After a slow first half start the Demon Deacons found a way to turn everything around in the second half, scoring 24 unanswered points to beat the Connecticut Huskies 24-10. Wake Forest scored on a long Josh Adams touchdown run of 38 yards, a 21 yard touchdown pass from Riley Skinner to John Tereshinski, a Sam Swank 42 yard field goal, and finally put the game out of reach with a 9 yard touchdown run by senior Micah Andrews.

Except for one unfortunate fumble inside the five yard line, the second half was a thing of beauty for the Deacs. The defense, who only allowed a field goal in the first half (UConn's only TD was a punt return), played well all day long and the offense began completing drives in the second half (which was the only thing that seemed to be missing in the first).

Although I was frustrated with the score at the half, I felt that Wake was definitely the better team on the field. Unlike UConn, Wake seemed capable of making big offensive plays, and I enjoyed seeing the Deacs stretch the field vertically today more than they have all season.

Nothing made me more happy than Micah Andrews getting to score a touchdown on the last play of his career. It's been a tough couple of years for Micah and to see him go out on such a high note was really nice. Congrats to Micah on a great career at Wake and I wish him the best in what ever he does next (sounds like it will be something theatrical).

ACC Rookie of the Year Josh Adams struggled at times today, although the issues seemed to be more a lack of holes than a lack of running prowess. He did finish with 81 yards and one beautiful 38 yard touchdown run, and I know he will be a huge part of Wake's offense for at least two and hopefully three years to come.

Riley Skinner had a pretty solid day himself, completing 29 of 38 passes for 267 yards - the most he's had all season. His touchdown throw to Tereshinki was a beauty, and he should have had another to Kevin Marion. One thing I love about our offense is that it allows for days like today where Riley finds 10 different receivers. Spreading the ball around like that really keeps a defense on its toes. Although the interception was not a particularly good throw, Skinner had a typically effective day and once again proved that he's the man for the job here at Wake Forest. Hopefully the coaches will be more willing to continue throwing the ball down field next year after Riley and the offense's performance today

Alphonso Smith moonlighted on the offensive side of the ball today and had three catches, one of which went for 12 yards. I don't know if this is something we'll see regularly next season or if it was one of those Bowl Game Special type of moves, but I enjoyed seeing the coaching staff trying to find more ways to get him involved. Although he didn't add to his interception or TD totals today, he played a strong game and I'm more than happy that we can expect to see him in Old Gold and Black one more time next year.

Kenny Moore also deserves recognition for his 11 catches today which gives him the ACC record for most receptions in a season with 98. Congrats, Kenny, on a great record and an incredible senior season.

The defense played solidly as a whole, sacking Tyler Lorenzen twice and hurrying him on several other occasions. UConn picked up 115 rush yards, but considering that the rush is the strongest part of UConn's offense I'd say that's a pretty good day. Stanley Arnoux played a great game and grabbed an interception on a tipped ball at a crucial point in the game.

With the win Wake improves to 9-4 for their 2007 campaign and has won twenty football games in the last two years. I know long time Wake Forest fans never thought they'd hear something like that, and it truly is a thing of beauty. Coach Grobe looked characteristically stoic on the sidelines all day and barely even cracked a smile until well after the game was over. He did a great job guiding the Deacs all season long and it calms me greatly to be confident that he'll be back on the sidelines in 2008.

The published attendance of today's game was 53,126. I was hopeful that this number would end up being a little bit higher, but seeing the endzone parts of the upper deck made it clear that the game was nowhere near sold out. Wake fans were definitely out in force, and several times the "Wake" "Forest" chant could be heard on TV. I will say that I think the MCCB makes a big mistake by not selling the midfield seats to the participating schools. Corporate sponsors who had those seats did not turn out in great numbers and it was very strange to see the middle of the lower deck looking as spotty as did. If Wake ends up playing in Charlotte in the future, I hope they fix this issue. Although there did seem to be a reasonably good UConn turnout, I can proudly say that the stadium definitely seemed dominated by Deacon fans.

That's all I've got for now. It was a great afternoon to be a Deacon fan and this should leave a very nice taste in the mouths of Deacon fans until next August rolls around. Who knows, if the cards fall the right way we could end up in the top 25 when the final rankings are announced, which would certainly be a solid accomplishment. I'm sure there will be some decent follow up over the next few days, but for now we can all enjoy a beautiful win.

Congratulations, Demon Deacons! You make Wake Forest fans everywhere proud to be Deacons!

Update: I somehow failed to mention Kenny Moore's record, so I fixed that. My apologies, Kenny.

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The Meineke Car Care Bowl is upon us, and with it comes one final beautiful day of Wake Forest football. One last chance to enjoy Kenny Moore and Steve Justice, Kevin Marion and Jeremy Thompson (and of course don't forget Trey Schmidt and Max Opamuratawongse). Anyway, I feel like an idiot writing like that (I'm not Lennox Rawlings and hope to never be confused for writing like him) so I'm going to move on to bigger and better things.

The MCCB kicks of between the Deacs and UConn in about two hours, and I will be firmly planted on the couch in support of their efforts. I applaud all of you who will never read this because you're going to the game, however for those of you stuck at home like me, you're welcome to crash here. We'll call this a bit of an Open Gameday Thread, so post your thoughts on the game below. I probably won't be around too much because I've got some Wake friends coming over to watch with me, but we'll see how it goes.

Go Deacs!

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Chip Malafronte has come through in a big way here at the last minute. Even with his busy schedule in Charlotte, the writer of Runway Ramblings has found time to answer a few questions for the Old Gold & Blog. Make sure to check out Runway Rambling for any UConn news you may be looking for. Now for his Answers:

9-3 and 2nd place in the Big East sound pretty impressive (and surprising) to me as an outsider looking at Connecticut football. How do UConn fans feel about the season to this point?

Chip Malafronte: I think every single UConn fan is probably as surprised as you. Even the most optimistic were thinking 7 wins this season would "maybe" be obtainable, considering the struggles this team has had over the last two seasons. To be 9-3 and tied for first place in the Big East (not second, there's a big, spanking new trophy in the UConn training facility to prove it) was certainly far beyond everyone's expectations.

Wake Forest fans and players were hoping to play a "bigger" opponent in their bowl game this year, and for us UConn doesn't exactly fit that description. I'm guessing UConn may have similar feelings though, so what is the perspective of the team and its fans going into the MCCB?

CM: I don't think UConn fans were particularly choosy about who the opponent would be for this bowl. The fact that the teams played each other last season may have made Wake less desirable. But the Demon Deacons ascension in the ACC the last two seasons certainly has UConn people excited.

Having two strong running backs (Andre Dixon and Donald Brown) has certainly been big for UConn this season, but Wake has prided itself on it's ability to stuff the run. How do you see this matchup playing out? What about UConn's passing game?

CM: UConn's running game has certainly been the main offensive weapon, with Dixon and Brown bringing different styles to the table. The biggest difference between this season's team and last season has been the play of Juco transfer quarterback Tyler Lorenzen. While the numbers may not jump off the stat page, he rarely makes mistakes (13 touchdowns, five interceptions) and can also make plays with his feet. Perhaps the one troubling aspect in the passing game has been inconsistency from the Husky wide receivers, who tend to drop too many passes.

Wake's running game has improved throughout the year, so much so that Josh Adams has been named ACC Rookie of the Year. Will UConn's run defense be up to the task? The UConn secondary also has 22 interceptions this year. What's been the key to creating those big plays?

CM: UConn's run defense has been quite impressive over the last few seasons. Aside from the West Virginia game this season, which was as disastrous as it could have been, UConn has contained some of the top backs in the Big East like Ray Rice of Rutgers and even Steve Slaton of WVU. Experience has been the biggest key to the secondary. All of the starters are back, but guys like safety Robert Vaughn (six picks) have benefitted from having a year under his belt. UConn's young linebackers Scott Lutrus and Lawrence Wilson, both freshmen All-Americas, have also helped in pass coverage and have five interceptions between them.

Put your name on it: what's the final score going to be on Saturday? What would a win mean for UConn? A loss?

CM: I expect a close game, not sure if UConn has enough to stop Wake though. I'll give the Huskies the benefit of the doubt and predict a 21-17 victory. A win will certainly be a nice feather in their cap, giving the program two bowl wins in just six years as a full-fledged Division I-A program. A loss certainly wouldn't spoil what's been a tremendous year.

Once again, big thanks to Chip and Runway Ramblings. Now it's time for the Deacs to take care of business.

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I have an unfortunate update this morning, but thankfully it's nothing about the team. For whatever reason I have been unable to get in touch with Chip Malafonte of the UConn blog Runway Ramblings. He was the blogger I was having answer my 5 questions this week, but he hasn't gotten back to me in the last 24 hours with answers to the questions I sent him. I'm still hopeful that he will come through later today, but at the same time I understand that he's a legitimate professional journalist for a Connecticut newspaper and may have more pressing things going on in his life now that he's down in Charlotte.

Unfortunately that leaves me without a lot to say at this moment. Certainly I'm getting excited for the game, and nothing has given me reason to doubt the confidence I've felt since being selected for this bowl. Of course it's always difficult to project how your team is going to come out over a month after playing its last game, but I've got a lot of faith in these guys. Plus, at this point I've only picked 1 bowl wrong and it was the first one. Hopefully that trend continues tomorrow.

I did see one very interesting note this morning from the betting website Covers.com. The writer said that considering our last game against UConn, UConn's most recent performance against West Virginia, the fact that this is basically a home game for Wake, and that the ACC always does well in the MCCB, he's amazed that the line for this game has moved from Wake -3 to Wake -1.5. For whatever reason, people just aren't betting on the Deacs. Perhaps this is the time for non-gamblers to jump on this train (or maybe not, but it's still an interesting read).

If any big news comes out of Charlotte today I'll do my best to update, but I'll be spending much of my afternoon/evening at the Houston vs. TCU Texas Bowl, so no promises. Of course if I hear from Chip I'll be sure to get his answers up. If I happen to miss something during the day, please post it in the comments so that others can find out about it (even if I don't). Hopefully those of you going to Charlotte have safe travels and I wish you all the best. Have fun with all your Deacon buddies tonight, but make sure you get some sleep - we need you all at full strength tomorrow!

Go Deacs!

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Last weekend I said I was going to take a look at the expert picks for the MCCB and talk a bit about those. Although it took me a bit longer than expected to get around to it, here it is nonetheless.

Let's start at ESPN:
Bruce Feldman of ESPN the Magazine is predicting (insider only) that Wake will win 13-7, saying "Two of the worst offensive teams in bowl play probably won't produce many fireworks. Neither team makes many mistakes. I'll go with Wake having more experience in bowl games from last season as the difference." - I don't think these offenses are quite as bad as he makes them out to be, although I agree that bowl experience does give us an edge (plus, hopefully, a good crowd). I think his margin of victory may be close to correct, but I expect an overall higher score.

Colin Cowherd has just given us a score, Wake 30 UConn 27. I can't argue too much with that prediction. I really think the Deacs are capable of a bigger win than this, but I can see why "experts" are predicting a reasonably close game.

I was very surprised to see that 62.2% ESPN's Sports Nation had picked UConn. I guess they're just going off the fact that UConn is ranked (not a bad criteria if you don't know much about the teams I suppose, but still)

At CBS Sportsline all I could find was a list of picks by their experts. Since I don't really even know who they all are, I'll just give them like this: 2 of their experts picked UConn, 2 picked Wake, and their computer thing picked Wake. Wish they had given us more than that, but what can you do? Some more info is available on their MCCB page.

I can't really find any picks on Fox Sports' site, and don't know where else to look right now, so that's all I've got. It looks like we're coming out pretty well in these, so hopefully that will be a good thing. If you find other picks go ahead and post them in the comments.

5 Good Questions coming for the last time very very soon!

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I don't know if any of you have been frustrated, by I have been frustrating myself with the lack of Meineke updates I've been able to do during this down time. I've been pretty suprised by how little new information has been out there, and frustrated that I can't be in Winston to find it myself (not that I'm complaining about some time at home though).

If I were in town I would probably go watch practices this week and hopefully get to talk to some people about what's been going on with the team, but as things stand I can basically only rely on Dan Collins to do that so here's his article from yesterday.

We are only a week away, though. so it's clearly time for me to have something to say.

It's been great to see people on the message boards starting to really get excited about the game (I think getting actual tickets has a lot to do with that). Unfortunately sitting here at home and knowing I won't be making it back up for the game has put a slight damper on my own excitement but hopefully I can live vicariously through all of you who will be there.

As most of you have probably heard, Wake's ticket office has sold over 20,000 tickets (an initial allotment plus a second) and are also getting credit for about 10,000 more ticket sales that were directly from the MCCB office and apparently a couple thousand from UCONN. I don't know exactly how those numbers were determined (some have said by area code the purchase was made from) or if they will officially count in future years when other bowls look at our turnout but either way those are great numbers. Great job Deac fans!

2 bowls in I'm one for two on my picks, but the one I lost I had put much higher confidence on. There's still a long way to go and of course I'm looking forward to getting the full 32 points when Wake Forest takes care of UConn one week from today.

Turning now to the week ahead, the following things are on the Old Gold & Blog's calendar:

Sunday or Monday: Compilation of all "expert" picks of the MCCB I can find, with my own comments on each

Tuesday: Christmas - you'll get nothing and like it (how could you not, it's Christmas!)

Wednesday 0r Thursday: Back for its final installment, 5 Good Questions will talk it up with Chip Malafronte, UConn beat writer for the New Haven Register and author of the excellent Runway Ramblings blog about UConn football. As always look forward to that.

Hopefully on the in between days something worthwhile will crop up and I'll try to have something up every day this week except Christmas day. Enjoy the weekend!

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I know I'm just slightly late with these picks seeing as how the Poinsettia bowl has already been played, but since it seems like almost every blogger in the nation who says anything about college football has published their picks I think It would too rebellious of me not to.

These picks come from the picks I made in a pick 'em contest based on a confidence ranking rather than being based on the spread. Because of that I'm not going to mess with going back and redoing this based on the spreads, so good luck using them for betting purposes (probably not a smart idea anyway, it's time like these when I'm glad I don't bet on things such as these.

Since I did make these picks and rank them by confidence, I will let you know what confidence I assigned them, but I'm going to list them in chronological order. If I have additional comments to make, I will. I'll list my winner over the loser, followed by the confidence (Highest is 32, lowest is of course 1).

Thursday, December 20
Poinsetta: Navy over Utah - 17. Clearly I was wrong, but having played Navy this season and seeing how talented they were, I couldn't help it. I know losing Paul Johnson would be tough, but they put up a heck of a fight. In hindsight 17 was probably too high for the confidence.

Friday, December 21
New Orleans: FAU over Memphis - 2

Saturday, December 22
Papajohns.com: Cincinatti over Southern Miss - 4. Had to stick with Ben Mauk and the Bearcats.

New Mexico: New Mexico over Nevada - 8. Least attended bowl game ever? I heard Nevada had sold 95 tickets.

Las Vegas: BYU over UCLA - 11.

Sunday, December 23
Hawaii: East Carolina over Boise State - 6. Not sure I actually liked this pick, but did for the sake of the state.

Wednesday, December 26
Motor City: Purdue over Central Michigan - 12.

Thursday, December 27
Holiday: Texas over Arizona State - 13.

Friday, December 28
Champs: Boston College over Michigan State - 17. BC has had some rough patches towards the end, but they're definitely the better team in this game. Only possible problem would be motivation. They're used to having no fans watch them.

Texas: Houston over TCU - 9. A game I will be attending, but rooting for TCU. I actually like UH's team, but I'm going with some TCU friends so my allegiances lie there.

Emerald: Maryland over Oregon State - 27. I feel very good about Maryland in this game. Reports are that they're actually fired up to go play and Oregon State seems disappointed to be there. Those type things become big factors in games like this.

Saturday, December 29
Meineke: Wake Forest over Connecticut - 32. As you can see, I sometimes enjoy making my picks based on emotions (another good reason for me not to put any money on them). Many experts predict this will be a close game, and they may be right, but how could I not pick the Deacs with full confidence? What kind of fan would I be?

Liberty: Central Florida over Mississippi State - 19.

Alamo: Texas A&M over Penn State - 22.

Sunday, December 30
Independence: Alabama over Colorado - 10.

Monday, December 31
Armed Forces: Air Force over Cal- 15.

Humanitarian: Georgia Tech over Fresno State - 13.

Sun: South Florida over Oregon - 25.

Music City: Kentucky over Florida State - 26. There's just no way you can pick Florida State to win this game with all that's going on there right now. As much as I like to show an ACC bias, it can't be done for this one.

Insight: Oklahoma State over Indiana - 27.

Peach: Clemson over Auburn - 16. Clemson proved to be a dang good football team this year. They messed things up at a couple of crucial moments, but just looking at their win over us says enough for me.

Wednesday, January 1
Outback: Wisconsin over Tennessee - 5.

Cotton: Missouri over Arkansas - 20.

Gator: Texas Tech over Virginia - 1. So my Big 12 bias (grew up an OU fan) shows its teeth here. I'm not confident Virginia can ever stop Tech or that they can put up enough points to stay with them. Clearly I'm torn though.

Capital One: Michigan over Florida - 3.

Rose: USC over Illinois - 30.

Sugar: Hawaii over Georgia - 24.

Thursday, January 2
Fiesta: Oklahoma over West Virginia - 31. This pick actually makes some sense considering the current instability at WV, but Oklahoma is the team I grew up rooting for, and I haven't cut those ties.

Friday, January 3
Orange: Kansas over Virgina Tech - 23. Maybe unpopular in ACC circles, but Kansas is a very good football team this season, and I really haven't seen Virgina Tech look great against any strong opponents this year. All the games they've won over good teams have been close. I hate to think of the ACC losing the Orange Bowl 2 years in a row, and I'll be rooting for VT, I just don't think it will happen.

Sunday, January 5
International: Rutgers over Ball State - 29.

Monday, January 6
GMAC: Tulsa over Bowling Green - 7.

Tuesday, January 7
National Championship: LSU over Ohio State - 21. I couldn't not pick LSU to win this, but I'm really not that sure of it. Maybe it's just that I feel like OSU can't keep going 0-fer in national championship games (as much as I like seeing them do it) but something doesn't sit right about this for me. Nonetheless, LSU should definitely win.

So that's it. As I went through and typed that all up I realized that I'm unsatisfied with several of those picks and several of the confidences, but at this point I don't want to change them. I prefer to go with my gut on these type things. When it's all said and done (and maybe somewhere in the middle) I'll update how I've done.

Enjoy the bowl season!

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I know that to many fans (and apparently to many players) the Meineke Bowl in Charlotte is a bit of a letdown. Everyone was hoping for even bigger things this season, and we were only several close games from making that happen. I hope that fact motivates the team in future seasons, but for right now I hope that both players and fans will embrace the opportunity to win one more football game and finish with an impressive nine wins. Charlotte may not be all that glamorous, and the game may have one of the more unfortunate names out there, but that doesn't change the fact that this team has done big things and deserves our support. I know it's been said, but it's very true: 10 years from now the difference between Charlotte and the Champs bowl in Orlando will be entirely insignificant - what will matter is whether or not we won and improved our overall bowl record. I would have loved to see us play a fun game against a big name SEC or Big 10 opponent, but for now I'm going enjoy what we've got - a great football team that's fun and exciting to watch, one of the best coaches in the nation who isn't planning to go anywhere, and an AD who fully backs the program. Considering those things, I'd say we have it pretty good as Wake football fans. Go to Charlotte, have a good time, and then we can worry about winning ourselves another ACC Championship next season.

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