Boston College women’s basketball opens its 2026-27 season against Holy Cross at Conte Forum on Monday, Nov. 2, at 6 p.m. It is new head coach Kate Popovec-Goss’s first game in charge. The ACC’s coaches and Blue Ribbon Panel picked the Eagles 18th of 18 teams in the league’s preseason poll, and the roster has nine newcomers and three returning players.
A new coach after a four-win season
BC hired Popovec-Goss from Bradley on March 27, making her the ninth head coach in program history, the university announced. She took over from Joanna Bernabei-McNamee, whose contract was not renewed, The Heights reported. In four seasons, Bradley went from four wins in 2022-23 to 20 wins and a WNIT bid in 2025-26. That was only the second postseason appearance in the Peoria, Illinois, school’s history. Before Bradley, Popovec-Goss was associate head coach and recruiting coordinator at Northwestern from 2017 to 2022, and she played college basketball at Northwestern and Pittsburgh.
She inherits a rebuild. BC won four games last season and missed the ACC Tournament with one conference win, according to a BC Athletics preseason feature. At the ACC Tipoff media day in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Oct. 6, she said: “Culture is everything. I think just starting there and being process-driven.” She added that the ACC “is a beast of a league. You’re not going to come in and waltz through it.”
Boston College women’s basketball roster: who to watch
- Grace Oliver, junior forward: A transfer from Wake Forest, she averaged 14.3 points in 2025-26 and led the ACC by shooting 60.4% from the field. She also shot 38.8% from three-point range.
- Jocelyne Grier, sophomore guard: She is the leading returning scorer at 9.7 points per game off the bench, and her 44 three-pointers led the team last season. BC says she was one of 11 players nationally to score 300 points with 40 threes off the bench.
- Athena Tomlinson: She is back as the point guard.
- International newcomers: Lithuanian newcomer Daniele Paunksnyte, Paraguayan center Gabriela Bernal Ortellado, Spanish forward Nuria Ausaverri and Canadian forward Eunicia Salgado. Ausaverri, a 6-foot-1 forward from Madrid, has played for Spain’s youth national teams, and Popovec-Goss said she “can play both on the perimeter and in the post.”
Oliver and Grier represented BC at the ACC Tipoff, the school announced.
BC women’s basketball schedule 2026-27
The non-conference schedule has seven games at Conte Forum, according to BC Athletics:
- Nov. 2: Holy Cross (home, 6 p.m.)
- Nov. 5: at Harvard
- Nov. 11 to 24: five-game homestand against UMass Lowell, Providence, Merrimack, UMass and Northeastern
- Nov. 27 and 28: St. Pete Showcase in St. Petersburg, Florida, against College of Charleston and BYU
- Dec. 2: at Indiana
- Dec. 10: Bryant (home); Dec. 13: at Quinnipiac
The 18-game ACC schedule is split evenly between home and road games. BC opens league play at Virginia on Dec. 6 and at Miami on Dec. 22, then hosts Louisville on New Year’s Eve, according to the ACC schedule release. Home dates include Duke on Jan. 21 and Notre Dame on Feb. 21. The season ends with a West Coast trip to Cal on Feb. 25 and Stanford on Feb. 28.
What the ACC preseason poll says
Duke, the defending ACC champion after back-to-back Elite Eight trips, was picked first with 49 of 76 first-place votes. Louisville was second, followed by North Carolina, Notre Dame and NC State. BC got 170 points, 66 behind 17th-place Pitt. Notre Dame guard Hannah Hidalgo was named Preseason Player of the Year. The ACC sent a record nine teams to last season’s NCAA Tournament, the league said.
Popovec-Goss framed the first season around progress. “Measuring our wins and losses, not just in the stat column but in our progression, is going to be really, really important over these first couple of years,” she said in Charlotte, according to BC Athletics.
More BC women’s sports coverage
BC’s other women’s teams are already in season. Women’s hockey split with No. 12 Cornell, and volleyball, field hockey and soccer are covered in our weekend roundup. On the men’s side, hockey tied No. 4 Denver. More is on The Boston Report’s college sports hub.
Sources
- ACC: Duke selected as ACC favorite, Hidalgo named Preseason Player of the Year
- BC Athletics: Boston College names Kate Popovec-Goss head coach
- BC Athletics: Eagles appear in the Queen City (ACC Tipoff feature)
- BC Athletics: 2026-27 non-conference schedule
- BC Athletics: 2026-27 ACC schedule
Additional sources
- The Heights (BC student newspaper): BC hires Kate Popovec-Goss
- BC Athletics: ACC Tipoff attendees
- BC Athletics: Nuria Ausaverri added to roster
- ESPN/AP: Boston College hires Bradley’s Kate Popovec-Goss
Featured image: The arena bowl at Conte Forum, home of Boston College basketball. Photo by Greenstrat via Wikimedia Commons, public domain, cropped.
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