-highest single-game tackle total in school history. Frank Chamberlain (1999, vs. Syracuse), Stephen Boyd (1994, vs. Virginia Tech) and Tom McManus (1991, vs. Rutgers) share the record of 25.

Clancy, whose previous single-game high was seven, leads the ACC in tackles (43) and tackles per game (14.3) through three games this season.

BC coach Frank Spaziani leads the Eagles against Northwestern on Saturday. (AP)

The ACC announced Wednesday that Notre Dame will join the Big East for all sports except football and hockey, and the Irish will play five football games annually against ACC opponents. For Boston College football coach Frank Spaziani, not much will change, as the Eagles and Irish have played the past five seasons and have a contract to play five more times between now and 2019.

“From our perspective, we play them every year,” Spaziani said on Wednesday’s ACC football coaches teleconference, joking, “I thought they were in the ACC, to be honest with you.”

Added Spaziani: “We have a mutual respect for each other, an appreciation for each other. We understand what a great institution it is. So, I think it’s tremendous for our league and certainly for Boston College. We play them, now to be playing them in other sports, it’s valuable. It’s very valuable. … It’s a marquee brand. I think anytime you add a marquee brand to your established tradition and the wonderful stuff that you have, it enhances it.”

BC hosts Notre Dame on Nov. 10, and then after a two-year hiatus, the schools will play in 2015, ’16, ’18 and ’19. But right now Spaziani is focused on another team from the Midwest, as the Eagles travel to Chicago for a game against Northwestern on Saturday. The Wildcats are off to a 2-0 start, with wins over Syracuse and Vanderbilt. BC is 1-1, with a win over Maine following a season-opening loss to Miami.

“They’re very well-coached,” Spaziani said of the Wildcats, who are led by seventh-year coach Pat Fitzgerald. “They have some very good players. They just play a very good brand of football. They know how to win. They demonstrated that in their first two games.”

BC received a big performance in the win over Maine from young wide receiver Spiffy Evans. The sophomore caught a 3-yard pass for a touchdown and ran back a punt 82 yards for another score.

“He’s like a lot of young players, they take a little bit of time to develop,” Spaziani said. “He’s been with us for a year, and played as a true freshman last year. He’s only gotten better, and certainly that was one of his better football games. And his best football is ahead of him. Now the next thing to do, once you’ve done it, is be consistent, keep doing it. Spiffy’s a hard-worker and he’s got some talent. We’re excited about having him.”

CHESTNUT HILL — Frank Spaziani made no bones about it Saturday after his team’s 34-3 cakewalk over Maine. The win is great but the Eagles have to play a lot better over the course of their remaining 10 games if they have any chance of seeing positive results.

They trailed 3-0 after 15 minutes despite dominating play. They couldn’t convert yards into points and, as a matter of fact, they gave Maine its only points on red zone turnover.

“I have a new bald spot in the back of my head,” Spaziani said. “It was an inauspicious start. Those things are there. They need to be corrected. We are not going to be able to go the rest of the season, playing the schedule that we play, doing that. [After the first quarter] we tried to let our players know it’s a football game. It’s 60 minutes and you’ve got to keep playing.”

And that starts with Northwestern on the road at Evanston, Ill. next Saturday.

“We’re going to a different stratosphere now,” Spaziani said. “We’ve got two games under our belt. We’re going on the road. It’s a game that we need to play well. We took some steps forward in areas, but we’ve got 10 tough games coming up and we’ve got to get better. There are some good things out there but we’ve got to get better.”

One area where the Eagles most certainly took steps forward was on defense, starting with a red zone stand when running back Duece Finch fumbled at the BC 18, giving Maine the ball at the Eagles 10.

But the defense allowed only a 19-yard field goal, Maine’s only points of the day.

“Anytime you give up the ball in the red zone like that, a field goal [allowed] is palatable, depending on the situation,” Spaziani said. “The defense did a good job keeping Maine out of the end zone.

BC also dug in on third down, allowing Maine just three first downs on 18 third-down tries.

“That is always one of our MOs,” Junior linebacker Steele Divitto said. “You want to stop them on third down, get off the field and get the offense in and give them a shot. The offense did an awesome job taking care of the ball. They were a little sloppy in the beginning but they responded well.”

BC allowed just 193 yards on 73 defensive snaps. BC’s offense compiled 385 yards on 74 snaps.

NOTES: X-rays on Chase Rettig‘s back following Saturday’s game were negative. He has taken several big hits near the sidelines in the first two weeks and his back became sore in the second half. “It’s fine,” Rettig said afterward. “I took some hits last week and today and I just need to get in the tub this week.” Rettig finished 16-of-32 for 219 yards and three touchdowns and no interceptions. “Chase was fine,” Spaziani said. “He had a winning effort. There is a lot of improvement he needs to make off of this one. He’s a good player but he made a few mistakes that we need not to make. We need him to be almost perfect. That’s what we’re looking for.” … Fullback Jake Sinkovec also had X-rays on his right foot after the game. Those were also negative.

CHESTNUT HILL — Meet Curtric Jamal Evans, more commonly known as Spiffy Evans.

On Saturday, he was more than just a cute nickname or an athlete with 600 pairs of sneakers. The sophomore from Hollywood, Fla. led Boston College to a 34-3 win over the Maine Black Bears in a game the Eagles needed badly for team confidence – and his own. Evans electrified the 30,685 in attendance at Alumni Stadium with a game-breaking 82-yard punt return for a touchdown in the third quarter and gave his team the lead for good on a three-yard TD catch in the second quarter. Evans finished with four catches for 53 yards, two punts for 93 yards and one kickoff return for 10 yards. A total of 156 total yards on seven touches.

“Spiffy played a little better than he practiced,” said BC coach Frank Spaziani. “He did some nice things out there. That’s his potential. We need him to keep doing that.”

“Coach just sat me down and talked about keeping my confidence this week in practice,” Evans told WEEI.com. “He knows the kind of player I can be. I just wanted to focus on that after a few drops last week. He could see it in my eyes this week in practice that I needed a confidence boost.”

As for the nickname Spiffy?

“It came from my grandfather, actually,” Evans explained. “He gave it to me when I was around seven years old because I have a lot of sneakers. From a kid, I just love fashion, like sneakers, old stuff like vintage wear, hats, anything that you can put on and wear. He just gave me that nickname and said, ‘I’m a unique kid.’ I just stuck with it since.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ryan Anderson

Sophomore forward Ryan Anderson scored 29 points and grabbed eight rebounds, but Boston College lost to Regal Barcelona, 76-65, Saturday night to wrap up its tour of Spain.

Sophomore center Dennis Clifford had 15 points and eight rebounds for the Eagles, who went 1-3 in Spain. Freshman Joe Rahon scored 11 second-half points.

Anderson scored 17 of BC’s 28 first-half points as the Eagles trailed by 21 at the break, 49-28. The Barcelona lead was 20 at 67-47 heading into the fourth quarter. BC scored the first nine points of the final period to draw within 11, and when Rahon hit a 3-pointer with 4:51 remaining the Eagles were only eight points down. But that was as close as they would get.

CHESTNUT HILL — In the first game after the Luke Kuechly era, Boston College showed they have a long way to go to prove they can handle the defensive load without him.

In a game they out-gained Miami, 542-415, in total yards, the Eagles could not stop the Hurricanes when they needed to in a 41-32 loss Saturday afternoon at Alumni Stadium.

The Eagles allowed true freshman Duke Johnson to show off skills that made him one of the most sought after players coming into college. Johnson broke off touchdown runs of 54 and 56 yards in coming back from a 14-0 hole. The Eagles also fumbled twice, leading directly to 10 Miami points and Chase Rettig threw an interception that was returned 41 yards for a touchdown.

“I thought we played sloppy,” Eagles coach Frank Spaziani said. “We made some mistakes that hurt us on offense. We certainly moved the ball and did some really nice things. I think we played hard until the end. We made a couple of fumbles and had some turnovers, obviously. We had two long runs which we can’t have happen on defense. We have to figure out what the problem was. We have to play better defense than that.

“But there are some good signs there. We have to build on that and move forward.”

The best sign, of course, was BC’s ability to move the ball nearly at will with a high-powered passing attack, picking the slack for Montel Harris, the running back kicked off the team in the summer.

“That was a winnable game,” Spaziani said. “Not taking anything away from Miami. They deserved to win but we need to play better. We need to catch the ball, hold onto the ball and tackle. Those are the things that we can improve on and we need to.

“Certainly, defensively we have to play better than that. No one made a play. It didn’t look like it. We did fight and stop them a couple of times, but not when we needed to. You can’t give up big plays. You score 32 points and you should win the game.”

Next up, the Maine Black Bears next Saturday at Alumni.

A brand new turf is in place for the 2012 season at Boston College. (Mike Petraglia/WEEI.com)

CHESTNUT HILL — The post-Luke Kuechly era begins today at Alumni Stadium as the Eagles play host to the Miami Hurricanes on national television.

Kuechly – a perennial All-American linebacker – was taken ninth overall by the Carolina Panthers in the first round of April’s NFL Draft, choosing to come out after his junior season.

This will mark the first time in four years that someone other than Kuechly will man the middle linebacker position. Nick Clancy – a 6-foot-3 232-pound senior will get the chance.

Another notable name will be the press box for the season opener as former Colts general manager Bill Polian is taking in the game. Polian was fired by Colts owner Jim Irsay after last season’s 2-14 season in Indianapolis.

There is a brand new turf down on the field at Alumni Stadium as a state-of-the-art Astroturf was installed in the spring. The new surface is something called. “AstroTurf GameDay Grass 3D60H.”

The Hurricanes won 15 straight between 1985 and 2006 but the Eagles have won the last two games by a combined score of 52-31, including last season’s 24-17 win in Miami.

This is the first time BC has opened a season against Miami since 1993 when the Hurricanes came away with a 23-7 win at Alumni Stadium.

Neither team is ranked in the national polls to start the season as the game also opens ACC play for both schools. BC is once again in the Atlantic division while Miami resides in the Coastal division.

The key to the Boston College offense will be the right arm of quarterback Chase Rettig. Last year, during a 4-8 campaign, Rettig completed 170 of 317 passes fro 1,960 yards, throwing for 12 touchdowns and nine interceptions.

The are two Patriots scouts on hand as well as scouts from the Giants and Jets.

Dennis Clifford

After playing two competitive games in Madrid and earning a split, the Boston College basketball team found the going a lot tougher in Valencia against the Valencia Basket Club, dropping a 93-66 decision to the team from Spain’s top league.

Sophomore Dennis Clifford led the Eagles with 15 points and eight rebounds. Classmate Ryan Anderson contributed 12 points and six boards. Freshman Joe Rahon (11 points) and junior Danny Rubin (10) also scored in double figures, while freshman Olivier Hanlan had eight points, three rebounds, three assists and two steals.

Valencia scored the game’s first eight points and led 24-10 after one quarter. BC used a 12-2 run early in the second quarter to get back in it, but Valencia answered with a 10-0 run and led 50-32 at halftime. The hosts opened the third quarter on a 10-1 run and never looked back.

BC wraps up its preseason trip on Saturday night with a game against Regal Barcelona.