McGuire has been named to the pre-season Wallace award watch list, an award that is given annually to the best player in college baseball.
The senior from Harwich, Mass. won Big East player of the year in 2005, but struggled a bit last year in the ACC, batting .264 with three home runs and 37 RBIs.
Ayers, the punter on BC's football team, will again be looked to as the catalyst for the Eagles' offense.
The junior right fielder led the team last season with a .340 batting average and stole 17 bases in 24 attempts last year.
Middle-infielder Ryan Hutchinson, who will hit behind Ayers, hit .308 in 2006 and swiped 18 bases on 25 attempts. Senior co-captain Pete Frates, who will start in center field collected 19 steals last season, and said that BC will continue to play scrappy baseball, "We're still going to play our birdball approach, where we bunt, steal, do all that stuff, but I think we are going to knock some runs around and when we need to go run-for-run with some of these bigger teams that like to hit homeruns, I think we'll be able to stay with them."
The Eagles offense will face a major test when it embarks on its annual spring break trip to Florida to face the Boston Red Sox and newly signed pitcher Daisuke Matuszaka.
The Japanese rookie will be making his long -awaited debut for the Sox, and the BC hitters will face one of the most talented pitchers in the world.
Frates, a Beverly, Mass., native, talked about the excitement of facing Daisuke: "We get The Herald at school, and every day it's Daisuke on the cover. Every day. It's going to be wild, playing the Red Sox every year is one of our most exciting games and everybody wants to know about that so we look forward to that, but this year, there's almost a mystery around it, because no one has seen him pitch here in the states and it's going to be his first outing and the Japanese media is going to be there, so it's going to be wild."
McGuire talked about the approach he will take against the Sox import, "It's going to be awesome. He's proven himself in Japan, and the MVP of the World Baseball Classic, we're just going to try to have fun with it. I don't really know how to approach Daisuke, he's got seven pitches, but hopefully I'll get a fastball during my at-bat."
Spring Break
