BOSTON (AP) – Boston College will play North Carolina in the Continental Tire Bowl with a chance to finish its season on a high note after a surprising loss kept them out of a Bowl Championship Series game.

The Eagles received the invitation Tuesday after assuring officials of the game that their injured quarterback would be ready and the school’s reputation for not attracting its own fans to bowls was undeserved. The game will be played Dec. 30 in Charlotte, N.C.

“I had great faith that our athletic director was going to find us a good bowl,” coach Tom O’Brien said.

It could have been much better.

Had BC beaten underdog Syracuse last Saturday it would have gone to a BCS game, the Fiesta Bowl or the Sugar Bowl. But the 17th-ranked Eagles (8-3) were knocked out of the Top 25 when they lost 43-17 to the Orange (6-5). BC and Syracuse finished tied for the Big East title with Pittsburgh and Syracuse.

“We’ve got a lot to prove,” said quarterback Paul Peterson, who missed the Syracuse game with a broken hand. “People say we’re no good after just one game. We’re going to prove we’re a good team.”

Pittsburgh is in line for a a BCS invitation if it beats South Florida in its last regular-season game on Saturday.

BC leaves the Big East after this season for the Atlantic Coast Conference. North Carolina (6-5) is a member of the ACC.

“We played well all year and we don’t want our season to be defined by one football game,” O’Brien said. “This has been a year of extreme highs and lows” with big wins at Notre Dame and West Virginia and tough three-point losses against Wake Forest and Pittsburgh.

Athletic director Gene DeFilippo thinks the prospect of pairing an ACC team with one scheduled to enter the conference may have helped BC get the bid over Connecticut, a Big East team in which the Continental Tire Bowl also was interested. UConn was invited to the Motor City Bowl instead.

He worked to convince bowl officials that BC could bring a sizable fan contingent to fill hotel rooms and spend money.

The perception that their fans don’t travel in large numbers “was an obstacle but it’s not a fair assessment,” DeFilippo said.

He told bowl officials that four of BC’s five bowl games over the past five seasons were played farther from home and in cities less accessible by airplane than Charlotte – the Insight.com Bowl in Tucson on the last day before the new century, at the Aloha Bowl in Honolulu on Christmas Day, at the Motor City Bowl in Detroit and at the San Francisco Bowl on New Year’s Eve.

The Eagles have won their last four bowls, but those officials also wanted assurances that Peterson would be ready. O’Brien said he produced a medical record that showed Peterson can start throwing on Dec. 13 and begin practicing on Dec. 19 or 20.

“It’s got good movement (in the hand). I get the stitches out on Thursday,” said Peterson, who had to watch the loss to Syracuse from the sideline. “What can you do? I couldn’t stop from breaking my hand so it’s not worth getting all flustered about.”

DeFillipo spoke to Continental Tire Bowl officials in each of the past three days and got the bid in a phone call Tuesday morning.

“It’s like recruiting,” he said. “It’s never really sure until we got the call.”

But ending up in the Continental Tire Bowl, rather than the Fiesta or Sugar, is bittersweet for O’Brien and some of his players.

“I feel kind of a hollowness because I know our team is so good and we played so hard and Saturday it just wasn’t there,” defensive lineman and captain Tim Bulman said. “I know this team is not going to end their season the way we played Saturday.”

AP-ES-11-30-04 1712EST