Conte Forum can seat 8,606 for a Boston College basketball game. And most nights, if you drop in to watch the Eagles women’s team, you can be assured of getting a very good seat.
Last year, BC averaged just 1,029 spectators per game. They were outdrawn by the likes of Fairfield — whose total enrollment of about 6,800 students would fit comfortably inside BC’s arena — and Vermont — whose total capacity for basketball is a mere 3,266.
Why? The BC women’s basketball program has spent more than two decades fading into irrelevance.
Since the Eagles joined the ACC in 2005, they've managed a winning conference record twice in 21 seasons. Their last NCAA Tournament appearance was in 2005-06. They're 98-237 in the conference, a 29.3 percent win rate. Since 2010-11, they've won 41 percent of their total games and 25.5 percent of their ACC matchups.
After the Eagles' 5-26 record last season tied their lowest win total in the last 50 years, they parted ways with Joanna Bernabei-McNamee and hired Kate Popovec-Goss. She had just rebuilt a program, steering Bradley on a four-year turnaround and improving from 4-28 in her first season to 20-13 this past winter.
Popovec-Goss' new role boils down to one monumental task: Make people believe in BC.
“The biggest thing that we have to change is just this perception that you can't have success here, because I don't see it,” Popovec-Goss said after a July summer workout.
There’s a new mission to win at BC, and it has brought local stars Grace Oliver and Natalia Hall-Rosa back to their home states as transfers.
"I want to show that BC is a school to be taken seriously," Oliver said. "I know that maybe hasn't really been the reputation the past couple years, but just being able to change that narrative around, I think that's really important for me. And just setting an example for all the younger girls out here, that's really special."
Making recruits believe
In recent years, the sentiment from area youth coaches is the Eagles appeared to aim sky-high with local recruiting. They were selective with their offers and often handed them out early to top-tier prospects like Kaelyn Carroll (Dedham, Mass.). While the program glossed over some of the area's elite talent with less pedigree, BC's recruiting ambitions couldn't make up for its tepid local image.
When Bernabei-McNamee arrived in 2018, the Eagles quickly found two impact players from New England. Taylor Soule (West Lebanon, N.H.) surpassed 1,500 points at BC before playing a fifth year at Virginia Tech and becoming a WNBA draft pick. Marnelle Garraud (Lynn, Mass.) scored 944 points before transferring to Vanderbilt. Those two helped BC to those two years of winning ACC records (and two seasons of 20-plus total victories) in 2019-20 and 2021-22.
But they were recruited by the previous staff led by Erik Johnson — not Bernabei-McNamee. The Eagles landed only three New England natives under her leadership. Allie Palmieri (Trumbull, Conn.) and Kayla Lezama (Boston, Mass.) had similar trajectories. Both played sparingly as underclassmen, transferred after sophomore year and found success at mid-majors, each averaging more than 12 points per game last season (Palmieri at UMass, Lezama at Hampton).
Taina Mair stings the most. The Boston native made the All-ACC Freshman Team for BC in 2022-23, promptly transferred to Duke and became a star and first-round WNBA draft choice.
Popovec-Goss has evidently placed recruiting New England among her highest priorities. In the opening statement of her April introductory press conference, she said "we want to attack the Northeast" on the recruiting trail. She was intentional in showing up to the NEPSAC Scholastic Showcase in June while her assistants traveled for other scholastic live period events. Within two sentences of chatting at the showcase, Popovec-Goss remarked wanting to "win New England."
BC has already given out multiple verbal offers to prospects in top local AAU programs like the Bay State Jaguars, Mass Rivals and MCW Starz. Popovec-Goss emphasizes getting high schools and grassroots teams to BC so that she can show the program has changed.
"Recruiting New England is so important, because I find that this generation of New England athletes has never been alive to see BC women's basketball really be successful, and they have grown up with that," she said. "So their interest in BC — it's about the perception that's here. It's really not about the reality, and I think that's the biggest thing. I've got to get people here to show them the reality."
Oliver received a text in April with a link to Popovec-Goss' intro presser. The Norwell, Mass., native was in the transfer portal at the time, looking for her third school in three years after leading Wake Forest with 14.3 points per game. Oliver was impressed by Popovec-Goss' passion and ended up being the new coach’s first addition.
"Her family mentality, and then also that kind of no-bulls--- mentality, that for me is something big," Oliver said.
Soon after came Hall-Rosa (Randolph, Mass.) from Seton Hall. Again, Popovec-Goss' direct honesty stuck out and led her to BC.
"She's very real, and I feel like you don't really get that a lot going in the transfer portal. So it was nice hearing true intentions," Hall-Rosa said. "As you know, the transfer portal is all over the place sometimes, and it's scary (when) you're going into it. As for me, I didn't have a great first season, so it's that feeling of not knowing what's next. So having a new coaching staff come to BC, hometown school, and immediately jumping on it and having faith in me as a player, it felt good. She kind of gave me that confidence within myself that I kind of lost along the way."
BC was a fixture in Oliver's high school recruiting process, though she ultimately started college at Colorado. But Oliver, who was nationally ranked as a Nobles star, recalls top prospects feeling neglected by the school. Hall-Rosa, for example, received more than 20 offers in high school, but not one from BC.
"I have nothing against the old coaching staff, but they just didn't really seem to want to recruit kids from their backyard and in their home, even though it was something that a lot of people wanted to be a part of," Oliver said. "They wanted to be a part of BC, but they just were never really given the opportunity. And I can already see the change in that."
BC obviously will look beyond New England to build its roster too. For all the criticism of how Bernabei-McNamee and the previous staff approached local recruiting, they did win elsewhere on the trail. They landed top-100 prospects like Maria Gakdeng and Amirah Anderson, found underrated gems like Mair and Andrea Daley, and scored in the transfer portal with Cameron Swartz and Dontavia Waggoner. But as the wins stagnated, BC as a competitive ACC destination became a tougher sell.
Popovec-Goss has so far turned to the international pool. Five of the Eagles' six incoming freshmen hail from outside the United States More than half of the current roster was born abroad.
It's a smart way to tap into a massive talent pool loaded with hidden gems. Daniele Paunksnyte, from Lithuania, could be an early steal after she averaged 20.3 points at this summer's U20 FIBA EuroBasket. Popovec-Goss has recruiting experience at a high-academic institution through her Northwestern years as associate head coach and recruiting coordinator. That's influencing her approach at BC.
"I'm very used to being able to go out on the road, identify talent, and then coming back and evaluating whether or not that is a player that's going to fit the institution," she said. "And so that kind of forced me, even young, to be able to go out and say, 'OK, so maybe they're not ranked, or maybe they don't play on the top (AAU) circuit, or whatever it is. But I have to go find someone who's the right fit for us.' And I think that that really helped me as a recruiter because I watch, and I challenge my staff to watch, who fits what we do, not anything beyond that."
Making fans — and donors — believe
BC’s average attendance last season was the third-lowest among all Power Four conference schools, ahead of only Miami and Pitt, according to the ACC's tabulation. Since 2017-18, the Eagles have never ranked higher than 12th in the ACC for home attendance. They were seventh last year among New England colleges.
If we remove the Field Trip Day outlier (which drew 5,167 fans), BC averaged 786 spectators last season.
Popovec-Goss says it's easy to view the fan base struggles as a chicken-versus-egg-like scenario. How do you get fans to believe in a program that isn't consistently winning — or in contrast, how do you build a winning program without fan support?
"Fans should want to come to the game and help us win. But the reality is the products you put on the floor have to be something that they want to support," she said. "And I think traditionally, what I've found at the programs that I've been at is, once you get people to come, they want to come back. So I think that's kind of the hardest hurdle you've got to overcome is: You've just got to get people in the door. I think the second thing that you battle in a place like this, and people take for granted, is this is one of the best cities in the country — in the world. There's a lot to do on any given night."
To her credit, Popovec-Goss' Bradley program grew its fan base every year, from a paltry 496 per-game attendance figure in 2022-23 to 1,340 last season. In Peoria, Ill., a small city of about 113,000, the Braves showed up at local farmers' markets, handed out flyers and advertised season ticket promotions.
In Chestnut Hill, the Eagles have Boston's regional hub at their disposal. Popovec-Goss wants to leverage camps and get local youth teams to show up for games. That's already begun this summer; Oliver was excited to meet a recent camper from Hanover, right near her Norwell hometown. Popovec-Goss also thinks back to her time at Northwestern, when she watched the Wildcats, led by Newton, Mass., native Veronica Burton, build a dedicated student section following.
But one key support group BC must unlock: NIL partners.
In January, athletic director Blake James explained on his school-affiliated podcast that BC will follow a template for revenue-sharing that is similar to a baseline evaluation that came out of the NCAA vs. House settlement. That means women's basketball will receive roughly five percent of BC's projected $21.32 million revenue-sharing total. James also said that BC as an athletic department is looking to expand its footprint with third-party NIL deals.
Popovec-Goss sees NIL partnerships as part of her community engagement mission. She believes the Eagles can't send the message that they're only seeking partners because they're trying to compete with other schools. They need to show that they're individually focused on their relationships with partners and how an investment can benefit both team and business.
"Here's the reality of the NIL rev-share space: No one knows exactly where the money is coming from," Popovec-Goss said. "Everyone has the same rev-share in the sense of how you divide it up amongst teams, (and) that's at the jurisdiction of each school, but when someone says, 'I have X amount of dollars that I'm distributing to student-athletes,' it is a combination of rev-share and third-party NIL. It is not just straight one or the other. And so I think that for us, engaging third-party NIL, it's got to be a lot deeper than just, 'Please pay this. We need money for this.' Again, I think it goes back to that connectivity."
Making winning believable
None of the fan engagement or recruiting strategies will matter if BC cannot sustain winning. Fans, NIL partners and even players themselves, with the current prevalence of the transfer portal, are empowered to walk if they don't believe in Popovec-Goss' vision.
Transfers were the undoing of the Bernabei-McNamee era. Per WBBBlog, seven Eagles left (though most were grad transfers) after BC's 21-win season in 2021-22. Mair left after her freshman year in 2023 along with Gakdeng. When the Eagles retained their entire starting five in 2023-24 and then went 16-18 (6-12 in ACC), it sparked a mass exodus of 10 transfers the following season.
Popovec-Goss, meanwhile, had her own learning experience in the transfer portal. She saw Halli Poock, a standout freshman who averaged 14.9 points, leave Bradley for Murray State in 2024 (Poock averaged 22.5 points last season). Popovec-Goss admits she did take the decision personally until she realized how her attitude was affecting the rest of the program.
"She had a better opportunity to go somewhere else. That was how she felt. It wasn't personal — and that was what I did, is I made it so personal and such a thing," Popovec-Goss said. "And if it was personal, then she's gone on and had a really successful career somewhere else, and that's just what it is. So I think because I went through that, and I was so concerned about that, I recognized it pulled me away from what I should be focusing on.
"I honestly had a big shift in kind of that year two, going into year three. Kids are gonna make the choices that they want to make, and I also can't be mad at that kid because that's the environment and that's the ability that they now have. So if they are feeling like they're making a decision that's in their best interest, that means they're probably going to do what's most successful for them. I need to invest in the kids that believe that this is their best interest at BC."
Yet, a rebuild of this magnitude likely won't coalesce in a single season. The Eagles currently have no seniors and two juniors while also learning a new style of play.
Again, Popovec-Goss reflects on her Bradley tenure. It took until her third year to really feel like the culture she implemented had taken root.
"The kids give you hope. Even if it's just one kid that walks in and is like, 'I believe,' and you can see them shifting, it kind of keeps you trotting along," she said. "But I think that was the biggest thing. I didn't always know. I just had to keep showing up, and also making sure I surrounded myself with people that reminded me, on the days where maybe I questioned it, that I was trending in the right direction."
The jury is out on BC. The Eagles have to cross a chasm that has consumed every previous attempt to get this program on track.
"It's not sexy. It's not cute. It's not trendy. It doesn't look good on Instagram. Shoot, you were in one of our worst practices — like, it is not pretty," Popovec-Goss said after that summer workout. "I knew I wasn't going to come in here, and all of a sudden the light bulb was going to click, and we're gonna have perfect practices every single day, and everything's gonna be great. But I think, to be honest with you, these are the days that you get the most out of.
"And it sucks. But we just have to keep being here and figuring it out together."
