Last week was fun! Boston College made us all look silly showing the life they haven’t had all season and coming back to beat NC State but I think I’m speaking not just for the Tar Heel blog writers but for all the fans from UNC when I say it’s kind of stupid we wouldn’t mind being every week. Other than that, though, the ACC’s bad teams stayed bad, the good teams stayed decent, and we still have no idea about the deal with Syracuse and Louisville.
In the standings, a few misplaced picks from Al took him from a tie for first place to a slim hold on third place with a few games where he could lose the podium entirely, picking with the minority on both. Yours truly would seem most likely to take their place, just one game behind and have the other team picked in these two key matchups. Saturday will indeed be interesting…
I’ll note before posting the draft picks that we are, of course, one game short of what we expected, as UVA rightly canceled their game against Coastal Carolina. Our hearts go out to the families, loved ones and community of Monday’s shooting victims.
Duke-Pittsburgh is almost certainly the most interesting game on the ACC slate this weekend; Duke is a limited team playing good football and Pitt is a good team playing limited football. Pitt is a home touchdown favorite, but I feel like he should be closer to me; while the staff might be biased due to their relative performances against UNC, Pitt’s only impressive football was recently beating UVA, and that’s hardly worth bragging about. And I must say that I appreciate McKay for choosing this school in Lynchburg which lost against UConn last week, although Virginia Tech is the worst team in the conference.
On the next slide, NC status and Louisville is pretty hard to figure out because the state offense seems to have started to click with MJ Morris at the helm and they’ve found ways to beat every other mid-tier team in the ACC, but after having lost to Boston College last week, the rebound after losing Devin Leary might have faded. Louisville, meanwhile, has been alternately terrifying and terrible over the past few weeks, with quarterback Malik Cunningham in and out of lineup as he battles multiple injuries. We have what I consider a healthy anti-state bias here at THB, so having just two writers pick the Wolfpack against a team that doesn’t know who will start at quarterback is pretty on the mark. And finally we come to WakeForest-Syracuse, who are probably the two hardest teams to figure out in the ACC at the moment -Cuse got off to a flying start and have completely crumbled since Garrett Shrader started dealing with an upper body injury , although he says he is much better now. Wake Forest were the hottest team in the ACC before Sam Hartman inexplicably started turning the ball around at a higher rate than he has ever done in his career and losing very winnable games for his crew. One of those slides has to end here, and most of us are betting on Wake – and can you blame us, with how many times has UNC been a good game for struggling offenses?
Who are you watching this weekend? Do you have any choices you strongly disagree with? Let us know in the comments!
