Moving on from news of futility to, well, more news of futility, Duke extended their lead in the Carlyle Cup by a half a diaphanous point by taking the Tar Heels three straight volleyball sets last Saturday. The two teams will meet again for the other half of a point on November 3rd in Durham, and of course the whole fractional point scoring will be thrown out the window should the two teams meet in the ACC tournament.
It's been a tough conference season for UNC, as evidenced by the verbs employed on their press release page. Starting with the first road-ACC game at Virginia Tech, it's been "stumbles", "fall", "look to rebound", "falls", "swept", and "falls". The team is 3-11, 1-4 in the ACC and han't won since September 15th against N.C. State. The road gets a little easier for the next week, as only Clemson among their next five games is better than .500 in conference play. The ACC currently has no nationally ranked teams in the sport.
The next Carlyle Cup matchup is between the decidely more succesful women's soccer teams tommorrow in Durham. Duke leads the competition 1.5-0.