Coach Vig and UVA Look To Take Down Charging Florida State In Another Close Conference Battle
Teams:#14 Virginia, Duke, #15 Florida State, #29 NC State, Va. Tech, Clemson, Maryland, Wake Forest, UNC, BC, Georgia Tech, Miami

Editor's Note: This article has been updated from it's original format with added information about Luke Gunn, which changed our prediction as well.

The ACC in 2007 was a 2-horse race between NC State and Virginia, with the two teams combining for 10 of the first 13 finishers in the race. UVA rode a 2, 3, 4, 6 performance to take down State 32-39, despite the Wolfpack landing 6 runners in the top 13 of the race. State's top 4 all graduated, and UVA lost 2 out of their top 4, so 2008 will feature a vastly different cast of characters up front. Jason Vigilante, in his first year as the head man at UVA, has his boys running well (even without Emil Heineking) as their runners clumped between 20th and 50th place in their Pre-Nationals race, garnering a 6th-place finish and #14 national ranking. But it looks like the Cavaliers are going to have another really tight battle at conference, this time with the Florida State Seminoles, at least, and maybe NC State. FSU had a very similar Pre-Nationals meet to Virginia, with their top 5 all between 24:10 and 24:38, good for 4th in their race and a team average time just slower than UVA's (24:20 to 24:18). But (and this is one important "but") Seminole senior Luke Gunn (23:35 at Notre Dame this season) sat out the race. According to some sources he will be raring to go at ACCs, perhaps tipping the scales in FSU's favor. NC State is weak at #4 and #5, and have no shot at all unless someone (e.g. Gavin Coombs) comes forward and scores really low.

We must give the ACC credit as their teams apparently don't run against each other very much. They must like to save the rivalries and suspense for the league meet as the 12 teams attended about 7 different meets last weekend. To research them and compare them to each other is therefore a very challenging and tedious task, but one that we are totally up for completing. So here goes:

Outside of the top 3, we go to the Dukies, who return the 2nd-fewest points in the league. They didn't run too hot at Griak, and aside from soph Bo Waggoner, they aren't doing too hot in general, losing to last year's ACC 10th-place UNC Tar Heels and D2 Queens University (granted, that is Scott Simmons'* program, FYI) at the Blue Ridge Open. So perhaps the UNC Tarheels, fresh off 10th, yes 10th, in the conference last year, can get back where they and their talent belong: in the top 4. Fourth (or dare we say, 3rd?) might be going to Virginia Tech who looked pretty good in grabbing 4th just behind Lamar at the Chile Pepper meet. And Boston College might be next in line with their 2008 New Englands champion Tim Ritchie. It's pretty muddled up after that between teams like Duke, Clemson, Maryland (2-strong up front) and Georgia Tech (not to mention struggling programs Miami and Wake Forest). We know that in football, the ACC is one conference that year in and year out should not have a single team in the BCS. In cross country, the bottom half of the league, despite the perennial success of a couple teams at the top, is not inspiring.

Up front we look for guys from UVA, FSU, NC St. and VaTech to dominate, and we're picking NC State's John Martinez for the win in a close one over UVA's Ryan Collins and FSU's Dan Roberts.

*We recommend you read Scott's book, "Take The Lead", in bookstores now, for an interesting, unique, and informative read on training runners.