ACC Bowl Predictions

Bowl season is quickly approaching so it's time for me to make my predictions for each of the ACC bowl games. My record, including the ACC Championship game is current;y 49-18.

Bowl games are in order by date played:

Independence Bowl: Air Force 31 Georgia Tech 27
Champs Sports Bowl: West Virginia 28 NC State 27
Military Bowl: E. Carolina 17 Maryland 24
Music City Bowl: North Carolina 27 Tennessee 21
Meineke Car Care Bowl: South Florida 10 Clemson 20
Sun Bowl: Notre Dame 24 Miami 21
Chick-Fil-A Bowl: South Carolina 31 Florida State 34
Orange Bowl: Stanford 31 Virginia Tech 28
Fight Hunger Bowl: Nevada 24 Boston College 17

FSU News and Notes

It's winter break in Tallahassee but there are still a few headlines this week.

• Will Muschamp was hired to replace Urban Meyer as Florida's head coach. Muschamp served as the Texas Longhorn's defensive coordinator and has no head coaching experience.
• Cam Newton won the Heisman Trophy easily despite his off-field issues.
• Florida State men's basketball team begins the 2010-2011 ACC season tonight as they host the Clemson Tigers at 6:15.
• Former FSU kicker Graham Gano struggles against the Tampa Bay Bucs, missing two field goals in the Redskin loss.

Florida State draws South Carolina in the Chik-Fil-A Bowl

Although the Seminoles would have wished to go to the Orange Bowl as ACC Champs, an invite to the Chik-Fil-A Bowl on New Years' Eve isn't a bad draw either. The bowl game in Atlanta is the #2 bowl game in the ACC, meaning they had second choice of an ACC representative following the Orange Bowl. With its selection, the Chik-Fil-A committee chose ACC runner-up Florida State to represent the Atlantic Coast Conference. In addition to its ACC representative, the bowl features a matchup with an SEC program. With the 5th choice in the SEC, the Chik-Fil-A committee picked SEC runner-up South Carolina to represent the South Eastern Conference.

Former Florida Gator head coach Steve Spurrier will be making his first appearance against Florida State since his days in Gainesville. He leads the 20th ranked Gamecocks into Atlanta to face the 23rd ranked Seminoles led by first-year coach Jimbo Fisher. Both teams enter the game with a 9-4 overall record this season. Expect a high scoring game in this matchup of two great offenses.

'Noles Fall Short in ACC Championship Game

The weather in Charlotte, North Carolina was anything but spectacular with temperatures below freezing and a mix of rain and snow. The Florida State's defense wasn't much better. Actually, neither team's defense played fabulous, the Hokies just seemed to make more big plays when needed. Christian Ponder was sidelined in his only ACC Championship Game appearance in his career due to an elbow injury that has existed the entire second half of the season. Instead, E.J Manuel made is sixth start of his young career and played a pretty decent game. Manuel threw for 288 yards with 1 touchdown and 2 interceptions. The Florida State rushing game managed to gain only 53 rushing yards in comparrison to the 179 rushing yards put up by the Virginia Tech offense.

In front of over 72,000 fans, the Hokie offense was just too strong for the Florida State defense as they managed to score 44 points and defeat the Seminoles 44-33. The Hokies started the season 0-2 after suffering losses to Boise State and FCS opponent James Madison. However, after a streak of 10 wins, Virginia Tech managed to finish the season with a 10-2 record. That record improved Saturday night when the Hokies picked up their 11th victory this season and were crowned Atlantic Coast Conference Champions.

Virginia Tech will Stanford in the Orange Bowl on January 3rd, whereas the Seminoles will play in Atlanta on December 31st at the Chik-Fil-A Bowl against the South Carolina Gamecocks. Stay tuned for a preview of that game along with predictions for all the ACC bowl games this season.

ACC Predictions

With the regular season now over with, it's time to make some post season predictions. Last week I went a poor 5-4. However, that was kind of expected given that it was rivalry week and anyting could happen. I finished 49-17 in the regular season giving me a 74.2% win percentage. To put that into perspective, Heather Dinich is the ACC blog writer for ESPN and she finished with a 69% this season. Here's my ACC Championship Game prediction:

Florida State 27 Virginia Tech 24

The bowl game matchups will be finalized on Sunday so make sure you stay tuned for my bowl season predicitons next week.

FSU-UF Photos

Florida State Basketball Suffers Back-to-Back Defeats

The Florida State men's basketball team started the 2010-2011 season with a 5-0 record, however, none of their opponents were from 'BCS' conferences. That all changed this week when the 'Noles had #18 University of Florida and #2 Ohio State come to Tallahassee. The Seminoles rallied in the 2nd half of each game, and made it a close game versus the Gators, but fell short in both games. The Seminoles are now 5-2 and will have one more warm-up game against Hartford this weekend before it opens ACC play against Clemson on the 12th of December.

Maryland helps out Florida State

As if a victory over the Florida Gators isn't enough, Maryland provided a helping hand in their victory over NC State approximately 30 minutes after the FSU game. That means the Seminoles finish in sole first place in the Atlantic Division and will trave to North Carolina to play VIrginia Tech in the ACC Championship game.

Final ACC Atlantic Division Standings

Florida State    6-2
NC State         5-3
Maryland         5-3
Boston College 4-4
Clemson           4-4
Wake Forest    1-7

FSU dominates the Florida Gators

For the first time in six years, the Florida State Seminoles have defeated the Florida Gators. It is the first time since 1999 that the 'Noles have defeated both the Gators and the Hurricanes in the same season. It was a huge 31-7 victory in a game that was controlled by FSU since the ending of the first quarter. The Gators jumped out to a 7-0 lead, but unfortunately for UF fans, those were the only points the Gators scored all game.

Turnover after turnover, the Gators kept handing the ball back to Florida State and the Seminoles took advantage of the opportunities all game long. Leading 31-7 in the 4th quarter, FSU was able to give Ponder a rest a give E.J Manuel a chance to close out the game.

Despite being only slight favorites and having dropped the last 6 games in the rivalry, the Seminoles clearly looked like the better program on Saturday. In front of approximately 100 high school recruits and 82,324 fans on senior day, the Seminoles played their most complete game since their 45-17 victory in Miami on October 9th.

In Jimbo's first season ever as head coach, he finishes with a 9-3 overall record and 6-2 ACC record. The future looks bright for this Florida State program.