Wednesday links

posted by LW, Wednesday, February 25, 2009

As if the ACC race wasn't already confusing enough ...

Boston College put itself into the conversation with last night's win over Florida State in icy Boston.

So now the upper half of the standings looks like this:

UNC 10-3
Clemson 8-4
Duke 8-4
FSU 8-5
WF 7-5
BC 8-6
MD 6-6
VT 6-6

At this point you'd have to say the Eagles are also vying for a top-4 finish in the ACC, which of course grants a coveted first-round bye in the conference tournament.

And you'd also have to say Oliver Purnell and Leonard Hamilton now have some company in their race for ACC coach of the year honors. Not many folks out there thought Al Skinner's Eagles would be serious NCAA candidates after what they lost from last year's team, but here they are.

Here's the Florida State angle from last night's game.

Big game tonight for the Tigers, but aren't they all at this point?

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reflects on the high stakes for the Hokies, who need to do some serious damage to merit serious NCAA Tournament consideration.

Clemson needs to be ready for this game, because the Hokies actually played pretty well in last week's home loss to Florida State. Their energetic man-to-man defense held the Noles to 28 percent shooting in the second half before Toney Douglas' game-winner with six seconds left.

Here's a podcast that discusses Virginia Tech's discipline issues, and if you haven't seen the Roanoke Times' Randy King in action, you need to check this out. He's an absolute hoot.

Here's a link to our story on Demontez Stitt. Well, actually it's a story on his riot of a grandmother.

I was talking with Stitt after yesterday's practice for a story on all the standard stuff: his recent shooting improvement, his recovery from an ankle injury, his heightened emphasis on attacking off the dribble.

Stitt is really hard on himself, so I asked him a predictable question: "I'm assuming you're your own worst critic?"

"Um, no," he replied. "My grandmother is definitely my worst critic."

He told me about his grandmother bringing her own stat sheets to his high school basketball games and calling him out when he didn't record enough assists, steals or blocks.

I gave her a call last night, and she held court for about a half-hour. She's definitely a piece of work.

Clemson's penchant for slow starts led Oliver Purnell to tweak the routine during pre-game warmups, according to The State.

Purnell told the team he would be tweaking the team’s pregame warm-up routine, making it more structured and intense so the Tigers will have broken a sweat by tip-off.

The Greenville News looks into the tight nature of the series with Virginia Tech.

The Post and Courier offers a stock report on the ACC's upper-echelon teams.

The Independent-Mail talks about the dangerous Hokies, and here's the preview from the Seneca paper.

Bart Wright admits he's an NFL Combine junkie.

I'm wondering: Is there a difference between his affliction and that of recruiting junkies, the latter an element Bart takes great pleasure in needling?

Here's a favorable review of HBO's documentary on the Duke-UNC rivalry.

And look who's 60 ... whoooooo!

LW

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