Well, there's nothing much in the way of football news, and it's still to early for basketball. (Although, hey! Meaningless numbers support Carolina!) But there's always everyone's favorite 23 sport, two school competition no one cares about but me - the Carlyle Cup!
Oh, I've missed you, dippy little Carlyle Cup logo.
It turns out, this year UNC is better than Duke. But not only in the standard metrics of taste, intelligence, attractiveness, all-around wonderfulness, et al. - the Heels are kicking their ass in a fair amount of sports. First was field hockey, where Carolina is undefeated, top-ranked, and supplying a women's-soccer level of players to the national team. They stomped Duke 5-0 back in September.
The women's volleyball team had the next game - but they lost in five games - so we'll move on to women's soccer. Now, the women's soccer team is struggling this year. They've lost three games, something that's happened twice in the history of Carolina soccer (In 1980 and 2000. They still won the national championship in 2000.). UNC is vulnerable. They can be beaten, and Duke was poised to strike.
Duke lost 2-1, Casey Nogueria had another game-winner, UNC remains in the Top 10 and the Blue Devils go back to being "previously ranked."
Maybe it would be different on the men's side. UNC's only 4-3-5 there - with five ties I can't imagine why men's soccer isn't catching on - and Duke's in the Top 10, a strong challenging team who... screw it. The Heels won that one too, behind Ryan Adeleye's overtime goal. And for that bit of heroics, I'll decline to make the cheap Huey Freeman joke at his expense.
UNC is currently running up the score in the Carlyle Cup 3 to 0.5 - the volleyball team get's another bite of the apple November 16th - with the next event next Saturday at the ACC Cross Country championships. More important, there's a non-Duke showdown this Saturday, when the aforementioned top-ranked, undefeated, four-time national champion (1989, 1995, 1996 and 1997) field hockey team meets the second-ranked, also undefeated, five-time national champion (1987, 1993, 1999, 2005 and 2006) Maryland squad. This is pretty much an ACC and NCAA championship preview, it's 1pm on Saturday in Chapel Hill, and there's no reason whatsoever why you shouldn't be there. It'll be just like a Saturday of football, but with exponentially more winning.
No interceptions thrown by former UNC quarterbacks in a shocking trick play. Guaranteed.