It's UMass upset - at way things went

Memo to the Boston College band: Enough already with the "Sweet Caroline." Bad enough the Red Sox fans have lost their minds. Try "Brother Love" if you want to go Diamond on us.

Now, then. We had ourselves a football game at The Heights yesterday. The 12th-ranked BC Eagles were playing the role of congenial host to the ol' State U, quite the big fish in its own playoff division pond, ranked second in the nation behind Montana. BC won, 24-14, and if you think that means UMass went away quietly, saying, "Well, we fought the good fight," ah, no. That was not the case.

"Like I told the guys, and I'll say it here," said Minutemen coach Don Brown. "There are no moral victories at UMass."

UMass is way beyond that now. This is a team that played for the national championship last year, and would like to think it might be doing the same thing again this year. And the team the Minutemen lost to was Appalachian State, a squad everyone is now hip to after its stunning conquest of Michigan a few weeks ago.

Does it not follow that if Appalachian State can win in the Big House before 110,000 people, the lads from Amherst would have every reason to believe they could win in Chestnut Hill? That's hardly a reach.

But this was not to be that day, and a good part of the reason was their self-destructive nature. I mean, 17 penalties for 114 yards? What's up with that?

"We've been plagued with penalties all year," said senior linebacker Jason Hatchell with a sigh.

"A lot of them were due to effort and energy," pointed out Brown, who was perhaps more agitated about some noncalls (especially in the area of pass interference) than he was about what was whistled. "It's amazing that even with the 17 penalties it was a 3-point game in the third quarter."

Yes, sir. When Jeremy Horne took a pass from quarterback Liam Coen, broke a tackle, and scampered into the end zone to complete a 35-yard collaboration, the Minutemen, who entered the second half trailing by a 17-0 score, were right there at 17-14. You can imagine the thoughts that were going through the heads of the UMass people.

BC responded by grinding out a 10-play, 65-yard drive. It was back to 24-14, and that's the way it would end.

In the end, the pedigree showed. Supposed Heisman Trophy candidate Matt Ryan had a so-so day (24 for 42, a modest 204 yards, and one passing TD), but he did make some big plays. Andre Callender rushed for 115 yards. In addition to the 65-yard drive, BC also had scoring marches of 49 and 96 yards. BC did just enough to win. But the Eagles never delivered a knockout blow, and certainly never discouraged UMass.

What's going to bug the Minutemen is the knowledge that this was far from their best shot. They had come within 10 points of the 12th-ranked team in the country, on its home field, with a subpar performance.

UMass had tried not to make too much of this game. Yes, it was going to be its one chance at a bowl division foe, and a ranked one, at that. Then throw in the whole in-state rivalry business, and it would have been very easy to make this into a semi-crusade rather than a football game.

"Oh, sure, we're in the CAA [Colonial Athletic Association]," explained Coen, who was knocked out of the game with a knee injury early in the fourth quarter, "and BC is BC. At first, you're thinking, 'We'll have to play a perfect game to beat them.' Then you start looking at the films, and you see things. You realize you don't have to play perfect football. You just have to play pretty good football."

Coen had seen something, all right. Both UMass touchdowns came on big plays. The first was a 41-yard pass to Rasheed Rancher, who beat his man, took a perfect Coen pass, and rolled into the end zone to get the Minutemen on the board in the third quarter. The Horne play was another impressive quick-strike affair.

"We just had general confidence that there were things we could do," Coen said.

There was one big what-if moment in the third quarter. It came after the Rancher touchdown, when, on second and 5 at the BC 23, Ryan Purvis caught a pass from Ryan and was then separated from the ball by Josh Jennings. It was recovered by Hatchell at the BC 35, and there was a tremendous buzz on the UMass sideline. But the call was reversed.

"It wasn't deflating," said Coen, "but it was just, 'Uhhh.' We were really psyched. We had a run play called, but we were ready for a straight man blitz and I had counter ready. I promise you if they had maxed out, we were going over the top."

Let the record show that, following an exchange of punts, UMass did score on that pretty Horne play before the third quarter was over. But we'll never know what that kind of dramatic momentum shift would have meant in the big picture had UMass scored twice in succession.

The visitors knew there was little chance of BC overlooking them, not after an entire nation saw Appalachian State shock Michigan in Ann Arbor. "I remember thinking, 'Aw, why'd they have to do that?' " recalled Coen. Michigan had lost to the (then) No. 1-ranked playoff division team, and BC had no interest in losing to the second-ranked team.

The Eagles knew very well that UMass would be bringing a legitimate team into Alumni Stadium.

So this is going to hurt for a while. UMass knows already it didn't give itself a good enough chance to pull off the upset, and the players are going to know it even more when they look at the film.

Even worse, they're looking at a bye week. They've got to wait two weeks before taking out their frustration and anger on Villanova.

"We didn't execute as well as we needed to in the first half, and we put ourselves in a huge hole," said Brown. "We came out in the second half with a renewed resolve, which I knew we would get."

The Eagles said a lot of nice things about UMass when it was over. Little did they know they had caught the Minutemen on an off day.

Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.