In Thursday's ACC action, two interesting games: for the teeth pulling fans, Clemson and Virginia will go at it; halftime score could be 20-14. It's a game for people who really love hard work on defense. Offense? Not so much. That part could be pretty uninspiring. But as far as rough, tough defenses go, this should be interesting. There will be some sore bodies on Friday.
| Thursday's ACC Action | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Teams | Times | TV | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Clemson @ Virginia | 7:00 PM | ESPN2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Maryland @ Virginia Tech | 9:00 PM | ACC Network | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Our instinct is to pick Maryland over Virginia Tech, but consider: in their last two games, the Hokies pushed Miami and forced UNC into overtime. We know it's not a vintage UNC team, but that's still impressive.
Maryland did beat Wake soundly, but that's not saying much given Wake's road struggles. Otherwise, they were lucky to beat State, lost to UNC by 10, barely got BC, lost to Duke by 20 and a struggling FSU by two. They're not tearing things up.
We think Virginia Tech has a great shot here at a fairly rare win.
Speaking of Wake Forest, Eamon Brennan, who wrote a memorable column about unhappy Wake fans earlier this season, says they're still not happy. Worse, they're now gunning for A.D. Ron Wellman too.
A new site is up: Buzz Out. It's dedicated to getting rid of Jeff Bzdelik. You have to give them points for presentation even if context is lacking.
We can understand the frustration, but as an example, Dino Gaudio: though it wasn't immediately evident, the program was deteriorating under his watch. Bzdelik didn't exactly get a clean slate. People forget, but Gaudio at one point was sure that his talented players weren't going to the NBA. They pretty freely expressed their dissatisfaction to him during games. It wasn't a healthy situation.
You can't really expect the A.D. to say, well look, the guy didn't really have control over his team so he had to go. But that's what it came down to. In another year or so, things would have imploded. They did anyway, but now Bzdelik gets the blame instead of Gaudio.
Also, Here's Jim Sumner with a look at Miami's rise to power. It really is an interesting thing to consider, somewhat like Wake's title a few years back in football. Who saw that coming?