BOSTON (AP) – Jared Dudley’s friends in California can’t escape the buzz about Boston College. They hear it on sports shows and see it as scores crawl by on the bottom of their television screens.

“People are paying attention to you everywhere. When are you going to lose?'” said Dudley, BC’s second leading scorer. “If we keep playing the way we’re playing, we might not.”

The publicity for a team stuck in a corner of the country where pro sports dominate may be as surprising as the Eagles’ perfection. At 18-0, they’re one of two undefeated Division I teams and reached No. 5 in The Associated Poll on Monday, their highest spot in school history.

They’re in truly elite company.

Top-ranked Illinois is 21-0 and followed by North Carolina, Kansas and Duke. Then comes BC, which hasn’t made it out of the second round of the NCAA tournament since 1994 and was 6-21 in 1998-99 after a dispute with the admissions office led to top recruits going elsewhere.

The roll call of powerhouses resumes in the next three spots with Kentucky, Wake Forest and 2003 champion Syracuse.

Do the Eagles belong in the same company as those seven big shots who have won eight of the last 17 national championships?

“Who says we’re not a big shot?” center Nate Doornekamp said.

The Eagles know exactly who they are – a deliberate team that doesn’t blow out opponents, a level-headed group that knows the record that counts most is their 7-0 mark in the Big East. Take a team lightly and the first loss won’t be far behind.

Their next two games are against mediocre Big East teams, at home against West Virginia tonight and at Seton Hall on Saturday night. BC won at West Virginia by 20 points on Jan. 16 and would tie the school record 19-game winning streak set in 1968-69 by winning Tuesday.

By the end of the night, BC could be the only unbeaten team because Illinois plays at No. 12 Michigan State.

“Big East games are always tough, no matter who you play,” said Craig Smith, who came from the Los Angeles area and leads the Eagles in scoring and rebounding. “You can’t ever let up in this league. We have to bring our A’ game, because now we have a target on our back.”

Maintaining a perfect record hasn’t been easy. BC won one game in overtime, another in double overtime. It scored the last seven points to beat Villanova 67-66 on Jan. 19, then edged Providence 78-75 last Wednesday.

“It’s just our style of play,” Doornekamp said. “We go possession by possession. All our possessions are long. We wear out other teams.”

The Eagles showed signs of breaking into the top ranks last season when they went 24-11 and lost to national runnerup Georgia Tech in the second round. Every key player returned except center Uka Agbai.

“We had a great feeling about the team,” Doornekamp said. “I don’t know if we thought we could do this but we’re having a lot of fun.”

The Eagles have nine games left before the Big East tournament. The schedule includes three ranked teams – No. 8 Syracuse, No. 16 Pittsburgh and No. 24 Villanova. It will be their only meetings of the season against Syracuse and Pittsburgh and both are at home.

It also will be their last conference games since BC will play in the Atlantic Coast Conference next season. All the more reason for opponents to want to beat a team leaving them behind.

“Coaches and fans definitely are mad at us even though players have nothing to do with it,” Dudley said. “But, hey, that’s OK. A conference title would be a good way to go out”

But that’s hardly guaranteed.

“One loss puts us right into the pack of the Big East and it puts us right into the pack nationally,” Doornekamp said. “There’s some very good teams with one loss.”

For now, there’s only one other team with no losses.

“If we stick to what our game plan is we should be fine,” Smith said. “You can’t get caught up in all the hype. You smile about the ranking, but then you get back to business.”