(UPDATE: This story was first posted on Feb. 25, back when Boston College was only 0-15 in ACC play. Since then, the team has lost its final three conference games to finish the hoops season winless. Congrats, BC! The original post is below.)
BC just became the first to go winless in conference in football and hoops in 40 years
BC just did something no major conference team has done since 1976. (It’s not a good thing.)
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Boston College lost its 15th straight ACC men's basketball game Tuesday, falling to Virginia Tech in front of, officially, just 1,018 fans at Conte Forum. In reality, there were probably fewer than that.
Who can blame BC fans? Their basketball team is on its way to falling to 0-18 in ACC play. KenPom.com does not give the Eagles a better than 19 percent chance to win any of their remaining games. And this comes right after the football team went 0-8 in ACC play this year.
That’s a chance to go 0-26 against conference foes in revenue sports this year, an impressive run of futility that hasn’t been matched in almost 40 years.
The last time a major-conference team lost all of its conference football and men’s basketball games in a single academic year was TCU in 1976-77, as a member of the Southwest Conference, which hasn’t existed since 1996.
Here’s the list of major conference teams that have accomplished the feat since 1920 (due to small schedules, a handful of teams went winless before then).
| Year | Team | Conference | Combined record |
| 2015-16 | Boston College | ACC | 0-26* |
| 1976-77 | TCU | Southwest | 0-24 |
| 1943-44 | Georgia | SEC | 0-5 |
| 1939-40 | Sewanee | SEC | 0-12 |
| 1938-39 | Sewanee | SEC | 0-19 |
| 1936-37 | Sewanee | SEC | 0-15 |
| 1935-36 | Sewanee | SEC | 0-16 |
| 1933-34 | Sewanee | SEC | 0-16 |
| 1932-33 | Sewanee | SEC | 0-13 |
| 1923-25 | Northwestern | Big Ten | 0-18 |
The last time a current power conference saw a team go winless was 1943-44. Northwestern’s 1923-24 team is the only real comparable example, since Georgia only got to play five games in 1943-44 due to World War II and Sewanee left the SEC after eight winless years in conference football play.
This year's Boston College teams won't just be historically bad, though. They're historically boring. BC ranks last in the ACC offensively in both football (per S&P+) and basketball (per KenPom), ranking 341st (out of 351) nationally in basketball, and 124th (out of 128) nationally in football. On the football side of things, that probably has something to do with being routinely outrecruited by non-power programs (and it's only getting worse).
Along with fellow awful team Wake Forest, the Eagles have given us two of the worst performances in football and men’s basketball this season. Boston College lost to Wake Forest, 3-0, in football, to claim last place in the ACC (the Demon Decons finished with one win). In basketball, Boston College lost to 1-13 Wake Forest by 26 points, falling behind 37-4 nearly 17 minutes into the game.
The Eagles have three remaining chances to secure that first conference win: at home against Georgia Tech Saturday, at North Carolina State next Wednesday and at home against Clemson on Sat., March 5.
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