Brimming with confidence: Boston College doesn't need media affirmation to know it can go far this season.(College Basketball)

There are 10 seconds left in the basketball game, Notre Dame is ahead by five, and everybody in this building knows what is coming. Except those guys, the ones wearing uniforms the color of a nice cabernet. Their heads are held high. They are speaking calmly with each other, trying to figure a way out of this impossible situation, like the CIA spies on Alias. There is no hint of surrender among the Boston College Eagles.

This does them no good, of course--at least not here. Time is too short, and the Irish lead is too large. Suddenly, Notre Dame students overrun the court, no one really stopping to consider this is Boston College their team just vanquished. Really, now. The Eagles might win the Big East title, might earn a No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed and might even reach the Final Four, but nothing could be more unlikely than this team getting the Duke treatment.

It might be the most sincere acclaim they've received this season, though the season nearly has been perfect. The Eagles won their first 20 games and stayed unbeaten longer than any team except Illinois, but they generally were dismissed as the product of an accommodating schedule or ignored in the hope they eventually would lose a few games and drift back into the morass of the RPI standings.

"We've been in the gutter," says small forward Jared Dudley, one of the Eagles' best players.

"Every week, people have been saying we were going to get knocked off, things like that," says point guard Louis Hinnant.

This year's excellence is relatively new. The Eagles were successful last year, fifth in the Big East Conference and a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament. But they lost 10 times. At this team's present rate, it would have to play into the next decade to lose that many games.

The feeling of exclusion, though, is familiar. That is what defines Boston College basketball. None of its players was a McDonald's All-American. Most weren't considered elite prospects. BC coach Al Skinner and his assistants saw something in each of them. The players were honored--and affirmed--to be coveted by someone in the Big East.