Maryland Secures Title, 23-19

The play that clinched Maryland’s first outright Atlantic Coast Conference championship in 16 years hadn’t been used since fall camp.

That’s the same time first-year Coach Ralph Friedgen began building a winning attitude among a group of players who refused to quit again Saturday night at Raleigh, N.C.

Friedgen and his No. 10 Terrapins rallied late to slam the door on Florida State’s nine-year run as ACC champions, becoming one of the most unlikely champions in league history with a 23-19 victory against North Carolina State.

Maryland went from 5-6 last season to 10-1 under its rotund coach and awaits its first major bowl bid since the 1977 Cotton as the ACC’s bowl championship series representative.

“[Friday] night I told them win or lose they were a special team to me,” Friedgen said. “With a win here, they’re a special team to everybody.”

Shaun Hill’s eight-yard scoring pass to Guilian Gary with 41 seconds left capped a dream regular season for Friedgen and Maryland’s long-suffering fans.

“Shaun looked at me and gave me a signal and I was like, ‘We haven’t run that since camp,’ ” Gary said. “So, I lined up and he put me in single and everybody else on the other side. He looked at me and said, ‘It’s you or nothing.’ ”

North Carolina State (6-4, 4-4) saw its three-game winning streak end.

Friedgen became the first rookie coach to win the ACC title, going 7-1 in conference play.

Georgia Tech 38, Wake Forest 33--George Godsey threw for 267 yards and three touchdowns--two to Will Glover--to lead the Yellowjackets to victory at Winston Salem, N.C.

Glover finished with eight catches for 155 yards with touchdowns of 65 and 47 yards, and Joe Burns ran for 145 yards and a touchdown as Georgia Tech (7-3, 4-3) prevented the Demon Deacons (5-5, 3-5) from qualifying for a postseason bowl.

Wake Forest can get its bowl-qualifying sixth victory in its season finale against Northern Illinois.

North Carolina 52, Duke 17--Ronald Curry threw three touchdown passes and ran for another score at Chapel Hill, N.C., as the Tar Heels extended the Blue Devils’ losing streak to 22 games, longest in the nation among major-college teams.

North Carolina (6-5, 5-3) defeated Duke for the 12th consecutive time, winning the last six by a combined score of 254-68. The Tar Heels, which had fewer than 300 total yards in four games, had 315 by halftime and season-high 560 overall. Duke (0-10, 0-7) has the eighth-longest losing streak in Division I history.