There wasn’t much of a crowd to kick off the ACC tournament with Georgia Tech playing Boston College, which is a mistake anyone who filtered in over the course of the game won’t make again.
Olivier Hanlan, Boston College’s star athlete from Quebec who isn’t a hockey player, is clearly worth the price of admission. Early admission.
Due to the impending breakup of the Big East as we know it, Notre Dame will join the ACC earlier than initially expected.
The Irish reached an agreement with the Big East that will allow them to join the league in every sport but hockey and football July 1, the school announced in a statement Tuesday.
"From the time of our decision to join the ACC we have stressed our commitment to ensuring that our departure was achieved in a collegial manner," Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said. "This agreement realizes that intention and we are very grateful to the members of the Big East and Commissioner Mike Aresco for helping to facilitate this orderly and timely transition."
Duke's Seth Curry enjoyed himself as he hit his first eight shots in the first half at North Carolina. Credit: CHUCK LIDDY
With the release of the all-ACC teams, it's officially awards season. On that note, the Sporting News announced their all-America teams, and Duke's Seth Curry was a second-team selection.
Curry, who was also named ACC Player of the Week, ranks third in the ACC with 17.1 points per game and a .435 3-point shooting percentage. He's also second with 2.7 3-pointers per game and fifth with a .810 free throw percentage. Curry has scored at least 20 points in 16 games this season, including 11 of Duke's 18 ACC contests.
Due to a nagging right shin injury, Curry has rarely practiced this year. More on that in this story from last week.
Duke's Mason Plumlee and N.C. State's Richard Howell were first-team all-ACC selections. Credit: CHUCK LIDDY
The Triangle schools were well represented on the media’s all-ACC teams released Monday. Duke, North Carolina and N.C. State combined for 13 representatives on the first, second, third and freshman teams as selected by the 77 voters of Atlantic Coast Sports Media Association.
Duke’s Mason Plumlee was led all players with 226 points and 73 out of a possible 77 first-place votes. Plumlee finished the regular season ranked second in the league in scoring (17.3 points per game), rebounding (10.3 boards per game) and field goal percentage (58.9 percent). He led the ACC with 17 double-doubles. Duke has had a first-team All-ACC selection in six straight seasons.
N.C. State’s Richard Howell was also a first-team selection with 192 points and 46 1st-place votes. Howell and Plumlee were the only two players to average a double-double in league play, and the N.C. State senior led the league in rebounding with an average of 10.6 rebounds per game.
Miami's Jim Larranaga was my pick for National Coach of the Year. Credit: CHUCK LIDDY
There aren't nearly as many people interested in this as there are people interested in my opinions on the all-ACC teams, I know (even if people are interested in the latter just to disagree with me). But, I'm a firm believer in transparency, so, as a voter for the U.S. Basketball Writer's Association awards, I feel compelled to disclose my ballot.
Oscar Robertson Trophy (Player of the year): Victor Oladipo, Indiana
It hasn't always been this way, and it probably won't always be this way, but one of the great things about the Duke-Carolina rivalry at the moment is the obvious respect Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams have for each other's players.
That was so obvious in the handshake line Saturday night, when Krzyzewski took pains to talk to Reggie Bullock, who he would moments later call "one of the best players in the country, not just in our conference," and when Williams, only seconds after consoling senior Dexter Strickland on the bench, still found time to stop and compliment Seth Curry, among other Duke players, as he went through the line.
Mason Plumlee is a candidate for ACC Player of the Year. Credit: ROBERT WILLETT
The 2012-13 All-ACC Teams will be released Monday at 1 p.m., and the player and coach of the year will come out Tuesday. As a member of the Atlantic Coast Sports Media Association (ACSMA), I'm entitled to vote. I spent a while figuring out whether I wanted to vote—you'd probably be surprised how many writers in this area opt not to vote for various reasons. But in the end, I decided to participate in the process. I watch an awful lot of ACC basketball. In fact, I have Maryland vs. Virginia on in the background now.
The two hardest decisions were Player of the Year and the fifth member of the first-team. I made a spreadsheet with the names of 21 sophomores, juniors and seniors (I knew going in that I didn't think any freshmen deserved consideration for the main teams). I looked at a variety of traditional and "advanced" stats: points per game, possessions percentage, offensive rating, field goal percentage, effective field goal percentage, rebounds per game, offensive rebounding percentage, defensive rebounding percentage, assists per game, free throw rate and steals per game. I used Statsheet, the best college hoops statistics site out there. And it's free.
I didn't go strictly by the numbers, but I did use them to gather more information to go along with the observations I've made throughout the year.
The stats I used were through Saturday's games—what happened in Wake Forest vs. Virginia Tech and Virginia vs. Maryland wasn't going to change my mind.
Here's the ballot I turned in, followed by explanations:
My all-ACC ballot, annotated.
Player of the year: Erick Green, Virginia Tech. In the end, I couldn’t ignore the fact that Green is leading the entire country in scoring, not just the conference. That includes the small-conference machine-gun scorers like Nate Wolters, Lamont “Momo” Jones and Doug McDermott, guys who aren't playing against ACC defenders on a nightly basis.
Duke and North Carolina will have Thursday off in the ACC Tournament, N.C. State will not.
Virginia's 61-58 overtime win over Maryland on Sunday night clinched the No. 4 seed, and the final opening-round bye, for the Cavaliers.
N.C. State, which finished 11-7 in the ACC and in fifth place, will play on Thursday against 12th-seeded Virginia Tech. The other three games on Thursday in Greensboro will be: Boston College-Georgia Tech, Maryland-Wake Forest and Florida State-Clemson.
Tyler Thornton and the rest of the Blue Devils crashed UNC's senior day. Credit: ROBERT WILLETT
CHAPEL HILL Well, that was unexpected. Duke thoroughly dominated UNC from the opening tip until the final buzzer, and Andrew Carter details the in between in the game story here. Mason returned to his player of the year form, and—get this—Roy Williams lost for the first time on senior day. Ever. That spans 25 years as a head coach and 10 as an assistant to Dean Smith. Hard to believe, but it's true: Duke hadn't closed out the season with a win in Chapel Hill since 2001, when the Carlos Boozer-less Blue Devils ran all over the Tar Heels.
I'm writing a bigger picture take on what this means for Duke later today, and I'll link it here when it's up. In the meantime, a few quick thoughts I jotted down during the game:
