In case you’ve been living under a rock or hiding beneath an umbrella for the last 24 hours, I’ll let you know that Wake Forest slogged its way to a 9-6 victory over Georgia Tech in rainy Jacksonville.

This game was boring to an extreme. The lack of excitement meant I was left alone with my thoughts, which I’ll try to replicate below.

I couldn’t believe that Wake and Georgia Tech were actually playing in a championship game. Take away all the extra signage, and the layperson would have had no clue that this was a game of significant importance. But not only was this particular game bad, the informed viewer realized that the two teams’ only particular trait is that they are good at not-losing.

I’m willing to put money on the table right now that Georgia Tech will be the surprise team of 2007. I don’t know who all leaves the team, but the departure of 9-for-29 Reggie Ball may be the best medicine the team could ingest.

That the game was between Wake and GT underscored the crappiness of the ACC this season as well as how bad Clemson screwed up by dropping 3 league games to teams that did not make it to the championship game.

And finally, could Alltel stadium have been any emptier? The extremely poor attendance could be attributable to a number of things: the schools playing or the weather, perhaps. But I’ll go on to say that I’m not a big fan of Jacksonville and that it just may be the case that no one else is either. Jax isn’t really far enough south to get the advantages of “Florida weather” and its otherwise not central to… well anything really. Now I don’t know that there are any cities which can draw a crowd regardless of teams, but it seems to me that Jacksonville is not that city.

I’ll finish with words borrowed (stolen?) from SMQ:

Congrats and all, good luck in Miami, but damn, this is hardly a champion to get excited about, in a league won by pure, grisly attrition.

The Gnomes Schedule has been updated and here are some near season end facts:

The ACC has recorded, according to my photoshop, 74 wins and 58 losses for the season.

If Wake wins this weekend against Maryland the ACCCG will be between two teams that Clemson had defeated in the season; Wake Forest and Georgia Tech. Wake will have one more divisional win than BC (plays Miami) so that would put them into the CG. THAT should piss the seniors off!!

If not for the VT blowout, Clemson would have had another woulda shoulda coulda season with the 1 point losses to BC and Maryland. The total points lost in the season adds to 19 points, and SHOULD STAY AT 19 TOO!!!

This has to be the first time since FSU entered the ACC as well as Miami that both teams have losing conference records. But, ya know the media says the ACC is down so that means everyone else just SUCKS. Thanks media.

Finally, it’s been fun keeping up with the schedule thanks for taking part. Not sure how to get a basketball schedule together as that would be HUGE but if I get enough requests I may be able to get something together. It’s been fun folks, now let’s cheer the Tigers on to one more dominating Senior 4-0 class over the Shamecocks.

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.

About 3 1/2 weeks ago I suggested that Wake Forest deserved to be called a “pretender.”

I said:

The published news reports would have called Wake a pretender. Instead “they are for real.” I hope it gets taken to them in their next 6 games not because I harbor ill will toward the team but because I’m sick of seeing them get undeserved credit as some kind of really good team. If they win at NC State and UNC I’ll eat my words.

Well Drew has token note (not that I know who Drew is). And I am eating.

The point is overwhelming clear. Wake is for real. They are a great team.

Why last week they had a convincing come-from-behind victory against 1-7 North Carolina. The game before they walloped 3-5 NC State by 2 points. Throw in their earlier 1 point thriller of a victory against Duke, and Wake has won the State Title. They beat the Research Triangle — which has an impressive combined 4-20 record — by a net total of 10 points. Wow!

You should know that the Wake Forest juggernaut has won its seven games against teams that are a combined 15-42 (43 if Rutgers takes care of business against UConn tonight). And 3-4 (probably soon to be 3-5) UConn has the best record of the teams Wake has beaten.

Certainly they will knife right through Boston College (7-1), FSU (4-4), Virginia Tech (6-2), and Maryland (6-2).

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…
Read the rest of this entry »

Iowa has lost in a close game to Indiana.

NC State has lost to Wake Forest in another close game.

As Iowa and Michigan was the only other game next week that could have topped the Clemson Georgia Tech game for Gameday it seems that the result of the Iowa Indiana game made the decision even clearer. As NC State has lost that puts them in the 1 loss column with the division and places Clemson on top with 3 wins in conference. That means that Clemson and Georgia Tech are both leading their divisions. Top 15 divisional leaders squaring off on ESPN, one with the highest rushing offense and the other with one of the greatest receivers in the nation, what else would Gameday want!! Now all we have to do is sit and wait for the confirmation. Clemson boards are going nuts with the potential of Gameday in Clemson. Just add that as one more factor in what is well becoming one heck of a highly anticipated and nationally focused game.

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.

I’m a little pressed for time right now, so this will have to come in two installments. Before I go on to look at the next 4 upcoming games, let me quickly comment on last week’s game.

In previous forecasts, I had called for Clemson to win by 20. Obviously they did not win by 20, nor even the 16 required to cover the spread. They did, however, manage to play 3 horrible offensive quarters and walk away with a 10 point victory. Major credit goes to the Clemson defense for keeping it close for those quarters. They made the Wake offense look average at best. If we could go back and put in an average special teams performance ::coughs:: kickoffs ::coughs:: and the typical offense, the Tigers would have won by 30. The published news reports would have called Wake a pretender. Instead “they are for real.” I hope it gets taken to them in their next 6 games not because I harbor ill will toward the team but because I’m sick of seeing them get undeserved credit as some kind of really good team. If they win at NC State and UNC I’ll eat my words. And since rooting against teams based on media hype ::coughs:: Notre Dame ::coughs:: doesn’t ever work out for me, I’ll be keeping a bottle of A1 around because I’m sure those words will be tough as leather and taste like ass.

And let me add this about my forecasts. I’m including a forecast margin of victory and then a prediction. The forecast is what I think the Tigers are realisticaly capable of winning by. Anything less will be disappointing. It means that the team either underperformed or I gave too little credit to the opposition. The predictions will serve more as my gut instinct and what I would bet on if I were gambling.

And because I’m busy and we have a Thursday night game, I’ll get this published and do the rest tomorrow.
On to the Temple game. Read the rest of this entry »