If the first couple of weeks were deemed as measuring sticks for the Atlantic Coast Conference, the third week of play didn’t really determine much.
There were a large number of ho-hum results. There were only a couple of close games, with Virginia Tech winning at East Carolina — such road conquests always deserve some mention — and Wake Forest falling at home to Louisiana-Monroe.
Maybe Georgia Tech did as much as any team in the league, and if nothing else the Yellow Jackets won a game that counts in the conference portion of the standings. They Yellow Jackets are a rather under-the-radar group, but winning its ACC opener at Duke was a necessary step in the big scheme.
That Georgia Tech victory was the only ACC matchup of the week. And in the coming week, the Yellow Jackets can be the first team in the league with two conference victories if it can knock off North Carolina.
FIVE BIGGEST TAKEAWAYS FROM WEEK 3 IN THE ACC
1. Maryland is 3-0 for the first time in a dozen years and so the Terrapins are halfway to gaining bowl eligibility in their final season in the ACC. The Terrapins haven’t exactly knocked off a tough collection of opponents, but there’s no other team in the league boosting three victories just yet.
2. Virginia Tech has some issues, perhaps mostly on offense, because they seem disjointed too often even though it has posted back-to-back victories. Tallying only 15 points (and two of those came courtesy of a safety from the defense) against an Easter Carolina team that has experienced defensive shortcomings in recent years is no way for Virginia Tech to portray one of the top teams in the conference.
3. Duke might not be ready to roll with the big teams just yet. The Blue Devils have been resurgent and were looking for their first 3-0 start to a season since 1994, but the ACC opener was a humbling lesson in a loss to Georgia Tech.
4. Florida State has produced a couple of results so far that make it look like the Seminoles are a force that most teams won’t want to deal with. The Seminoles will want to make sure they don’t sleepwalk through the schedule until the big games arrive. By the way, in their 62-7 dismantling of Nevada, the Seminoles actually trailed with less than four minutes to play in the first half.
5. Pittsburgh and Syracuse picked up their first victories under the ACC banner (albeit in non-conference outings) on the same day. These two programs once were headliners in the East and they have a ways to go to achieve that again, but they have to start someplace and now every team in the ACC has one at least one game. So not only are they the newest current members, but they’re the last in 2013 to notch their first victories.