Getty Images
As part of its “sort-of” membership with the ACC in football, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish have to waste valuable scheduling space on four to five ACC schools a year. One such matchup is already complete, with the Irish routing Syracuse, 26-6. The second of such matchups is Saturday, when Notre Dame welcomes North Carolina into South Bend.
In other years, this might actually be an entertaining matchup. And given that Notre Dame’s next game is against No. 1 Florida State, you can’t completely hate on the Notre Dame-ACC arrangement. It will provide some good games from year-to-year, but it will also offer matchups like this on Saturday, which is going to be ugly.
North Carolina is 2-3 on the season and has lost both of its ACC games. The Tar Heels are a gong show on defense, having given up an average of 42 points per game this season, better than only four of the 128 teams in FBS. The highlight (or perhaps, lowlight) of the North Carolina season came in a game at East Carolina, when the Pirates rolled UNC for nearly 800 yards of total offense in a 70-41 blowout.
Even in its two wins, the Tar Heels gave up 29 points to FCS school Liberty, and 27 to San Diego State. The last three weeks — in losses to ECU, Clemson, and Virginia Tech — North Carolina has allowed 154 points (51.3 per game). This is unacceptable for any ACC team, especially one that has some tradition of success in the conference.
At 5-0, there’s no reason to think Notre Dame will struggle Saturday. The Fighting Irish are a modest 61st in the nation in scoring, but don’t let that fool you. Notre Dame is still averaging better than 31 points per game. And until last week’s 17-14 win over No. 14 Stanford, the Irish had scored at least 31 points in every game this season. North Carolina probably is worse defensively than Rice, and the Fighting Irish nearly hit them for 50 in a 48-17 win to open the season.
Compound that with the fact that Notre Dame is only giving up 12 points per game and hasn’t allowed more than 17 in any contest this season (including a shutout of Michigan), and you can allow your mind to imagine all sorts of crazy possibilities when predicting the score for Saturday’s game between North Carolina and Notre Dame.
Prediction: Notre Dame 45, North Carolina 10
Ed Morgans is an ACC Basketball Writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @writered21 and add him to your network on Google.
