DURHAM - Chase Fischer, who's Wake Forest's first commitment under new coach Jeff Bzdelik, perked up Saturday morning when asked about the Deacons.

A 6-foot-3 guard for the West Virginia Wildcats, he'd shot poorly (though he made four 3-pointers and scored 14 points) in a loss to the Memphis Magic at the Bob Gibbons Tournament of Champions.

But he was happy to talk about Bzdelik and Wake Forest.

If N.C. State's going to jump from the bottom of the ACC basketball standings to the top, the Wolfpack will have to do so against the toughest conference schedule.

The details — dates and order of opponents — have yet to be finalized, but under the three-year schedule rotation, the Wolfpack has two games each against Duke, Florida State and Clemson during the 2010-11 season, in addition to the annual home-and-home games with rivals North Carolina and Wake Forest.

At 5-11 in the ACC last season, N.C. State finished in 11th place. With
an influx of new talent — three five-star recruits — the Wolfpack is
expected to make a significant jump in coach Sidney Lowe's fifth season.

In a column earlier this week, colleague Tom Sorensen wrote that the ACC needs to expand again and suggests West Virginia, Cincinnati and Louisville as targets.

Sorensen is right about 90 percent of the time, especially when
forecasting draft picks the Charlotte Bobcats should have made. As he
often mentions, he said in 2006 that the Bobcats should draft Brandon
Roy in 2006 and in 2005 that they should trade up to get Chris Paul.
Imagine how good the Bobcats would be if they'd followed Sorensen's
advice.

The men's basketball teams at North Carolina and N.C. State were among the more than 800 Division I sports programs honored today for their academic achievement with Public Recognition Awards from the NCAA.

Each year the NCAA salutes the top 10 percent of teams in each sport as determined by the Academic Progress Rate formula that provides a real-time snapshot of the performance of each team in the classroom.

North Carolina and N.C. State were the only men's basketball teams honored from the ACC. Duke, with 15 teams honored including the football team, led the ACC in Public Recognition Awards. Boston College was next with 13. Among schools in the Carolinas, North Carolina received eight, Wake Forest five, N.C. State three and Clemson none.

Defending NCAA champion Duke will play host to 2010 NCAA semifinalist Michigan State on Dec. 1 in the marquee matchup of the 2010 ACC/Big Ten Challenge, ESPN announced today.

North Carolina will visit Illinois on Nov. 30, and N.C. State will travel to Wisconsin on Dec. 1 in two of the Challenge's other key games. Game times and TV assignments on ESPN's family of networks will be announced at a later date.

Miami, which finished last in the ACC standings last season, is the lone team from the 12-school ACC that won't compete against the (for now) 11-school Big Ten in the Challenge.

The ACC starting lineups/rotations to mull over now that we know which players will be around for the 2010-11 season.

By the way, you read somewhere in March which players would be leaving and which would be staying. You might want to listen to that guy when the Summer Hoops Preview comes out in June.

Here's the list, in no particular order (wink):

You can't argue with the volume of players Duke, UNC and the rest of the ACC have pumped into the NBA but the All-NBA teams suggest you can with the quality.

Of the 15 players on the three All-NBA teams, one came from the ACC
(Wake Forest's Tim Duncan, a third-teamer this year).

The Wear twins transfer from UNC means 31 basketball players
who have enrolled since 2000 have left the Big Four.

The Wears bring UNC's total to six, four less than Wake Forest. There are few regrets on the list,
notably Duke's Elliot Williams, but mostly forgettable players (see:
UNC's Adam Boone, N.C. State's Justin Flatt and Wake's Dshamal
Schoetz).

New Wake Forest University basketball coach Jeff Bzdelik received his first commitment this week when junior Chase Fischer of Ripley, W.Va. announced for  the Deacons.

WINSTON-SALEM -- The giant video board at BB&T Field on Wednesday morning welcomed a new basketball coach - Jeff Bzdelik - who was hardly a household name when Wake Forest fired Dino Gaudio last week.

Nonetheless, Bzdelik, 57, knows Wake Forest well, and he said if he could pick one school where he wanted to coach, this would be it.