Basketball time

posted by LW, Monday, January 11, 2010

Halfway through basketball season, it feels like basketball season.

Finally.

Don't know about most of you, but it takes me a while to get adjusted.

Early November is just way too early to be interested.

And my attention will always be divided until the last BCS game is played.

So it finally felt right to turn the page and watch some ACC basketball over the weekend.

Here are some random thoughts on the conference as we look forward to Wednesday's visit from North Carolina:

-- ACC is one tangled ball of yarn, no? It's absurdly early to look at standings, but nine teams have at least one loss. Anyone want to take a stab at ranking the top five?

-- Until Saturday, it was assumed that Duke was far and away the best team in the conference. But then the Blue Devils lost at Georgia Tech and demonstrated that it's hard to assign such lofty status to a team that's so reliant on the 3-point shot. Duke missed 22 of 28 shots from beyond the arc in that game.

-- I don't think North Carolina's guards are as bad as folks are saying. They're certainly not the caliber of their predecessors (Lawson, Ellington), but Larry Drew II, Dexter Strickland and Will Graves didn't look too bad Sunday night against Virginia Tech. Drew is much improved from last season; Strickland has blazing speed in transition; and Graves can get hot every now and then.

-- Then again, Virginia Tech's defense might've had a lot to do with the Tar Heels' backcourt success last night. Is it me, or does Seth Greenberg not maximize the talent he's accrued in Blacksburg? It's become so typical for the Hokies to sizzle for 20 minutes, then fizzle the next -- and particularly against North Carolina. When Jeff Allen scores four points in a game, something is wrong.

-- Malcolm Delaney: special. The only thing keeping him from a spectacular night was a bum ankle that seemed to seriously hamper him after he scorched the Tar Heels in the first half.

-- Watching Georgia Tech's Derrick Favors in the first half against Duke on Saturday, you begin to better understand why Milton Jennings isn't exactly lighting it up as a freshman. Not saying Jennings is on Favors' level, but Favors projected the same deer-in-headlights vibe we've seen from Jennings this season. Bottom line: It takes time. Give the Jennings kid some time to develop.

-- Which game would you rather watch Wednesday at 7 p.m.: Boston College at Duke, or Miami at Virginia Tech? ESPN took the former as the undercard for UNC-Clemson, but the latter figures to be much more compelling. Should be a dogfight in Blacksburg.

-- As bad as Clemson looked at Duke last week, all that could pretty much be forgotten if the Tigers manage to dispatch the Tar Heels on Wednesday. And given that Clemson gets the Blue Devils again at home not long from now (Jan. 23), there's more than ample opportunity to atone for the Debacle in Durham.

-- David Potter needs to get it going offensively. He laid a big, fat goose egg Saturday against Boston College and has missed 18 of 22 shots from beyond the 3-point arc over the last seven games. He went 16-of-25 from long range in the Tigers' first six games.

-- Deon Thompson has not looked particularly good on the occasions I've watched him this season. It's kind of strange, because he was outstanding toward the end of last year.

-- Georgia Tech's upset of the Blue Devils was painted as a coming-out party for the talented Yellow Jackets, but I'm just not convinced this team won't still have some struggles this season. They look so disjointed on offense at times that it's hard to imagine them never looking back after Saturday's win.

-- Where would William & Mary rank in the ACC standings? The Tribe own wins over two of the conference's better teams, Wake Forest and Maryland.

On to some links...

Ed Hardin of the Greensboro News & Record takes measure of the ACC and concludes that it's anybody's ballgame.

The prevailing wisdom as of about 3:50 p.m. Saturday was that Duke was the best team in league and the fifth-best team in America. The word going around was that someone had to finish second and it might as well be anybody. That's still true, but that could include Duke now.

A season thought to be Duke's for the taking was altered in the first hours of the first full weekend of ACC basketball. The journey Krzyzewski thought his team had set out on turned out to be something different altogether. Turns out, the Duke team we've seen for the past few years isn't any different from the one we'll see this year. It's still capable of losing when we least expect it.

That's apparently the case with every team in the ACC. A rebuilding season in the conference is going to be a rebuilding year from top to bottom. Duke was thought to be playing in a league of its own, but not now. The first weekend of the season will resonate for weeks to come. No one is above losing on the road, and that's going to make this a long, hard journey. The road leads not to Durham but to Greensboro, the deepest end of the ACC.

This Chattanooga columnist also weighs in one what he says might be "America's Cockiest Conference."

Here's Duke's perspective from the loss at Georgia Tech.

If a message came out of Saturday's game, it was sent by Georgia Tech (12-3, 1-1). Despite one of the tallest lineups in the country, Duke had trouble dealing with the Yellow Jackets' size and strength inside. Forward Lance Thomas fouled out in 14 minutes and as the game wore on, the Yellow Jackets became the more assertive team.

It was Duke's third game in six days but without consistent scoring, the Blue Devils put extra pressure on themselves at the defensive end and on the boards.

"I thought overall we defended fairly well," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "The big thing was that once the ball went up on the glass, they got more (rebounds) than we got."

Kyle Singler, Jon Scheyer and Nolan Smith combined to shoot 19-of-36 against Clemson but were 14-of-42 against Georgia Tech.

"You're in a position where both teams can win, and somebody hits shots and then you don't," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "And if you miss, you usually have a better chance of losing.

"Sometimes the game is kind of that easy to understand."

Here's the Charlotte Observer's look at North Carolina's come-from-behind victory over the Hokies.

David Teel of the Newport News Daily Press says the Hokies must find a scoring complement for Delaney.

New Virginia coach Tony Bennett must think there's not much to this ACC basketball thing. He's 1-for-1 after Saturday's come-from-behind win at N.C. State.

How important is free-throw shooting? Virginia connected on its last 17 attempts and finished 19-of-20 for the game.

N.C. State finished 16-of-26 from the line.

Greg Wallace of the Independent-Mail senses a breakthrough coming for Clemson against North Carolina.

Clemson hasn’t beaten the Heels since Jan. 31, 2004 — an 81-72 upset of No. 12 UNC that served as the highlight of Purnell’s first season.

Since then, he’s 0-10 against Roy Williams’ boys.

If Purnell is Captain Ahab, the Heels are his big, white whale.

Four of those losses have come by seven points or less; an 88-81 defeat in the 2005 ACC tournament that many consider an early turning point for his rebuilding project, an 86-81 loss in the 2008 ACC tournament championship game, January 2008’s 90-88 overtime defeat clinched by Wayne Ellington’s 3-pointer with 0.4 seconds left, and, of course, the most stinging of all — Carolina 103, Clemson 93 in double overtime a month later in Chapel Hill.

LW

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