The Atlantic Coast Conference has taken a lot of heat this year for playing like a basketball league. However, two nice little stories are brewing under the national radar, and they’ll collide Saturday in Miami.
Butch Davis, who led Miami (Fla.) to four Big East championships or co-championships before his ill-fated stint in the NFL, takes his upstart North Carolina Tar Heels against his old Hurricanes. Both teams are 2-1 and are among the most improved teams in the country, although Davis arrives without quarterback T.J. Yates, who’s out six weeks with an ankle injury.
Miami blew out Texas A&M on the road 41-23 and held Florida to only 123 yards in the first half in a 26-3 loss. North Carolina made Rutgers look like the Rutgers of old in a 44-12 whitewash in New Jersey.
The biggest difference for Miami’s Randy Shannon, whose highly trumpeted ascension to head coach last year ended at 5-7, is at quarterback. Redshirt freshman Robert Marve is 26-of-40 passing for 281 yards with one interception and two touchdowns. He hasn’t made anyone forget Gino Torretta, but he’s starting to make people forget Kyle Wright.
“I’m thrilled we’re going on the right track now, but we’ve still got a long ways to go,” Shannon told . “The bigger thing is just don’t let guys slack off. We can’t look back and just say, ‘We’re good.’ We’re OK. We’ve got a lot of things we need to improve on offensively and defensively and special teams.”
John Henderson, The Denver Post
