Spot on About UNC and Could Not Have Been More Wrong About NC State
Every now and then, you get to write a victory lap. Every now and then, you have to eat crow. This weekend, I somehow managed to do both.
Heading into North Carolina's season opener against TCU, I picked the Tar Heels to win 25-24. I got the winner right, but I was only off by 20 points. North Carolina won 15-10, and while the final score wasn't anything close to my prediction, many of the things we talked about leading up to the game played out exactly as we hoped they would.
Billy Edwards Jr. looked comfortable running the offense, the defensive front was physical, Derek McDonald led the defense with 11 tackles, and North Carolina found a way to win a close football game. The Tar Heels didn't need to score 25 points. They needed to find a way to win, and they did. So I'll take the prediction, even if the scoreboard certainly didn't cooperate with my math.
Now, let's talk about the other prediction.
I bought into NC State.
A week before the season, I wrote about four reasons Wolfpack fans should feel good heading into the season. I felt pretty good about that prediction when I wrote it. Then NC State played its first game, and let's just say I didn't exactly nail that one.
Four Reasons NC State Fans Should Feel Good Heading Into Virginia
That's the beauty of college football. You can spend an entire offseason looking at rosters, schedules, coaching, returning production and everything else you can possibly analyze, and then Saturday arrives and reminds you that you really don't know as much as you thought you did.
I'm not ready to completely write off Dave Doeren, though. Doeren is the crock pot of the ACC. Dinner isn't going to be ready immediately, but if you leave it alone long enough, eventually you usually have something you can eat. That's been the Doeren experience at NC State. There are stretches when you wonder what is happening, followed by stretches when the Wolfpack suddenly puts together a solid football team and reminds everyone why expectations weren't completely unreasonable in the first place.
Will that happen again this season? I have no idea. But I would be surprised if NC State bounces back quite like Virginia did last year. The Wolfpack gave its fans reasons for optimism entering the season, and Game 1 provided plenty of reasons to reconsider those expectations. That doesn't mean the season is over. It means my preseason prediction didn't survive contact with reality.
And that's really the lesson from this weekend. I was willing to believe in North Carolina until the Tar Heels showed me otherwise, and I was willing to believe in NC State until the Wolfpack showed me otherwise. One of those teams rewarded me. The other reminded me why we don't get paid to make preseason predictions.
I'll keep watching NC State, and my friends will happy if the Wolfpack turns things around. That's part of making predictions before the games are played. Sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong, and occasionally you're spectacularly wrong.
But if the NC State season turns out to be just so-so, there is still one thing Wolfpack fans can count on.
They've got great parking.
