Of the Way » Sports

The wacky, circular world of ACC football, part 2

Michael Duchemin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:05:21 +0000

It has happened for the second year in a row. Last year, on this very day, I observed that you could start with any ACC football team and go in a circle all the way around to the beginning. This year…

Maryland beat Clemson

Clemson beat Boston College

Boston College beat Virginia

Virginia beat North Carolina

North Carolina beat Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech beat Miami

Miami beat Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech beat Florida State

Florida State beat Wake Forest

Wake Forest beat Duke

Duke beat North Carolina State

North Carolina State beat Maryland

Vegas generally has odds for everything, but I don’t know whether they have the odds for a wacky, circular ACC hat trick next year.

The wacky, circular world of ACC football

Michael Duchemin — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 05:15:50 +0000

It was a rather strange year for ACC football in which every team except for Duke and Virginia is bowl eligible. During the regular season:

Duke beat Virginia

Virginia beat Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech beat Clemson

Clemson beat Boston College

Boston College beat Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech beat Maryland

Maryland beat Wake Forest

Wake Forest beat Florida State

Florida State beat NC State

NC State beat UNC

UNC beat Miami

Miami beat Duke

There are several ways I could have gotten from Point A, around the circle, and back to Point A. To make matters even weirder, there were some great non-conference wins and some horrible non-conference losses.

Georgia Tech beat Georgia (the preseason number 1)

NC State lost 41-10 against South Florida (who are 2-4 in the Big East)

Clemson beat up on South Carolina

Wake Forest lost to Navy

Maryland beat California (ranked 23 at the time)

That same Maryland team lost to Middle Tennessee (yes, Middle Tennessee) the week before.

Duke beat an SEC team. (Granted, it was Vanderbilt.)

Virginia Tech lost to East Carolina.

Wake Forest beat Mississippi, the only team to defeat Florida.

It has really been a difficult season to pin down. Of the 12 ACC teams, 9 have been ranked at some point of the season, but most of the time it has been between 20 and 25 when they were ranked.

If Middle Tennessee beat Maryland, and Maryland beat Wake Forest, and Wake Forest beat Ole Miss, and Ole Miss beat Florida, does that mean that Middle Tennessee could beat Florida? No. It just means the ACC has been wildly inconsistent.

They don’t call it a “suicide squeeze” for nothing

Michael Duchemin — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:20:55 +0000

If Mike Scioscia’s gamble in the top of the ninth last night had paid off, he would have looked like a genius. As it was, I can’t fault him for making the call with one of his best bunters at the plate in Erick Aybar. It just didn’t work. It is not quite the equivalent of scoring a touchdown to pull within one point and then choosing to go for two and win the game. Delcarmen is a strikeout pitcher and there’s no guarantee that you can bring the runner in from third with one out. The problem with that play is that if it doesn’t work and you lose the runner at third (which is what happened), it completely deflates your team.

Kudos to Varitek for sniffing it out and playing the run-down perfectly. I’ll take him hitting 40 points lower than his current .220 for the amount of runs he’ll save you over the course of a season.