GREENSBORO --  After watching Harrison Barnes light up Clemson for 40 points Saturday in North Carolina’s improbable 92-87 ACC semifinal overtime win, I get the feeling we all just saw the best game Barnes will ever play in a Tar Heel uniform.

Maybe I’m wrong and Barnes, a precocious freshman, won’t come out early for the NBA draft. Maybe the impending possible lockout will keep him in school. Or maybe he just likes school and wants to stay like Tyler Hansbrough (who also once hit 40 points as a freshman) did for four seasons.

But when you can do something like that, it’s hard not to hear the siren song of the NBA.

GREENSBORO -- Duke's 87-71 win over Maryland in an ACC quarterfinal Friday night was impressive, especially considering Duke lost point guard Nolan Smith due to a toe injury (his second toe, to be exact) with a 65-60 lead and 6:48 to go.

GREENSBORO – On a night when one big question was answered for the Duke Blue Devils, another potentially bigger one was raised.

The Kyle Singler question? He’s fine. Singler eased plenty of minds when he opened the Maryland quarterfinal tournament game by hitting a couple of quick jump shots that seemed to sweep away the residue of some off-kilter performances recently.

He wound up with 29 points and looked like Kyle Singler is supposed to look in Duke’s deceptively lopsided 87-71 victory.

But what about Nolan Smith?

updated 10:22 p.m.

GREENSBORO -- Duke did not want to start the postseason this way.

Senior guard Nolan Smith, the ACC player of the year, limped off the court with a toe injury of undetermined severity Friday night late in the Blue Devils’ 87-71 defeat of Maryland in the ACC quarterfinals.

In today’s 3 p.m. semifinal, No. 2 seed Duke will play the winner of Friday’s late game between No. 3 seed Florida State and No. 6 seed Virginia Tech. Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski said he doesn’t know if Smith will play and will have X-rays to determine the seriousness of the injury.

GREENSBORO -- In what may have been a playoff for an NCAA berth, the team that clearly deserves to go to the NCAA tournament won.

No offense to Boston College, which has had a great season, but the ACC’s third-best (second-best?) defensive team is going to give some single-digit seed fits next week. Clemson, with a 70-47 win over the Eagles on Friday, moved to 21-10 and effectively locked down an at-large bid.

GREENSBORO -- The Clemson Tigers cruised into the ACC tournament semifinals Friday by manhandling Boston College 70-47 at the Greensboro Coliseum.

The Tigers scored the game’s first 11 points and never looked back, leading throughout.

GREENSBORO -- North Carolina gave a double jolt of caffeine to the ACC tournament Friday – first by nearly losing to Miami, then by clawing back from a 19-point deficit to beat the Hurricanes on a buzzer beater by Tyler Zeller.

Zeller’s layup just before the buzzer – off a beautiful feed from Kendall Marshall – gave North Carolina a 61-59 ACC quarterfinal victory that seemed very unlikely until the final minute. The result: a crowd of more than 23,000, made up of 90 percent Tar Heel fans, got scared and then got overjoyed.

GREENSBORO -- First, North Carolina turned Greensboro Coliseum into what used to be known as Carmichael Auditorium on Friday.

Then, just for the sake of hysterics, the Tar Heels and their fans reached back across the ages and produced the same sort of basketball magic long associated with the arena that Dean Smith’s teams made famous for staging improbable comebacks.

Rattled into the role of overwhelmed fall men were the Miami Hurricanes, who never trailed in this ACC Tournament quarterfinal until it mattered – the last shot.

That was when Kendall Marshall found Tyler Zeller for a game-winning, left-handed point-blanker and a 61-59 Carolina win.

updated 4:52 p.m.

GREENSBORO -- Miami coach Frank Haith thought the ball was going to Harrison Barnes.

UNC forward John Henson thought the ball was going to Harrison Barnes.

Based on the freshman’s two previous game-winners this season, most of the 20,000-plus in attendance at Greensboro Coliseum probably thought the ball was going to Harrison Barnes, too.

But with the clock winding down Friday, UNC point guard Kendall Marshall drove to the basket, and passed the ball to junior forward Tyler Zeller – whose buzzer-beating layup solidified an improbable 19-point comeback and 61-59 victory in the quarterfinals of the ACC tournament.

In the wake of Wednesday's Big East officiating fiasco, where officials missed multiple violations in the final seconds of St. John's win over Rutgers, ACC supervisor of officials John Clougherty said he was pleased with the way his officials dealt with their own late-game drama on Thursday.

Miami came back from 10 points down to force overtime against Virginia in the final 43 seconds of regulation, and Clougherty said before Friday's games that officials Bernard Clinton, Mike Eades and Jamie Luckie handled it well.