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HOLY CROSS 5, Boston College 4

Crusaders stun seventh-ranked Boston College

Holy Cross5
BC4

On paper, it certainly seemed like a mismatch. Boston College went into Friday afternoon’s game against Holy Cross at Conte Forum as the seventh-ranked team in the nation.

The Eagles put together a seven-game unbeaten streak (6-0-1) this month and were looking to close out November with a win over the Crusaders, who had dropped four of their previous five games and hadn’t beaten BC since 1946, their only victory in 16 prior meetings.

But in an upset for the ages, Holy Cross scored a pair of goals in the first period, added three more in the second, and held on in a wild third to record a 5-4 triumph in front of 6,527. It was BC’s first-ever loss to an Atlantic Hockey program.

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Freshman center Mike Barrett had a pair of goals and an assist for the Crusaders and junior goaltender Matt Ginn made 34 saves, including 14 in the final 20 minutes.

“It’s pretty big,’’ said Holy Cross coach Paul Pearl, whose team improved to 4-9-0. “They’re an excellent team and an excellent program. They do things right, how we’d like to kind of model ourselves. To be able to come in here and beat them is pretty special.’’

Pearl said he faced BC twice during his playing days for Holy Cross.

“They beat us, 6-0, my freshman year in the old rink,’’ said Pearl. “My sophomore year, they had to play at Holy Cross because they were building [Conte Forum]. They were No. 1 in the country when they came in. They beat us, 3-1. We hung in there.’’

The Crusaders took a 2-1 lead on Barrett’s first goal, at 12:24 of the opening period, and Castan Sommer’s third of the season at 13:19.

Senior center Kevin Hayes cut BC’s deficit in half at 14:53 but Holy Cross poured it on in the middle period, running the score to 5-1 on tallies by Adam Schmidt at 8:00, Barrett’s second at 12:09, and Matt Vidal’s at 16:53, which turned out to be the winner.

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The Eagles (8-4-2) were completely out of synch for the opening 40 minutes but finally kicked it into gear in the final period. The comeback started at 6:57 when freshman left wing Ryan Fitzgerald potted his seventh of the season. Junior center Michael Sit made it a 5-3 game at 15:31, and just 27 seconds later, Hayes earned his second goal to pull the Eagles within one.

Ginn was outstanding down the stretch. One of his best saves came with 15 seconds left, when he stoned BC sniper Johnny Gaudreau from directly in front of the net.

“As you saw and as people have seen over the last three years, Matt’s a very good goaltender,’’ said Pearl. “If he can see it, he can usually stop it.

“He was able to square up to the puck and really keep composed under those scrambly situations. Obviously, tons of credit to Matt and some credit to my [defensemen] and forwards going down there and picking up the right guys.’’

For the Eagles, it was a sobering afternoon.

“They battled us extremely well and put us back on our heels,’’ said BC coach Jerry York. “Lessons learned are, we came back and played very well the third period, just not quite enough.

“It’s hard to win one period and expect to win a hockey game. I’m very disappointed in the first two periods, the effort, the cohesiveness in the first two periods just [wasn’t] there.

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“They are tough lessons to learn when you lose a game like this.’’

The Eagles had dreams of completing a huge comeback, with the Patriots’ come-from-behind win over Denver last Sunday night as a model.

“It was a good mission for us to be on,’’ said York. “At the end, at six-on-five [with goalie Thatcher Demko on the bench], we tried to get some traffic but Ginn made some saves. We’ve clearly got some steps to take if we’re going to be a good club. We’re too inconsistent.’’


Nancy Marrapese-Burrell can be reached at marrapese@globe.com.