ACC Power Rankings Week 13: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

The Good

Sam Hartman threw for three touchdowns and ran for another on Saturday as the Wake Forest Demon Deacons earned the right to play Pitt next Saturday in Charlotte for the ACC championship.

For Wake, it would be its first ACC title since 2006, the only other time in more than a century of football that the Deacons have won 10 or more games in a season.

Pittsburgh won its fourth straight and finished the regular season 5-0 on the road. It’s the Panthers’ first 10-win campaign since 1981. Panther quarterback Kenny Pickett tossed four touchdowns to break the Pitt record for scoring passes in a season.

Clemson finished strong, winning their last five as they closed the season with a smothering defensive effort, blanking state-rival South Carolina, 30-0.

The Bad

North Carolina began the season a top-10 team with College Football Playoff aspirations. The Tar Heel season ended with a colossal collapse at Carter Finley Stadium, losing to NC State, 34-30. UNC finished the regular season 6-6. The Tar Heels will now wait to see where they are sent for a bowl game and what players will opt-out of said bowl.

On the surface, Virginia finished the season just about where the experts said they would: at or about a break-even team, and that’s exactly what happened for UVA, finishing 6-6.

It’s how Virginia got to 6-6 that qualifies as bad. The Cavaliers lost their last four games, including an inexplicable series of coaching blunders in their season-finale loss to Virginia Tech, 29-24.

A Virginia Tech team so underwhelming in 2021 they paid head coach Justin Fuente millions of dollars to not be the head coach, firing Fuente two weeks prior.

The Ugly

Duke coach David Cutcliffe Sunday afternoon also agreed to “mutually separate” and end his tenure as head coach of the Blue Devils. Duke finished the season 3-9 with an uninspiring 47-10 loss to Miami.

Not to pile on, but it’s hard not to include Virginia in the ugly category as well.

Virginia squandered the nation’s most prolific passing game due to a defense that played with as much heart as The Tin man early in the Wizard of Oz. Does the Cavalier defense have a heart and just didn’t realize it? We may never know.

Atlantic Division

1. Wake Forest (7-1, 10-2)
2. NC State (6-2, 9-3)
3. Clemson (6-2, 9-3)
4. Louisville (4-4,6-6)
5. Florida State (4-4,5-7)
6. Boston College (2-6, 5-7)
7. Syracuse (2-6, 5-7)

Coastal Division

1. Pittsburgh (7-1, 10-2)
2. Miami (5-3,7-5)
3. Virginia Tech (4-4, 6-6)
4. North Carolina (3-5,6-6)
5. Virginia (4-4, 6-6)
6. Georgia Tech (2-6, 3-9)
7. Duke (0-8, 3-9)

Story by Scott German