Just a few months after losing to the University of Wisconsin in the national championship, the No. 2 Boston University women’s hockey is kicking off a highly-anticipated season with a United States College Hockey Online ranking and the title of preseason favorite for Hockey East.

The second-place USCHO ranking is the highest the Terriers have ever been ranked to start off a season in program history.

“We’ve got to be ready to play,” said BU coach Brian Durocher. “I can feel the target getting a little bit bigger on our backs … We got some talent here to be a pretty good team.”

The Terriers, who had an overall record 27-7-4 last season and 15-3-3 record in conference, earned 55 points in the coaches poll, four more points than rival Boston College. BU took six out of the eight first place votes with the other two going to the Eagles.

For Durocher, the preseason rankings don’t serve as more than publicity for the team.

“Those rankings don’t get our present team anything,” Durocher said. “They’re nice articles to send to future recruits but the reality is we still have to go out and play the games.”

The key to the season, according to Durocher, will be trying to abstain from being over-confident going into games.

“I think that if you can carry that sort of underdog mentality,” Durocher said, “that blue collar work ethic and not think that it’s all about just scoring goals or making fancy plays but again blocking shots and keeping the shifts short, moving the puck around, indirect passes rather than always trying to put it tape-to-tape where it can be picked off in the middle of the rink.

“Those things do add up in a positive light particularly when you have good players. I know we’ve got some talented players here but we want to make sure that we play hard and respect our opponents every single night.”