Best win of the week: BC staying undefeated in Blacksburg

What more can be said about BC’s miraculous comeback last Thursday? In a span of a few minutes BC fans went from thinking, "Well the ACC Championship would still be a nice accomplishment" to "WOW WE ARE STILL IN THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE!"

The 14-10 comeback victory was unquestionably one of the top 3 biggest wins in school history. Putting BC’s National Championship hopes aside for a second, this win keeps the Eagles in the driver's seat to win the ACC Atlantic Division. A win over Clemson November 17^th, matched with another win in one of the remaining 3 games clinches the Eagles a trip to the ACC Championship game in Jacksonville.

As for the big prize, this year’s BC team kind of reminds me of the Ohio State team that won it all 5 years ago because they seem to be able to pull out close games every week. If you remember that OSU team, they seemed to sneak out victories week after week in every different way possible. It seems like the Eagles are doing the same thing this season. For BC’s sake, hopefully these close calls don’t bite them anytime soon.

Runner-Up: Clemson thumping Maryland 30-17

The score isn’t indicative of how much Clemson dominated a banged-up Maryland team on Saturday. The Tigers went up 30-3 on the Terps before allowing a couple of 4^th quarter garbage TD’s. The key to defeating Clemson is stopping their running game, and Maryland did a horrendous job of that as the Tigers ran for 249 yards rushing on the day.

What does this game do for Clemson? It gives the Tigers an outside chance at still securing the ACC Atlantic title. If the Tigers win out, and BC loses two games (one would come to Clemson), then the boys from South Carolina would find themselves in the ACC Championship game.

As for Maryland, they fall to 4-4 and there appears a very strong possibility that the ‘Terps will finish 6-6 and not make a bowl game this year. Their “signature win” against Rutgers looks less and less impressive as the weeks go by.

Worst loss of the week: Virginia Tech blowing a lead to BC

VT Defensive Coordinator Bud Foster said after the game, “I know people think we were in some sort of a 'prevent' defense, but, we were in the same defense that we played all night, but, Matt Ryan made some nice throws down the stretch and he showed why he's one of the top quarterbacks in the”.

Hey, I don’t claim to be a defensive guru, nor am I one to think that Foster is not telling the truth, however it didn’t seem to be that VT was running an “identical” defense to what they ran the rest of the game.

Runner-Up: Virginia falling to last place NC State 29-24

I’ve been trying to tell anyone who’d listen for weeks that Virginia is not a Top 20 team this year. To Al Groh’s credit, the team has been really overachieving all season long and have pulled wins out of their behind each week. With that being the case, it’s not good when Virginia falls to the last place team in the Atlantic Division. It looks like Virginia’s going to have to beat VT to get into the ACC Championship.

ACC Power Rankings

1. Boston College

2. Virginia Tech

3. Clemson

4. Wake Forest

5. Florida State

6. Virginia

7. Miami

8. Maryland

9. Georgia Tech

10. North Carolina

11. NC State

12. Duke

Game of the Week: Florida State @ Boston College

Next to a Mid-November trip to Clemson, this will be BC’s toughest challenge of the regular season. FSU has the talent and speed on defense to go toe-to-toe with BC’s offense. Additionally, the ‘Noles are loaded at the WR position and can take advantage of some weak parts of the BC secondary. The real question is if the FSU O-line will give their QB the time to hit his receivers. That hasn’t often been the case this year, so I’m not sure why things will change this weekend, but who knows.

Runner-Up: Wake Forest @ Virginia

Al Groh and Jim Grobe have done a fantastic job to put their teams within striking distance for 1^st place in early November. At the start of the year it would be tough to find many people who were predicting that even with WF coming off of their ACC Virginia controls it’s own destiny and can afford no more than 1 loss to