With both college and professional football on hiatus for a couple of days I have a chance to check out this week’s AP Top 25. If you want to see what some of the writers at isportsweb see their Top 25 you can read about it here, while a good friend of mine, Brent Axe (@BrentAxeMedia) is a AP voter and shows is rankings on syracuse.com. With no surprise, after UNC lost to Louisville, the Heels were bumped out of the “Others Receiving Votes” section. With the bad week that the ACC teams had against the Big East ones North Carolina football was not the only one taking a dip in the ranking. On the other hand some of the teams in the conference did move up thanks to their efforts on Saturday.
The Atlantic Coast Conference now has two teams in the Top 10, Florida State, who is ranked fourth (1275 points) from last week’s ranking of fifth (1160), who defeated ACC opponent Wake Forest by the score of 52-0. The other team in the Top 10 is Clemson, moving up to tenth (899) from 11th (868) from the previous rankings, after defeating Furman 41-7. And while it’s nice that the conference has two teams so high up, the flip side is that no other team from the ACC is in the Top 25.
Virginia Tech, who last week ranked 13th (734) went down to seventh in the “Others Receiving Votes” category with just 13 votes altogether after losing to Pittsburgh by the final of 35 to 17. Finally, the other squad in this category is Georgia Tech, who dropped some in the polls even though they defeated Virginia 56 to 20. In all the conference has four squads in the Top 25 and another two in the “Other Receiving Votes”, which is two programs less, UNC and N.C. State, than the six they began with this season.
In the end the ACC has only two undefeated teams left, which are the two squads in the Top 10, while two others, UNC and Boston College, have a losing record of 1 and 2. It will be interesting to watch how the next few weeks unfold. I will definitely be watching the four programs mentioned in the AP rankings do. If the two in the top tier can stay there. Can FSU finally do what all the so called experts believe they can? If the two in the lower part of the ranking can break back into the Top 25. Can either of them be a “dark horse” in the ACC race? As usual, for more information about North Carolina football and/or basketball, be it teams or players, past or present, come back often to isportsweb!