For some off-season football reading, we want to look at the ACC’s 25 best out-of-conference wins of the 2020s. For years, we’ve said winning OOC game would benefit the health of the ACC. With the obvious bias built in and the narratives being set around media, actual winning doesn’t matter like it should. It’s still fun to look back on some nice wins. Maybe we’ll get back to looking at results one day. We can only hope.
For the previous decade, we ranked the ACC’s 50 biggest OOC wins of the 2010s.
There were some great wins there. That’s for sure.
We look at games 16-20 here, and soon we’ll get into the top 10.
Games 1-5 | Games 6-10 | Games 11-15 | Games 21-25
16. #16 NC State 27 Texas Tech 14 – September 17, 2022
If there was one criticism of Dave Doeren during his tenure at NC State, it was a lack of quality OOC wins. They finally got a noteworthy one against Big 12 opponent Texas Tech. The Red Raiders finished the season 8-5 and won their final 4 games. The win helped the Wolfpack eventually get into the top 10, which set up a gameday matchup with Clemson later in the season. Only one other defense held Texas Tech to 14 points or less the entire season.
17. Syracuse 32 Purdue 29 – September 17, 2022
The Syracuse win over Purdue never got the credit it deserved. The Boilermakers were the Big 10 West Division Champions, and Syracuse ended up as a middle-of-the-pack ACC team. Maybe the ACC had a little depth in 2022? The game itself was a thriller, with Orande Gadson II catching a 25-yard from Garrett Shrader. The win was part of a 6-0 start by Syracuse that led to Syracuse and Clemson playing the highest-rated game of the weekend when they faced each other in late October.
18. #23 Clemson 30 South Carolina 0 – November 27, 2021
Clemson’s worst team in nearly a decade went down to Columbia, SC, and thrashed a South Carolina team some felt could knock off the Tigers. This wasn’t an awful South Carolina team as they went 7-6, and were just a couple of scores from a 9-win season. Clemson’s win suggested at the time there was still an enormous gap between the two schools’ football programs. The win was part of the Tiger’s late-season surge that saw them win their final 6 games and finish with their 11th straight 10+ win season.
19. Boston College 23 #24 SMU 14 – December 28, 2023
While we all admit winning most bowl games isn’t like it used to be, they can still carry some weight on the ole resume. Boston College faced an 11-win SMU team that won the AAC and was ranked in the top 25. With SMU joining the ACC in 2024, there was that aspect to the game as well. The Eagles came into this one on a 3-game losing streak, but with the win achieved their first 7+ win season since 2019. QB Thomas Castellanos showed why he was one of the ACC’s best dual-threat QBs, with over 250 yards on the ground and in the air, leading BC to a 4th quarter comeback win.
20. Virginia Tech 31 Marshall 14 – September 7, 2024
Virginia Tech beating Marshall 31 – 14 didn’t look like much at the time. By the end of the year a 6-7 (4-4) ACC team had beaten a 10 win Marshall team that won the Sun Belt. Bayshul Tuten ran for 120 yards, and the defense held the Thundering Herd to under 300 yards of offense. Sometimes, the quality of the win can be measured by a team that finished lower in the ACC standings and defeated a decent team. Virginia Tech had good moments in an inconsistent 2024, and this was one of them.
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