ACC Football: Week 5

[Olympic Fan]

A week dominated by the Louisville at Clemson matchup, Saturday night in Death Valley.

If Louisville wins, they have a clear path to the ACC title game in (well, that has not been decided yet, although Orlando is lobbying hard). If Clemson wins, we'll have to wait until the Oct. 29 Clemson visit to FSU to pencil in the Atlantic Division champ.

But that's not the only big game:

Miami at Georgia Tech (noon, ESPN2)
Notre Dame-Syracuse in East Rutherford, NY (noon, ESPN)
Virginia at Duke (12:30 p.m., ACC Network)
Buffalo at Boston College (1 p.m., ACC Extra)
North Carolina at FSU (3:30 p.m., ESPN)
Wake Forest at NC State (3:30 p.m., RSN)
Marshall at Pitt (7:30 p.m., RSN)
Louisville at Clemson (8 p.m., ABC)

The Miami-Georgia Tech game and the FSU-UNC game will have a lot of impact on the Coastal Race. Miami has looked good, but that's against a weak schedule. Georgia Tech was manhanded by Clemson last week.

UNC won a pivotal division game last week against Pitt, but FSU offers a different magnitude of test -- Larry Fedora has had a lot of success in recent years, but he's 1-8 vs. ranked teams (the one win was over No. 23 Pitt a year ago). In fact, UNC is 1-12 in its last 13 games against ranked opponents.

[OldPhiKap]

Go Duke.

Go to Hell Carolina.

Good luck to Wake and State, may both teams play well.

[Wander]

ND-Syracuse has 5 touchdowns less than 5 minutes in. Glad that defensive coordinator firing is doing a lot of good.

[ipatent]

that Clemson gets back to the final game and redeems itself. Tonight is their biggest early season challenge.

[Troublemaker]

Nice comeback by Louisville from a 28-10 halftime deficit. 28-26 now.

Heading into the 4th quarter, Louisville has run about 30 more plays than Clemson and leads time of possession 28 min to 17 min.

Should be the fresher team in the 4th.

[Bob Green]

Nice comeback by Louisville from a 28-10 halftime deficit. 28-26 now.

Heading into the 4th quarter, Louisville has run about 30 more plays than Clemson and leads time of possession 28 min to 17 min.

Should be the fresher team in the 4th.

I still like Clemson to win this game.

[ipatent]

I still like Clemson to win this game.

Great game. Watson seemed a bit hobbled. I'll bet Clemson hopes it's the last one this year against Louisville.

[Olympic Fan]

Great game. Watson seemed a bit hobbled. I'll bet Clemson hopes it's the last one this year against Louisville.

There is little chance that could happen ... they would have to meet in the playoffs (and as an ACC fan, I would love to see two ACC teams in the Final Four).

Clemson is almost guaranteed a spot in the ACC title game now (even if by some miracle they lose to FSU). But they'll be playing UNC, Miami or Virginia Tech.

Clemson would have to lose twice in the ACC to give Louisville a chance to win the Atlantic. But they still have a great chance to qualify for the playoff -- if they can beat Houston in Houston in early November. A few other things would have to break for them -- but unless Washington runs the table, the Pac 12 its going to have a hard time getting a team in ... and unless Baylor runs the table, the Big 12 is going to get left out.

I think there is a good chance that the Big Ten (the Ohio State-Michigan winner), the SEC (Alabama), and the ACC (Clemson and/or Louisville) are very likely to provide the four playoff teams.

Still a long way to go, but interesting to watch.

[Troublemaker]

I still like Clemson to win this game.

Great call, Bob. I thought Louisville might've had it when they went up 8 points in the 4th quarter, but Clemson came back. Man, football is so high-scoring these days.

[Bob Green]

Great call, Bob.

Thanks, it was a great game. I was up at 4:30 am getting ready for a 5:15 am departure to Durham, but I stayed up until midnight watching every second of the Clemson win. Long day...

[ipatent]

Six ACC teams in the top 25 this week.

[Olympic Fan]

Six ACC teams in the top 25 this week.

And three in the top 10

[Newton_14]

I still like Clemson to win this game.
Great call my friend! Mrs Newton_14 and I watched the entire game start to finish. Awesome ball game obviously. So many ups and downs. The turnovers both took away from the greatness of the play and added to the thrillingness of the game at the same time. Back to back to back turnovers in that one exchange. Louisville showed a lot of heart in rallying from 28-10 (would have been 35-10, were it not for the fumble in the endzone to start the 3rd qtr.), and Clemson showed a lot of heart in rallying late in a 4th qtr after losing the lead.

The wide receiver who caught the last pass didn't show a lot of heart though... man he did not fight at all to get to that first down marker. Very strange.


Great game though. The only bad part is we don't get to see Louisville torch unc-cheats defense for a gazillion points... Guess we will have to settle for watching Clemson do it instead. :)

[DukieInKansas]

My bonus for watching until the very end - getting to one of my nephews in the tunnel as the team was leaving the field. Way to go, Clemson! :D

[ipatent]

The wide receiver who caught the last pass didn't show a lot of heart though... man he did not fight at all to get to that first down marker. Very strange.

He must have thought he was past the first down marker.

[Bob Green]

In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due:

http://www.foxsports.com/college-football/story/north-carolina-has-college-footballs-best-qb-who-nobody-is-talking-about-100216


He’s completing 76 percent of his passes and has a sterling 13-0 TD-INT ratio. He’s also run for four touchdowns.

Ugh!