Miami traveled to Pittsburgh to wrap up the 2013 regular season, but with a little bit of help from North Carolina on Saturday the Hurricanes could be heading to the ACC Championship Game in Charlotte next week. A 41-31 victory on the road against the Panthers kept Miami alive in the crowded and somewhat complicated ACC Coastal Division race coming down to the wire. even after all of the games are played, a series of tie breaking procedures may need to be followed.
To win the ACC Coastal Division, Miami now needs North Carolina to defeat Duke on Saturday. Virginia must also beat Virginia Tech to create a three-team tie for the division lead between Miami, Duke and Georgia Tech. The first tiebreaker in a three-team tie is combined head-to-head winning percentage between the tied teams, but Miami, Georgia Tech and Duke would need to go to the next tiebreaker as the teams split wins and losses evenly between the three of them. eventually the tie breakers would eliminate Duke from the pack and give Miami the edge. You can read them in full for yourself.
Duke can avoid any of this mess by defeating North Carolina to clinch the outright ACC Coastal Division title, which would send Duke to the ACC Championship Game to face Florida State. The Seminoles had locked up the Atlantic Division a while ago and will be making their second straight trip to the title game. Florida State defeated Georgia Tech in last year’s conference championship game.
This has been a rough season for Miami, but they are eligible for the postseason and Miami finished the regular season on a high note with two straight wins with at least 40 points scored. Quarterback Stephen Morris had three touchdown passes in the game and Allen Hurns recorded 173 receiving yards for the Hurricanes. Pittsburgh was without their top offensive player, receiver Devin Street, but still managed to put up 500 yards of offense against Miami. Pitt defensive end Aaron Donald faced double team protection for most fo the game so was limited in his production. Still, as the game played out he began to get a little push in the trenches and proved wy he has been one of the best defensive linemen in the country this season.