COLLEGE FOOTBALL Despite losses, Miami has hope

The Hurricanes still have a chance to win the ACC title and a spot in a BCS game.
CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) -- In the last two weeks, Miami has lost consecutive games to unranked opponents, 14 spots in the national rankings and any hope of a national title.
However, not all has been lost. Somehow, the Hurricanes are still in the thick of the race for the Atlantic Coast Conference championship.
Even after being knocked off by North Carolina and Clemson, then plummeting to a season-low 18th in this week's AP Top 25 poll, Miami still has hope of winning the ACC's automatic berth into a Bowl Championship Series game. Should Miami beat Virginia, Wake Forest and Virginia Tech to end the season, it would win the league.
Easier said than done.
"I think it's really amazing that we are where we are and still have an opportunity for something special to happen," Miami coach Larry Coker said Sunday. "We've lost two games that I'm not going to say we should have won, but I'm certainly saying we could have won. To say we're not down or disappointed would be a gross understatement."
Strong start, weak finish
Miami's 24-17 overtime loss to Clemson on Saturday night seems like a microcosm of the Hurricanes' season so far -- strong start, slow finish.
Miami scored 10 points on its first two possessions against the Tigers, built a 17-3 lead by halftime and seemed to have Clemson stifled at every turn. Yet the Hurricanes punted all eight times they got the ball in the second half, allowed 215 yards after halftime and came up 5 yards short of a tying touchdown in overtime.
"It's another gut check for us," Miami cornerback Antrel Rolle said. "We've got to respond."
The Hurricanes' trend of allowing opposing tailbacks to run wild continued for the fourth straight week, with Reggie Merriweather scoring all three Clemson touchdowns and finishing with a career-high 114 yards. He carried the ball 20 times; Miami never stopped him for a loss.
"We didn't make many changes at halftime, just a change in aggressiveness, a change in heart," Clemson coach Tommy Bowden said. "The whole team believed we could win the ball game."
Clemson was 0-3 on the road
Hard to believe, considering Clemson's 0-3 road record before Saturday. Teams that struggle on the road typically don't overcome 14-point deficits on Miami's home field. But the Hurricanes apparently aren't intimidating anyone these days.
Merriweather managed 19 yards against Florida State earlier this year -- but shredded Miami. North Carolina's Chad Scott has a 51.1-yard average this season, not counting his 175 yards against the Hurricanes. North Carolina State's T.A. McLendon burned Miami for 145 yards, nearly double his average. And the 109 yards Louisville's Lionel Gates got in Miami is more than one-third of his season total.
Coker, however, isn't singling out his defense -- even though the unit has yielded averages of 31 points and 463.3 yards over the last four games. Instead, Coker says Miami's issues are "a myriad of things and a myriad of people."
"The only thing we are right now is bowl eligible," Coker said. "I don't think we really care about that. The only thing we care about is getting our ship right, going out and playing the way we can. We need to beat somebody good."