Four teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference's Coastal Division began the season ranked in the national polls.
They're finally starting to play like they belonged there.
No. 23 Virginia Tech and 25th-ranked Miami are back in the Top 25 after absences of varying lengths. Two other teams are starting to reappear on voters' ballots: North Carolina, which is returning some key players to the field and finding closure for others, and Georgia Tech, which bears little resemblance to the team that lost to lowly Kansas.
After a topsy-turvy start to the season, order finally seems to have been restored to the Coastal.
"The two losses definitely hurt us, but we're starting to get on a roll now and playing like the team that we all know we could be since as early as January," Virginia Tech cornerback Rashad Carmichael said. "I think we're right where we want to be going into this ACC stretch."
That's just as true of the Hokies - who are 2-2 outside the ACC and 3-0 in it - as it is for the Hurricanes, Tar Heels and Yellow Jackets. All of them appear to have bounced back from the early struggles that cast serious doubt on the preseason observation that the Coastal, with its four preseason Top 25 teams, was by far the stronger of the ACC's two divisions.
The Atlantic Division is led by preseason favorite Florida State, which is 4-0 in the ACC. But midway through the year, two surprise teams - North Carolina State and Maryland, each with one ACC loss - remain on the Seminoles' heels.
There aren't any such shockers in the Coastal, where both struggling Virginia and Duke are 0-3 in league play and sit a full two games behind the four front-runners.
That figures to set up a wide-open stretch run in the Coastal, with things heating up this weekend when North Carolina faces Miami. The biggest day for the division might come Nov. 13, when Georgia Tech hosts Miami and Virginia Tech visits the Tar Heels.
"It's going to play itself out here in the next couple of weeks, because everybody's going to start to play everybody else," said Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson, whose team beat North Carolina last month in the only matchup so far of top-four Coastal teams.
"We were picked fourth. We'll see if they were right. We'll know here in the next three weeks probably," he added. "You've got Miami and North Carolina playing, so one of them is going to have two (ACC) losses. Then it hits the gauntlet. All the Coastal teams that were predicted in the top four are going to be playing each other in the next two, three weeks.
"So it's going to sort itself out."
League supporters might say these four schools finally are playing as expected. Cynics would argue that of course the wins were bound to come; they're merely beating up on teams from a subpar ACC.
But either way, the four favorites have quietly gotten themselves back on track.
Virginia Tech had a miserable season-opening six-day span that included losses to Boise State and, stunningly, FCS member James Madison.
"You knew they'd bounce back," Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher said.
They certainly have - scoring at least 41 points four times during a five-game winning streak.
"The first week of the season, we dropped 0-2 that fast in that one week. It's real easy to get down on yourself and throw in the towel like 'Dang, we done lost two games that fast,"' Virginia Tech receiver Dyrell Roberts said. "But we got great senior leadership and our coaches kept us on the right track and let us know that ... we still have plenty more weeks to go. And luckily right now, we're on a roll and hopefully we can keep putting the work in and stay on this roll and finish out the season strong."
North Carolina's problems seemed to be mostly personnel-related. The Tar Heels opened the season minus more than a dozen players who were held out as part of the investigation into potentially improper agent-player benefits and possible academic misconduct.
Some, like defensive backs Deunta Williams and Da'Norris Searcy and running backs Shaun Draughn and Ryan Houston, have returned. Others, like defensive linemen Marvin Austin and Robert Quinn and receiver Greg Little, won't see the field again in college after being either dismissed from the team or found by the NCAA to be "permanently ineligible."
"It didn't look too well at the beginning of the season for the ACC," quarterback T.J. Yates said. "We weren't doing so well, especially in the Coastal. After a couple of weeks, we all kind of got back on track and things got back to normal."
Meanwhile, Georgia Tech's season may have swung on one drive.
The Yellow Jackets appeared headed for disaster when a loss at Kansas dropped them out of the national consciousness. They appeared destined to be 2-3 when they trailed Wake Forest late. Joshua Nesbitt then led a potentially season-saving drive he capped with the winning touchdown pass with 15 seconds left. Tech won its next two games by an average of 20 points.
Miami was the Coastal's lone Top 25 team two weeks ago, but a blowout loss to rival Florida State knocked the Hurricanes out of the poll. They're back in following a solid 28-13 win over Duke that marked turnover-prone quarterback Jacory Harris' first interception-free performance since the opener and Damien Berry's third straight 100-yard rushing game.
Doubters might wonder just how impressive a 15-point win over the lowly Blue Devils can be. But nobody can complain about the defense's seven turnovers.
"You can't let it carry over," Miami safety Vaughn Telemaque said following the Duke game. "You just want to keep on coming with a lot of energy, and we play a lot better that way."
One thing is clear entering the stretch drive. One Coastal team - no matter which one it is - will have dug itself out of a considerable hole to earn a spot in the league title game.
"I think the schedule definitely gives us an opportunity to control our own destiny," Virginia Tech's Carmichael said. "But either way it goes, we would be doing our best to try to win out, especially with those two losses early. We got our losses early, so now you're trying to take it slow."
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AP Sports Writers Hank Kurz Jr. in Blacksburg, Va., and Aaron Beard in Chapel Hill, N.C.; and Associated Press Writers George Henry in Atlanta and Brent Kallestad in Tallahassee, Fla., contributed to this report.