The Waiting Game

With six wins, N.C. State is eligible to play in a bowl game for the first time in three seasons. State is technically eligible for any of the ACC’s bowl slots except the Orange Bowl or an at-large slot in a non-ACC affiliated bowl.

Charlotte, with the Meineke Car Care Bowl on Dec. 27, and Washington, with the inaugural EagleBank Bowl on Dec. 20, are prime targets for State’s postseason.

In other conference news…

The ACC won the season-ending ACC/SEC Challenge 3-1.

Go ahead and look it up. Other than Florida waxing Florida State (and Florida is waxing everyone at this point), it was a good day for the conference.

(That adds to a 3-3 record against the SEC earlier in the year, which is certainly solid).

When the rankings come out later today, the ACC should have its first top-15 team since the preseason (Georgia Tech), and Boston College might even join the Yellow Jackets there.

Oh, and there’s 10 bowl-eligible teams, and the conference has the enviable task of trying to find a postseason home for all of the programs.

Did someone say football?? I did!

Yes, 3 days after the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, we’re already putting football on the stove, the back burner, but the stove none-the-less. (Baseball is #1 for now)

The Sporting News released a few articles regarding ACC and National football.

Ranking the ACC coaches
4. Tom O’Brien, N.C. State. He took his lumps last year in his debut in Raleigh, but that doesn’t un-do all of the standout work T.O.B. did for years in Chestnut Hill. Just imagine if Notre Dame or Washington had hired him. I still think it’s a lead-pipe cinch that O’Brien will have the Wolfpack playing in the ACC title game within three-to-five years.

Four to watch: NC State, Miss State, Stanford, Michigan State
NC State: Don’t kid yourself, Tom O’Brien is one of the top five coaches in the game. It took him awhile to weed out the malcontents last year, but by November, the Wolfpack were playing as well as anyone in the ACC (insert your joke here).
This is how Tom O. works: First, he makes the team smarter, then tougher — and once he finds a quarterback, the winning begins. The question: Can junior Harrison Beck become that leader?

When hate overrides logic

We are NC State fans, Wolfpack Nation, the good ol’ boys, and we HATE CAROLINA.

I think more than that though, we hate Carolina fans. Those ungrateful, arrogant pricks take any and every opportunity to open their face holes and vomit some line their parents taught them or they overheard at Wal-Mart while picking up some gear on clearance.
If we take an objective look at the recent state of, well, State, I think we should reevaluate our enemies. When it comes to loathing a team and fan base the past 5 years, it is a toss up between Duke and Maryland. Between Duke’s dumb luck and Maryland’s inmates fans, no one has caused us more misery on the hardwood or football field respectively.

This isn’t really even my point though, my point is this: Even though we hate them, we should quietly cheer UNC success in the NCAA Tournament. They are the ONLY remaining ACC team, do we really want the conference to have NO TEAMS in the Elite Eight? Final Four? After the dismal season we had as a conference, it would almost surely knock us down a rung on the dominance ladder of recent history. Carolina losing does not benefit us in any way right now. For the greater good, it makes no sense to wish UNC to fail at this point.

Down time baseball banter

The Wolfpack Baseball team is currently 13-7. Just a little behind pace of my 37-19 regular season prediction. A mid week sweep of Marshall will put us back on track at 15-7.

Despite a 4-5 conference record, State is practically tied for 2nd place (with Clemson and WF) in the Atlantic Division behind 9-0 FSU. FSU is a beast of an offensive team this year. Scary good. SCARY.

For NCSU:
Clayton Shunick leads the ACC in strikeouts with 22 K in 20 innings.
Matt Payne leads the ACC in BA with 13 hits for a .520 avg.
The Pack pitching staff boasts the #2 team ERA in the ACC.

FOR ACC: FSU, Miami, and UNC are all in the top 8 nationally according to Baseball America. Oh, and in case you forgot, we host UNC in Cary this weekend for a 3 game series. Go support the PACK!!!!!!!!

I’m still pretty busy with work (am starting a new company), and haven’t seen a whole lot worth writing about anyways. This isn’t a site, like some others, that will just post items for the sake of posting ANYTHING. I respect your time too much to make this my diary of State related musings.

Hope each of you are having a good week! I am looking forward to moving back to Raleigh this summer (for good please God!), catching some baseball games, and hopefully meeting some of you in the fall for some tailgating. Go Pack!

The enigma we call the ACC schedule (UPDATED!)

Update: The site VegasWatch.net has a nice article observing the idiosyncrasies of in-conference scheduling, mainly the imbalances of every big conference minus the Pac-10 (which is still a round robin). They highlight 5 teams in all: VaTech, Wisconsin, WV, NCSU, and Illinois.

I don’t think this gets enough attention; people compare teams’ records within the conference, and don’t look at the context of these records. So I thought I’d look at the teams who have played the easiest and most difficult schedules, relative to the other teams in their conference.

Virginia Tech
The Hokies are on the bubble, mostly on the strength of their 9-6 ACC record. Do not be fooled by this. With 12 teams and an a 16 game schedule, they have played two games against five of the other 11 ACC teams. As we all know, there are only three good teams in the ACC- Duke, UNC and Clemson. Virginia Tech has been lucky enough to play each of those teams only once. If the Hokies had doubled up against those teams instead of BC, Wake, and UVa, I doubt we’d be talking about them sneaking into the tourney.

NC State
This team is terrible, and obviously their schedule is not hindering their tournament chances, which are non-existent. But they sure have had it rough. As mentioned previously, in the ACC you double up against five teams. NC State is the anti-Va Tech; they’ve played Clemson, Duke and UNC twice each. This doesn’t really effect anything, but it really sucks for them.

Anyways, point is, it isn’t just us State fans the recognize how we got the short straw this season. I am starting to believe that the ACC should go to a divisional system in basketball too. Of course, even if it’s not beneficial for us we WANT to play UNC and Duke home and away (well, just home if we could) each season. Unfortunately, that recently results in 3-4 losses.

It’s Officially Horrible

The UNC-Charlottesville Cavaliers won last night, officially making NC STATE that last place team in the ACC by 1/2 a game. And to think we were picked to finish 3rd and make a good run in the NCAAs. The only runs this team will make are in the gym practicing, at least I hope they are practicing while everyone else is still playing! Lord knows we need it. The irrelevant silver lining? Hey, at least we have a overall winning record still, for now. But really, who cares.