Clemson’s caused us all enough misery over the last two weeks, so let’s look for joy in other people’s misery.

My misery: For weeks I’ve continued to say that Wake Forest was just a ragtag bunch of pretenders. Well those little bastards have done nothing but prove me wrong, wrong, wrong, and I feel like a giant retard for it. And in general my ability to correctly pick the winners of ACC games is roughly about 40% at this point. I made a prediction table after week 8. Based on that, this week’s picks are: Clemson over NCSU, BC over Duke, FSU over Wake, Maryland over Miami, and Georgia Tech over UNC.

Boston College: They were just about to ease into the Atlantic Division Drivers Seat until they got beat by that indefatigable Wake Forest team. Ask yourself this though, are a pair of losses to Virginia Tech and Maryland really worse than a single loss to Wake Forest. That’s a toss up right there.

The ACC Florida Teams: FSU and Miami are having a rough go of it this year. Each team is just 5-4. And thus far they both have losing records in conference.

Miami: Speaking of the U, they’ve got horrible, horrible fan support. A pretty good Virginia Tech team came to town last week and only 41,504 fans showed up at the Orange Bowl.

With all the regular season travels completed for the Tigers, everyone is glad that the team can stay home and play only in Death Valley. But just how important is playing at home? I decided to look into the numbers to see.

To keep things relevant, I looked at only the statistics since Tommy Bowden became coach starting in the ’99 season. Since that time his teams have gone 36-12 at home, 19-20 on the road, and 1-0 at neutral sites during the regular season. That leaves the bowls as neutral site games, in which Bowden is 3-3. Road trips are clearly a 50-50 proposition.

For simplicity, I’ll leave out neutral site games.

In percentage form, the home winning percentage is 75, with the road being 48.7. So the chances of winning by playing at home are improved by about 54%.

However, with two important league games looming, I went ahead and took only league games into consideration. Here, Bowden is 20-10 at home, and 16-16 on the road. Compare that 66.7% home winning percentage to the 50% road winning percentage, and the team is only about 33% more likely to win any given league game at home.

There is some bad news to be added to this year’s 4-0 start at home. So far under Tommy Bowden, we’ve never had an undefeated home season. And through 7 full seasons, there have been only three 1 loss seasons. However if we consider only home conference games, there is a lone season where the team did not drop a conference game at home. That year was 2003.

So how does Clemson compare to other ACC teams under their current head coaches? Read on…
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What the fuck is wrong with Miami?

It’s bad that they’re playing mediocre football. It’s worse that they have among the worst fan support in the country (Wake might bring in more fans than the U on any given weekend). The worst, though, is that in less than 2 years they have had two published fights in practice and now two brawls during/right after games.

Larry Coker is well beyond the stage where he can claim isolated incidents. Miami is systematically failing and flailing. Larry Coker is full of absolute horse shit. His supporters can bark all day about how great a man he is, but his program is an embarrassment to everyone at every level of college football.

“We’ve got a strong grip on this program,” Coker said.

Horse shit!

“Although this is obviously a setback.”

Gee thanks Captain Obvious.

“I think this will affect the image of this program, but in a very positive way,” Coker said. “This won’t be a negative for the University of Miami.”

Holy shit are you kidding me? Did Larry Coker really just say that? Is he the stupidest man alive?

Larry Coker’s head. Plate. NOW!

I don’t care if Miami has already suspended at least 8 players. After they fire the whole staff on Monday and revoke scholarships, I don’t care how many games they’ll have to forfeit until they can field a team again. In this respect Coker may be right. Once his impotent regime is left bloodied and damn-near lifeless in South Florida’s worst gutter, there is little place for Miami to go other than up.

UPDATE:   Reports now indicate that many of Miami’s players were also in a post-game fight.  Gotta protect the U.

The remaining ACC schedule is about 50% resolved on paper. The following results are this gnomes view on how the games should play out to favor the Tigers chances at the ACCCG and rankings.

Duke v FSU
Since the ‘Noles have dug themselves a hole I will be rooting for them so that our win over them and our division come out looking better. I say that as if there is a chance that the ‘Noles could lose but ya never know, the Tigers lost to the Dukies on their home field once!

Maryland v Virginia
Once again another team that the Tigers will play versus one that they won’t see in the season. And again, the way Virginia has been playing this year, I don’t think that there really is any question that the Terps won’t run away with it. After a close loss to the Jackets, the Terps should be looking to keep their season in tact with a win in UVA. Of course the loss could be demoralizing and have the Terps in a slump. A loss for the Terps would separate them from the top of the division with 2 losses in conference, but I don’t see that happening so if anything as win would strengthen Clemson’s schedule when they play the Terps in the Valley later in the season.

Miami v Fla Intl
Seriously, let’s just get to the remaining good ACC game. There hasn’t been a game besides VT and BC this week that isn’t already decided on paper. Miami needs to get some good press and needs to light up FAI. No Coker hotseat heat here for once.

UNC v South Fla
I would say that this game is an ACC lock but UNC is on a downhill slide this year and USF usually has a good team rolling for them. From my developing stats page USF has #54 overall offense and #28 overall defense. This could be Buntings farewell song and could be a good bottom dweller game to watch a small school get some props by playing and possibly defeating an ACC team.

NC State v Wake Forest
This is the ACC game, besides VT/BC, that Clemson fans will have their eyes on this weekend. After the undefeated streak ending, 4th quarter meltdown against the Tigers, the Deacs head to Raleigh, the giant killing field, to face a hot Wolfpack team. NC State may be on a high after knocking BC and FSU down a notch over the previous weeks and may not see Wake as that much of a threat. I look for Wake to keep their smoke and mirror offense alive and take the pack down for their first ACC loss thus propelling them to the 1 loss familiarity that is the Atlantic division.

Not as much as getting shot at 6:30 outside your coach’s house who you happen to rent from, but it still stings a little. Coker announced the suspension of four players for the opener, notably the team’s leading receiver and rusher in Ryan Moore and Tyrone Moss. It’s not like they are opening with SE State – Aberdeen campus either. FSU, I guess Christmas does come early for some. Now can you keep from evening the playing field and keep your own guys on the field? This doesn’t help the Tigers in the grand scheme however as FSU should roll now, tacking on an all important W in conference.

In continuing the “baseball’s just a crazy game” theme, here’s the ACC component of the latest pseudo-RPI:

        Division I   Overall
Rank Rating   W   L      W   L    Team   

1    0.637   37  13     37  13   Clemson
4    0.624   37  13     37  13   Georgia Tech
10   0.609   40  10     40  10   North Carolina
12   0.607   37  13     37  13   Florida State
13   0.604   33  16     33  16   Miami, Florida
14   0.603   34  16     34  16   North Carolina State
15   0.602   40  10     40  10   Virginia
20   0.595   32  16     32  16   Wake Forest

Those will (in all likelihood) be your 8 ACC Tournament teams. It looks like it will be a close proxy for the national championship.

The first game of the tourney is May 24th, with play the championship game to be played on the 28th. Who’s going to buy me a plane ticket to Jacksonville?