Clemson Football: After a suspect opening week, ACC recovers (for the most part)

We should have known on Friday night that a weird weekend was ahead for Clemson football and the ACC, when Louisville, who looked putrid against Syracuse last week, took down UCF in Orlando, 20-14.

Clemson, of course, beat Furman 35-12 Saturday afternoon.

What was supposed to be a laugher in Miami Gardens took a while to get there, but the Canes controlled the second half in route to a 30-7 win over a Sun Belt member Southern Miss, which was tougher than expected for some other highly ranked teams yesterday.  How’s it hanging Notre Dame and Texas A&M?

The most charming coach in college football, Pat Narduzzi, lost his quarterback and the game in overtime as the Panthers fell 34-27 to Tennessee in overtime, in arguably the most high profile game of the ACCs non-conference slate.

The conference’s only other non-conference loss was Tony Elliott’s first as a head coach as the Cavaliers travelled to Illinois and came away with a 24-3 loss as Brennen Armstrong somehow went 13 for 32 with 2 interceptions.

Duke remained undefeated as they defended 60 Ryan Hilinski pass attempts in a 31-23 win and Mack Brown and North Carolina escaped against Georgia State 35-28, while Georgia Tech overcame a slow start to beat Western Carolina 35-17.

Two games stand out a bit and one of those was in Nashville where Sam Hartman stood out in his return to action, throwing for 300 yards and 4 touchdowns on 18 of 27 passes as the Demon Deacons easily beat Vanderbilt 45-25.

Perhaps the surprise team of the ACC, Syracuse crushed patsy Connecticut and while this is nothing to celebrate in and of itself, it appears that the Orange may be better than anticipated, if their first two games are any judge.  This team hosts Purdue next weekend, so we should know a bit more after that game.

The ACC didn’t win it’s marquee non-conference matchup, but they also didn’t embarrass themselves as they did in week 1

In the only conference game on the day, Virginia Tech recovered from a horrid loss to Old Dominion and beat Boston College 27-10 to drop the Eagles to 0-2 on the season.

While the ACC lost the biggest marquee game, there’s no shame in losing to Tennessee in overtime and the conference went 1-1 against both the SEC and Big 10, but the real news was there were no embarrassing losses like there was in week 1 or those of Notre Dame and Texas A&M in week two.

It’s the little things.