The case for Vasquez

posted by LW, Thursday, March 04, 2010

After Maryland fell on its face in a Jan. 31 loss at Clemson, I was almost convinced Greivis Vasquez wasn't worthy of first-team All-ACC honors.

He was pretty much awful last night while having his lunch delivered to him by Tanner Smith, who played a major role in Vasquez missing eight of 11 shots.

Now, I'm almost convinced Vasquez is worthy of player-of-the-year honors in the ACC.

If you're a fan of an opposing team and have had to deal with his theatrics and histrionics over the years, the guy can't exhaust his eligibility soon enough. His annoying flamboyance, perfectly captured in this column from the Washington Post's Mike Wise, does not endear him to many folks who aren't loyal to Maryland.

But the kid can flat play. And if you wouldn't take him on your team, you're flat crazy.

He won me over by hanging 41 on Virginia Tech last week in an epic, two-overtime victory. It was easily the most compelling and entertaining game in an ACC season that has been filled with ugly, glacially-paced defensive struggles. And he was brilliant, scoring 28 of his points in the second half.

Then last night, he probably sealed the POY honor with a circus shot that essentially sealed a huge win over Duke in College Park.

Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com says the shot was perfectly representative of Vasquez's high-wire act.

So the stakes were high, the pressure intense. And what did Vasquez do? He ignored a ball screen, drove on Jon Scheyer, floated right, tossed the ball back left across his body and ... naturally ... watched it bounce and go in.

That bucket made it 73-69 with 38.6 seconds left.

Duke never did get a shot to tie.

"I was going to take the shot -- and the credit if I made it, and the hit if I missed it," said Vasquez, who finished with 20 points, five assists and four rebounds. "I was going to go for it. I was going to take that risk, and I got it in, and we won the game."

Like I said, perfect. I mean, what's better than the ultimate risk-reward player having his final game at the Comcast Center determined by the ultimate risk-reward play? The dynamic guard has spent four years developing a reputation as a guy whose explosive enough to beat anybody but reckless enough to cost you, as a guy colorful enough to inspire but too emotional for his own good. That's Vasquez.

Last night's game was big enough to draw the interest of Michael Wilbon, who attended and filed this column.

I thought his glorification of the Duke-Maryland rivalry was a little overdone because it largely ignored the rivalry's undeniable decline in recent years, a decline brought on by the years-long descent of both programs. Last night was more a return of the rivalry than a continuation of it.

The season isn't over yet, so this stuff is subject to change, but here's my All-ACC first-team:

Vasquez
Scheyer
Delaney
Booker
Singler

This season, I've tried to rely less on statistics and more on what I see. I voted C.J. Spiller for Heisman based on the premise that he was simply the best player I saw in college football, so I resolved to use the same logic in forming my All-ACC team.

Ish Smith and Al-Farouq Aminu played themselves off my list. Same with Gani Lawal. For a while, I was convinced they were three of the best players in the ACC.

But down the stretch, it's hard to ignore Smith's inability to shoot ... and Aminu's abominable goose egg last night at Florida State ... and Lawal's inability to put his team on his back as it sits on the NCAA bubble.

Good gosh, Wake Forest is a disaster. A few weeks ago, I thought they might be the best team in the ACC. Now the best they can do is fifth after last night's 51-47 loss at Florida State.

The Deacons lost despite holding the Seminoles to four field goals on 19 second-half attempts, none of which were made in the final 4½ minutes. But they had to play the final 5:51 without leading scorer Al-Farouq Aminu, who fouled out of the first scoreless game of his college career.

Aminu, who entered the game averaging 16.4 points a game, took only two shots from the floor and two from the free-throw line. He didn't attempt a shot in 10 minutes of second-half action.

"I've got to get more production out of myself," Aminu said. "They're relying on me to make shots, so I'm going to have to be more aggressive and start making shots."

Taking a look at the different ACC Tournament seeding scenarios makes me want to take three or 10 Advil.


Maryland beat guy Patrick Stevens had the patience to sort through it all and provides the rundown here.

CLEMSON

No. 3 with a win AND a Florida State win
No. 3 with a win AND a Virginia Tech loss
No. 4 with a win AND a Virginia Tech win AND a Florida State loss
No. 4 with a loss AND a Florida State loss
No. 6 with a loss AND a Florida State win

Virginia Tech gets a big win last night in Blacksburg. Should be quite a battle between the Hokies and Georgia Tech in the ATL this weekend.

A day after saying he was proud of his players for stealing thousands of newspapers that featured a story about one of his players getting busted for drugs, Guy Morriss hangs up on an AP reporter.

Stay classy there, Guy.

Nebraska AD Tom Osborne has the right approach to this expansion stuff.

“These are interesting times,” Osborne said on the radio show. “I think fans are a little bit nervous. All I can tell fans right now is don’t think for one minute that we’re asleep at the switch, that we’re just sitting here waiting for something to happen to us.

“It’s much better to be proactive than reactive. I don’t think I’m free to say much more than that. We are very aware. We don’t plan to get left at the gate, although we could be. I just don’t know what’s going to happen in this environment.”

It's early, but the evolution of this whole conference expansion and realignment thing definitely has a cut-throat, Wild Wild West feel to it.


LW

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