Duke got a big win on Saturday against Virginia Tech to stay alive in the race for the conference championship. They host a good Florida State team on Tuesday before their showdown next Sunday at North Carolina. The Tar Heels travel to VT on Wednesday. The Blue Devils are one game back, so a pair of wins to close the regular season would give Duke at least a share of the ACC championship. Most pundits have written Duke off for a #1 seed, but if they were to win out and then win the ACC tournament, they could sneak in as a top seed.

As a basketball fan, it would be great to see Duke beat FSU tomorrow guaranteeing that the Duke/UNC tilt on Sunday is for the conference title. Even if the Tar Heels beat Tech and guarantee themselves at least a share of the ACC title, they won’t want to miss out on an opportunity to slam the door on the Dookies. Meanwhile, the Blue Devils need to be careful not to look past a Florida State team that is 22-7. Duke beat FSU in Tallahassee back in January, so the Seminoles will have revenge on their minds.

Joe Lunardi (ESPN “bracketologist”) says that if the season ended today, seven ACC teams would make the NCAA tourney — UNC, Duke, Wake Forest, Clemson, Florida State, Boston College and Virginia Tech. Maryland has been making a move, but they could really use a win against Wake Forest and then a win at Virginia to put themselves in good shape. Otherwise, they’d have to make some major noise in the ACC tourney to get a bid. Likewise, Miami is sitting at 6-8 in conference, but they have two winnable games (@ Georgia Tech, vs. N.C. State) to close out the season. If they win both, they’d be at 8-8 and be in position to earn a bid with a good showing in the ACC tourney.

Of the teams Lunardi listed, Virginia Tech is in the most tenuous position. They have a tough pair of games to close out the season — they host the Tar Heels and have to travel to Florida State. They need to win at least one of those games to stay in the hunt for an NCAA bid. If they lose both, they won’t finish at .500 in conference.

Let’s say you’re sitting in a Vegas sportsbook yesterday afternoon and you decide that you want to get odds on a parlay that has #3 Duke losing to #10 Clemson by 27 points and #6 Wake Forest losing at Miami by the exact same margin. Or let’s just say that you have them both losing by 20-plus. What kind of odds would you be able to get? 100-1? 1,000-1? 10,000-1?

That’s exactly what happened. Clemson slammed Duke, 74-47, while Miami blasted Wake, 79-52. Littlejohn Coliseum is a great home court environment and the Tigers were able to jump all over the Blue Devils, leading from the get-go. It was just one of those nights for Duke when nothing was falling. Kyle Singler, Nolan Smith and Jon Scheyer were a combined 4 of 23 from the field for 12 points. As a team, Duke shot 23% from long range and 31% from the field, and they were rattled by the Tigers’ full court pressure. Trevor Booker was stellar for Clemson, posting 21 points and eight boards, both game highs.

Meanwhile, the Demon Deacons were stymied by Miami’s zone defense en route to a brutal 32% from the field (and just 15% from long range). Jack McClinton had 32 points for the Hurricanes. Miami broke a three-game losing streak with the victory.

North Carolina and Duke sit atop the ACC at 6-2, while Clemson is a half game behind at 5-2. The Tar Heels visit Duke next Wednesday in a game that will determine who is in the driver’s seat in the ACC.

Phillips was the one who fired helped Tommy Bowden make his decision to resign earlier this week and replaced him with Dabo Swinney. The move looked like it would pay off when Clemson took a 17-14 lead deep into the fourth quarter, but a late GA Tech touchdown sent Tiger fans home with yet another defeat.

The scene on the sidelines at the end of the game paints an ugly picture for Clemson’s current situation. There’s no doubt Bowden had to be replaced (his own brother said so after it happened), but Phillips and the rest of the big wigs in the program need to realize that change won’t happen overnight.

Although he got way to cute with his play calling on Saturday, Swinney did a nice job rallying the troops in the wake of Bowden’s firing. Given what was said by a couple of the players in the media this week, it appears that the locker room had been divided. But given the circumstances, Swinney kept things in order and deserves a chance to turn the Tigers’ misfortunes around this season.

Or at the very least, deserves the respect of not being lashed at on national television by an AD who should be nowhere near the sidelines at the end of a game. (Although to be fair, nobody knows at this point why Phillips was yelling at his coaches. Maybe he was upset that the concession stand ran out of Diet Coke?)

Clemson football coach Tommy Bowden has been fired, South Carolina television station WYFF reports.
Assistant head coach Dabo Swinney will serve as interim coach for the remainder of the season, the news station reports.

The Tigers opened with a 34-10 loss to Alabama and are now 3-3 (1-2 in ACC play). Bowden was firmly on the hot seat after a loss to Maryland Sept. 27, and a loss on Thursday to Wake Forest turned up the heat.

Bowden also was questioned over benching staring quarterback Cullen Harper in favor of redshirt freshman Willy Korn.

Bowden signed a contract extension in December that would have kept him at Clemson through 2014. It is believed that Clemson will owe Bowden $4 million after terminating that contract early, but financial details surrounding the coach’s departure were not announced.

Bowden has a 72-45 record at Clemson with eight bowl appearances. The Tigers were No. 9 in The Associated Press preseason Top 25 poll and were expected to compete for the ACC championship, which would have been their first, in Bowden’s 10th season as coach.

It was bound to happen. Clemson has underachieved under Bowden for years and it was only a matter of time before the program had to make a change. Bowden’s attempt to replace Harper with Korn was a last ditch effort to save his job. What Harper really needs is for his young offensive line to gel and significantly better coaching.

Wake, who perhaps was looking ahead to its game next week with Clemson, absolutely shot themselves in the foot all game. The Deacons turned the ball over an astonishing six times and mustered only 39 rushing yards. Conversely, Navy ran at will, racking up 294 yards and once they built a 17-0 lead at halftime, they never looked back.

Apparently nobody wants to win the ACC. One would have thought that with their big win last Saturday at Florida State, Wake would have used the momentum to take control of the conference. Instead they lost to an unranked Navy team that picked off four passes and dominated in time of possession, 35:40 to 23:19. Maybe Maryland, who pulled off an upset themselves on Saturday in beating No. 20 Clemson 20-17, can emerge in the Atlantic. But then again, the Terps also lost to Middle Tennessee State earlier this year.

Just a quick note about Navy, the Midshipmen go into virtually every game undersized, outnumbered and often with less overall talent on their roster. But they also have more heart, determination and focus than a lot of their opponents. And their upset over Notre Dame and Wake the past two years proves that.

We already knew Saban was a great college coach, but now we know he also has some real talent.

Stewart Mandel explains that Terrence Cody will likely be a star.

That Alabama may have the next Glenn Dorsey on its hands. Tide fans spent the offseason drooling in anticipation over the arrival of freshman WR Julio Jones, and while Jones did not disappoint in his debut, the truly astonishing newcomer was defensive tackle Terrence Cody. Clemson’s offensive line had no answer for the freakish 6-foot-5, 365-pound junior college transfer, who could be seen storming into the Tigers’ backfield over and over. Clemson’s vaunted rushing attack netted zero — yes, zero — total yards.

With such a rare combination of size and speed, Cody — who, as legend has it, began the year nearly 30 pounds heavier yet could be seen on the basketball court “dunking and doing 360s with the ball,” Tide center Antoine Caldwell said this summer — looks like the same kind of one-man wrecking crew as the former LSU star. Foes will have no choice to double or triple-team him, which, in ‘Bama’s 3-4 scheme, frees up all kinds of gaps for the linebackers.

We knew it was just a matter of time before Saban had Alabama back on track. We’ll see how much damage they can do this year.

“Nobody can be satisfied with a one-game performance,” Saban said. “This will be a challenge for our team and it’ll be interesting to see how they respond.”

Still, as the Alabama band broke into Queen’s “We Are The Champions,” at the end, you had to wonder if they were honoring the Crimson Tide’s past, with 12 national titles and years of dominance in the Southeastern Conference under Bear Bryant, or gazing into the near future.

Tide QB John Parker Wilson was outstanding, throwing for 180 yards and two touchdowns on 22 of 30 passing. But Bama won this game by getting up early and completely taking away Clemson’s dynamic rushing attack. C.J. Spiller and James Davis came into the season as one of the best backfield tandems in the nation. But collectively they only rushed for 20 yards on eight carries. Outside of Spiller’s 96-yard kickoff return in the second half, the Tide owned the Tigers in every facet of the game.

Looks like Saban is turning around Alabama’s program in just a few short years while Clemson continues to underachieve under Tommy Bowden. Alabama is a very improved program, but this loss is rather devastating to a Clemson team that was supposed to have an outside shot at a BCS title appearance.