Shuffle Off To Boston - It's official: if the  Maryland Terrapins can't lose again this season.

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That is, if they want to get to a bowl game for the 2nd consecutive season.

On a muddy field in cold, sloppy conditions,  Maryland's play mostly resembled the weather in a 28-17 loss to the Boston College Eagles on Saturday afternoon.

What made the loss worse was that Boston College, who limped in with a 1-6 record, was made to look like world beaters in College Park.

Eyewitnesses say that fewer than 10,000 people stuck around for the 2nd half of a game in which Eagles running back Rolandan Finch rumbled for a staggering 243 yards on the ground. Finch had never even topped 100 yards in a game before Saturday.

Davin Meggett recovered from some stagnant weeks to fall just a yard short of the 100-yard rushing mark, but his rushing wasn't enough to keep the Terps competitive in the slushy conditions.

Here's the recap and here's the Post's Eric Prisbell saying that the Randy Edsall experience cannot have gotten off to a worse start.

Bull Durham - One of our mantras at D5Q is that there's "no category in the standings for pretty wins, just wins." Nowhere on Saturday did that ring more true than at Duke, where Virginia Tech eked out a 14-10 victory over the perennial ACC also-ran.

The Hokies overcame more than 100 penalty yards and two interceptions from the usually steady Logan Thomas to move to 8-1 and 4-1 in conference.

Despite racking up 433 yards of offense, the game wasn't sealed for the Hokies until there was less than a minute left, when Hokies DB Barquell Rivers stepped in front of a Sean Renfree pass and picked it off with 55 seconds to go.

No fear, though, Hokie Nation. The task gets considerably tougher next week, when Va. Tech travels to Atlanta for a match-up with the suddenly streaking Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.

College Huddle

-We can understand if you didn't stay up late enough on Saturday night to catch the end of the triple-overtime thriller between Stanford and USC in Los Angeles. Perhaps the snow and chill lulled you into an early slumber. No matter; we stayed up for it and caught every last minute of the 56-48 win for the Cardinal. Here are all the highlights.

-Has Clemson come to a crossroads? Pundits are once again prodding at the 8-1 Tigers after their 31-17 road loss to Georgia Tech, especially considering Clemson's penchant for starting fast and crashing near the end of the season.

-And, in today's edition of "Geographic Boundaries Gone Horribly Wrong," West Virginia has accepted an invitation to join the Big 12, a league whose teams are concentrated in Oklahoma and Texas. Forget geography, though, when it comes to TV dollars and swaths of revenue, right?