Stealing Games on the Road a Must In ACC Play

Miami's NCAA fate is going to be decided rather quickly in the next two weeks. Miami must win two of the next four road games and beat Florida State at home next week to have any chance of making the big dance. In other words Miami must enter the final six games of the ACC season at 5-5 in the league to realistically expect to have a reasonable shot at the NCAAs.

Right now the ACC has two good teams: Duke and North Carolina. The league has nine mediocre to poor teams which includes Miami, and one really bad team, Virginia. Assume for a moment that each of the following nine teams have an equal shot of making the NCAA Tournament:

Clemson, Florida State, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Miami, NC State, Wake Forest, Boston College and Maryland. Then begin to separate the teams with impressive road wins in the league, Maryland beat then #1 North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Virginia Tech won at Boston College and Virginia. Florida State won at Georgia Tech. Wake Forest took Clemson to overtime on the road. Then recall Boston College has missed the NCAAs just once this millennium and NC State has missed just twice. Only then will you realize why I believe Miami's back is squarely against the wall and they cannot give away another game like the one against NC State in Raleigh.
Miami and Florida State are the two schools in the ACC with ZERO margin for error from here on out.

The Hurricanes went 7-10 in their first 17 road games in the league after joining but have since lost nine straight. Miami has no choice but to stop the bleeding quickly, beginning tomorrow night in Winston Salem against Wake Forest.

Wake is an extremely young, inexperienced team that has boatloads of athleticism and talent and has been playing on emotion all season. Skip Prosser passed away in August as I am sure most of our readers are aware and he left a legacy not only with the Basketball team but in the whole college community at Wake.

Miami has no choice but to beat Wake Forest unless they intend to beat Duke on Saturday. Coming home at 2-5 in the league would be disastrous to say the least. I will say however, that I had already written this team off but came through when it most mattered yesterday against Clemson and now have an opportunity on the quick turnaround provided to us by Raycom's control of the ACC TV contract to channel that momentum of the big win into a needed road game. I've seen Wake start to finish only once this season, against Florida State and that day they humiliated the Seminoles. But as is the case with very young teams, consistency is a problem and perhaps if the Hurricanes can come out with a passion to win tomorrow's game and steal one on the road, they'll do just fine, putting Wake out of its misery early. But I wouldn't count on it.