ACC Staff Predictions: Week of 11/11

And we’re back! The first week of college basketball is in the books, and we already have separation in the conference thanks to an expanded schedule that includes November conference games that nobody asked for and everybody correctly anticipated would be sloppy as heck. That sloppiness is great for drama, though, when it comes to our predictions. And at least some of the unpredictability carried over into football, where Miami, Virginia Tech, and * checks notes * newly Taggert-less FSU decided to play spoiler and throw a wrench into our staff standings (and, more importantly, briefly foil my comeback bid).

On the football side, Evan barely held onto his lead with a 3-3 week to give him 66 wins, and Chad, with a throwaway pick of Florida State against Boston College to go with his less-outlandish-but-still-surprising Miami pick over Louisville, surged into second and is now one game behind Evan at 65-25. Yours truly slipped back into 3rd, another game back at 64-26 after a 3-3 week, and Matt and Jake aren’t far behind, with 63 wins apiece. Here’s what we see going down this week in the ACC:

Okay, football gods, when I said last week was chaotic, I didn’t need you to overcorrect by making this one almost entirely chalk. Two picks for Georgia Tech and two picks for Pitt against UNC are the only deviations from majority in the whole group, so you can expect next week’s standings to look a lot like this week’s.

On the basketball side, after the excitement of early conference games, we now get into the early college basketball doldrums where good teams schedule awful teams ahead of their preseason tournaments, the games are a drag because of mismatches, and the results are rarely surprising. Evansville gave us respite last night after beating Kentucky, but alas, that’s not our conference... anyways, here’s our basketball picks, with first week standings next to each other. It’s too early to really draw any separation.

(You can tell these picks were made prior to Tuesday night’s games because of Jake’s baffling RMU pick)

At least the conformity is expected here, as nobody’s really expecting the ACC to drop all that many non-conference games when the scheduling’s up to the individual schools. We’ve got 6 picks for UNC-Asheville (Kenpom #263) beating Wake Forest (Kenpom #90), which is notable. I picked it mostly as a joke, personally, but now I’m part of a sizable dissenting minority. We’ll see how that goes for us. In the interest of counting, I only listed through Friday’s games.

Agree with our picks? Disagree with this chalky affair? Let us know below!