Laura Keeley's 2012-13 All-ACC teams

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:

First team
Mason Plumlee, Duke
Shane Larkin, Miami
Erick Green, Virginia Tech
Richard Howell, N.C. State
Seth Curry, Duke

Second team
Joe Harris, Virginia
Reggie Bullock, UNC
Lorenzo Brown, N.C. State
Kenny Kadji, Miami
Durand Scott, Miami

Third team
P.J. Hairston, UNC
Michael Snaer, Florida State
Ryan Anderson, Boston College
Alex Len, Maryland
Quinn Cook, Duke

All-Defensive team
Durand Scott, Miami
Jontel Evans, Virginia
Michael Snaer, Florida State
Alex Len, Maryland
Akil Mitchell, Virginia

All-Rookie Team
Rasheed Sulimon, Duke
T.J. Warren, NC State
Devin Thomas, Wake Forest
Olivier Hanlan, Boston College
Marcus Paige, North Carolina

ACC Defensive Player of the Year: Durand Scott, Miami

ACC Rookie of the Year: Rasheed Sulaimon, Duke

ACC Coach of the Year Jim Larranaga, Miami

ACC Player of the Year Mason Plumlee, Duke

••• I considered three players for Player of the Year: Erick Green, Shane Larkin and Mason Plumlee. Well, that's kind of true, as all three were grouped together on the spreadsheet. Greeen's numbers are fantastic: He leads the nation in scoring with 25 points per game (again, through Saturday), uses a league-high 31.56 of his team's offensive possessions AND has an offensive rating of 121.42, higher than either Plumlee (113.37) or Larkin (117.59). I could go on, but you get the point.

But...Green plays on the ACC's worst team. The absolute worst, in a league full of bad teams at the bottom of the standings. Could Seth Curry put up those numbers if he was the one offensive threat at Virginia Tech, a team that probably leads the league in garbage time? Who knows. But point taken.

Green is obviously talented, and, as I've tweeted, I hope he gets a nice, fat NBA paycheck as a reward for his hard work and playing on that terrible Hokies team. But he's not the ACC Player of the year.

So, that leaves Plumlee and Larkin. It's not easy to compare them head-to-head, as one is a center and the other a point guard. But, if you're curious, here is how they stack up numbers-wise:

Points per game
Plumlee: 17.2
Larkin: 13.7

Possessions percentage
Plumlee: 24.94 percent
Larkin: 20.59

Offensive rating
Plumlee: 113.57
Larkin: 117.59

Rebounds per game
Plumlee: 10.3
Larkin: 3.8

Defensive rebound percentage
Plumlee: 22.98 percent (tops in the ACC, top 100 nationally)

Steals per game
Larkin: 2.0 (tied for 1st in the ACC, top 50 nationally)

Assists per game
Plumlee: 2.1
Larkin: 4.4

Field goal percentage
Plumlee: 57.8 percent
Larkin: 49.3 percent

Effective field goal percentage
Plumlee: 57.8 percent (he doesn't shoot 3s)
Larkin: 58.6 percent

Free throw rate (a measure of how good a player is a scoring from the line)
Plumlee: 71.56 (tops in the ACC by 10 points, 24th nationally)
Larkin: 26.92

What I took from all of this: both players are great. Plumlee is more important to Duke, though, than Larkin is to Miami. Part of the reason is because the Hurricanes are more balanced with Larkin and the four seniors. That's a good thing for Jim Larranaga.

Duke goes as Plumlee goes. He has never played well or won his matchup (Howell out-dueled him in Raleigh) in a Blue Devils loss. Plumlee was the best player in the country during the nonconference slate, and he is still averaging a double-double on the year. Not since Tim Duncan in 1997 has an ACC player averaged at least 17 points, 10 rebounds and two assists per game. Yes, his production dipped a bit while he was facing constant double teams, but even in his eight game "mini-slump" between the second N.C. State game and the second UNC game, he averaged 13.6 points and 8.9 rebound per game. And for all his defensive struggles, coaches were still mentioning him for the defensive team last Monday. In that same time frame, Miami lost to Wake Forest and Georgia Tech, somehow.

Larkin supports won't be swayed by any of that. But that was my thought process in voting for Plumlee.

••• The other tough decision was Seth Curry or Joe Harris. Their relevant numbers were nearly identical:

Points per game
Curry: 17.1
Harris: 17.1

Possessions percentage
Curry: 22.17 percent
Harris: 26.49 percent

Offensive rating
Curry: 120.55
Harris: 117.23

Rebounds per game
Curry: 2.5
Harris: 4.0

Field goal percentage
Curry: 45.8 percent
Harris: 49.1 percent

Effective field goal percentage
Curry: 57.0 percent
Harris: 58.94 percent

Free throw rate (a measure of how good a player is a scoring from the line)
Curry: 57.02
Harris: 58.94

And Harris is the better defender between the two.

So Curry is slightly more efficient, and Harris is a bigger part of his team's offensive plan. It's been up to Harris to carry the Cavaliers offensively. Entering Sunday's game (which the Cavaliers won in overtime), Virginia was 1-6 in games decided by four points or fewer. Virginia is a bubble team, thanks in large part to recent losses at Boston College and at Florida State (Harris had 14 and 13 points on a combined 9-for-26 shooting from the floor).

Curry has also posted his numbers despite rarely practicing. If I could have, I would have made it a tie. But I couldn't and decided I thought Curry's performance was more noteworthy due to his injury and due to the fact that he has put up those numbers alongside Plumlee, and, for 18 games, Ryan Kelly. Duke is in competition for a No. 1 seed, and Virginia will be lucky to make it into the Tournament. That counts for something, otherwise Green would be Player of the Year.

••• I didn't consider Ryan Kelly for any of the awards. It would be brutally unfair, in my opinion, to put a guy who has only played 4.5 ACC games on an all-ACC team.

••• I wish I could opt out of voting for the All-Defensive team. It's way to hard to measure defensive impact. I paid attention to what coaches had said about opposing defenders and relied (slightly) on what I had seen as teams played Duke. Durand Scott was mentioned by almost everyone as a great defender. Thus, he's my defensive player of the year.

••• I obviously didn't put either James Michael McAdoo or C.J. Leslie on my teams. Both have disappointed, Leslie to a larger degree than McAdoo. Both are inefficient offensively and use more of their team's possessions than they probably should.

••• I don't understand the movement for Olivier Hanlan as Rookie of the Year. I get that he leads rookies in scoring, with 14.7 points per game. But I think that's more of a function of him playing on a bad team that gets a lot of garbage time—in fact, I doubt Hanlan would start at Duke, UNC, N.C. State or Miami. But that's just me.

I don't love picking the slumping Sulaimon, but his body of work has been impressive. He's also been a plus defender, shutting down guys like Michael Snaer. T.J. Warren was the other player I considered, but he hasn't exactly helped with the moodiness that has plagued N.C. State this season. If you're attitude has been detrimental to your team, than you can't be my rookie of the year.

So, there you have it. Way more than you wanted to know about my all-ACC ballot.

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