Tiers.
- Clemson handled a big test Thursday night going to Blacksburg to upend Virginia Tech after being down 15. A win like this on the road is huge one for Clemson which is jockeying with FSU, VT and Boston College for fourth in the league.
- Wake Forest presented their credentials as a legit Final Four team registering their 2nd top five win. In knocking off Duke, the Deacs are in great position to claim a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament…as long as they keep winning. I am not sure that is a guarantee. Wake is a young team and the two big wins they have enjoyed came at home. The win at Clemson does prove there is meat on the bones but surviving February is a horse of a different color…just ask Duke.
- For all the lack of an inside presence Duke actually outrebounded Wake and played a scrappy game. The biggest problem for the Devils is there is no serious offensive threat outside of Kyle Singler, Gerald Henderson and John Scheyer. It is also a problem their Big Three does not include a legit big man.
- At this point the ACC can be broken into three tiers:
Top Tier: Duke, Wake Forest, UNC
Middle Tier: Clemson, VT, BC and FSU
Bottom Tier: Miami, UVa, NC State, Maryland and Georgia Tech
The top two tiers are probably NCAA teams. Miami, BC and FSU are probably the closest to the edge of their respective tiers. UVa, NCSU, Maryland and Georgia Tech are close to falling off the face of the known earth. Anyone want to pay cash money to see an ACC Semifinal Saturday with UNC, Duke, Wake and Clemson? I would.
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“Anyone want to pay cash money to see an ACC Semifinal Saturday with UNC, Duke, Wake and Clemson? I would.”
Already have. There is a good chance that Hansbrough breaks JJ’s record on that Saturday, too… now if the ACC-god’s could just see that it all goes down that way!!
Man, the ACC Tourney should be great. Of course, there will likely be an upset in the quarters, but if all four teams made it through that would be great.
I thought Clemson played really well. Showed a lot of maturity and poise to come back and finish it off in Blacksburg.
Wake is so talented, it’s scary. I think the loss exposes Dook’s lack of talent down low, and I wonder about Singler wearing down again in Feb. With all that said, Wake really showed its youth down the stretch when they let Dook back into the game with very questionable shoot selection. I just can’t see Dook hanging with teams like Pitt, Louisville or UConn. Men vs. boys in those match-ups.
Should be a great next 6 weeks!
Off the cuff predictions:
UNC wins out (14-2).
Duke beats wake at Duke, loses at Clemson (12-4).
Wake loses to at home to Clemson and at Miami (12-4).
Clemson loses at FSU (13-3).
I think the league should be split four ways instead of three:
Top: Duke, Wake, Carolina
Upper: Clemson, VT
Lower: Miami, BC, NCSU, FSU
Bottom: Virginia, Maryland, Georgia Tech.
Of course I’m biased, but I think State showed a lot of fight in the Miami game when it seemed like everything was collapsing. Sid played with a much tighter rotation in that game and it paid off.
I’m still not sold on FSU as an “upper” team just yet. Miami can be better but is in a funk. BC is pretty much a one-man show.
Bottom line, anyone from any of the the top three tiers can win (or sneak up on someone, in the case of the “lower” tier) against any team in the league. I don’t see how Maryland, UVA or Georgia Tech can be expected to win much.
Just my two red-colored cents.
See I am all for shedding “tiers” which is why I only had three.
THF, I’m going off topic here but am digging the Telemundo banner ads on the site. My Spanish is rusty but I think it says “Your favorite shows are on telemundo.com.” How cosmopolitan.
I just saw those…never know what Google is going to spit out. That show “El Cartel” looks awesome and likely includes a lot of over acting.
C. Michael. Are you for real? I hope you are, and I hope our team has that kind of confidence as well. It is nice to lose a game, just so you know what you have to do to avoid another one, but losing two games can deprive you of any confidence. Seems as if Danny Green is not too worried about it. We need to be confident when stepping on the court.
C.Michael — I agree that we will win out, although I’m nervous about the games in Durham and Blacksburg. Seth Greenberg is a really good coach, and his team will need no reminding that they should have beaten us last year.
I disagree with the idea that Wake will lose at Clemson. Wake is for real, and they are getting more mature with each game. I’m with you in thinking that they are likely to lose at Dook, but that will leave them with two conference losses, the same number you and I are projecting for Carolina. Unfortunately, Wake has the tie-breaker, having beaten us. What this means is that we are likely to have to beat Dook and Wake on consecutive days in order to win the ACC Tournament. Ouch.
I just don’t see how we do that unless Thompson really steps it up and Frasor becomes useable off the bench for more minutes than he’s playing now. That means he has to be able to make some shots.
Right now I think both ACC Tournament finalists get No. 1 seeds, and the better of the semi-final losers gets a No. 2 seed.
UNC still has the basic nucleus of guys who have gone to the Final 8 and the Final Four the last two years. They are still the first tier. None of these teams in the ACC are even playing the same schedule in conference, or comparable schedules out of conference, so don’t let these broadcasters, whose job is to hype broadcasts, mislead you about Wake or Duke actually being in the top tier of the conference.
Duke still has the basic nucleus of guys who went 22-11 and 8-8 before losing to VCU in 2007. They overachieved during the regular season last year and so far this year, but the book is still out on them.
Wake has some excellent talent, but they really have not played an impressive schedule at all. No, I am not impressed that they won at BYU, sorry. If BYU had won 55 games in a row and Wake beat them, then that might be impressive, but since UNLV beat BYU at BYU their very next game, I think I will take it with a grain of salt.
Wake’s partners in the conference are Georgia Tech and NCSU, which should be good for four automatic victories, which still won’t impress me. At least they did draw Duke and Clemson twice. I expect them to lose at least two more and possibly three. Duke and Wake are the second tier. K himself has admitted this.
Clemson made a nice comeback last night after taking out VPI, but they still are a program that cannot get over the hump. They really had no signature victories last year, except for the upset over Duke in the tournament, when everyone else was beating Duke too. They have Duke at home next week and they better win it or simply accept the fact that they are a step below UNC, Duke and Wake.
Florida State has in many ways been more impressive than Clemson. They are 16-5, but three of their losses have been to Pitt, Duke and UNC, with the UNC and Pitt games being particular close. On the other hand, all three of these games were in Tallahassee, but nobody docks Wake that much for having their important games at home so far. FSU has Georgia Tech–which is the type of game they have lost in past years and then faces Clemson away. If FSU can win both of these games, you have to like their tourney chances.
BC, Miami and VPI are next but just not quite there. They all can beat anybody or lose to anybody. BC lost to St. Louis and Harvard. I think Miami has to beat Wake to have a decent chance to make the tournament. You really can’t lose to NC State or to VPI at home they way they have the past week. VPI has too many ugly outings like the losses to Seton Hall and Georgia. They really have to beat BC tomorrow. BC, Miami and VPI are the kinds of teams that do not belong in the NCAA tournament because no one except their fans wants to see them take a spot from a Davidson or George Mason, so they better make sure they have their resumes well over the line.
None of the rest merit pixels except to note Maryland’s situation, which is truly sad. I don’t believe that any other coach who has won the national championship in the ACC has had a season as poor as Gary Williams is having this year.
There actually are not very many to consider: Frank McGuire, Norm Sloan, Dean Smith, Jim Valvano, K, Williams and Williams. Sloan went 17-11 and 6-6 in 1977 and then 18-12 and 3-9 in 1979 before rebounding to 20-8 and 9-5 in his last year at State in 1980. Valvano went 19-14 and 4-10 in 1984, but obviously was in no danger that year and rebounded back to the NCAA tourney in 1985. Valvano’s last year in 1990, he went 18-12 and 6-8 and was fired, although probably not solely due to this dip.
Last I checked…
But seriously, if you look at UNC’s remaining schedule, it is not overwhelming at all:
NC St. (2)
Maryland (2)
GT
UVa
@Miami
@VT
Duke (2)
7 of their last 10 are against what THF has dubbed (and I agree with) the bottom Tier. Duke doesn’t scare me, which really only leaves the game at VT as UNC’s biggest challenge.
10-0 is hardly a stretch, and I expect that UNC will continue to get better.
Hey, is Seth going to tell his guys that they should have beaten Carolina in the game at Chapel Hill last year? I’d like to hear that pep talk!
It depends on Duke. Duke has had some games in which their hand/arm-checks have gotten their players fouled out. There have been other games in which the same type of defense is considered ‘great lock-down D”. If Duke is playing their “A” game defensively, and are allowed to, we lose to them. We have to have some guard penetration to win games, we just can’t rely on jump shots and Hansbrough free-throws against this team. If Duke gets some foul trouble, it allows Lawson/Ellington/Green to get some drives to the basket, in this case, UNC wins. We will not know which way it will go until after the tip.
The rest of the schedule does favor us, obviously. And I feel comfortable that we will win them all. But I have to save room in my train of thought, for us to lose two more.
Dook always scares me since the game is almost always tight, but I think we have the better matchups. I really feel confident that we’ll take both of those games. If we can’t, then we don’t deserve to be a Final Four team anyway.
Count me as a believer in Wake. They beat us (though we played like crap), they beat Dook, and they beat Clemson at Clemson, so I think that more than makes up for the soft OOC schedule. With their size and athleticism, they really have a chance (as long as their youth doesn’t get in the way). I just wish we got them in the Dean Dome.
Maybe 6 conference games is enough to determine the ACC tourney seeding…. I usually wait until March to decide whom to believe in, though.
I seem to recall people saying that Carolina had little or no chance to catch Duke in the regular season race last year, but that was after 8 games when Carolina was 6-2 and Duke was 8-0. Of course, Carolina won out and finished 14-2 and Duke went 13-3. Maybe it does take 16 conferences games….?
I certainly believe that UNC has a chance to catch Wake and Dook, but I’m not so quick to write off a 17-1 team that has beaten us, Dook, and Clemson. Dook and UNC both shot poorly, but I think Wake’s D had something to do with that. Again, I hope we get to play them again and settle any doubts as to the better team.
I am convinced…and I could be wrong…that Wake is due to have a slide over the next 3-4 weeks. It is difficult to hold the line. UNC has already tasted it’s own mortality and their experience gives them an edge in overcoming some of the pitfalls in the last two months of the season.
We never got a chance to avenge our defeat to Wake back in 2005.
My tiers:
Top (for a while)
Unc, dook, Wake
Upper
BC, FSU, VT
Middle
Clemson, Miami, UVA
Bottom
Maryland, NCSU
Very bottom all by their selves
GT
Is that Bobby Cremins speak?
Wake is a very talented (and smart) team, but maybe even more importantly, they’re playing a smart defensive scheme. Unless we shift some of the pieces around I just don’t see it happening for us. Good season for UNC–sho nuff, but not quite what we all hoped for. Hope like hell I’m wrong.
I am not sure how smart Chas McFarland is.
“We never got a chance to avenge our defeat to Wake back in 2005.”
Sure we did. We hoisted the National Championship trophy. What sweeter revenge is there?
I agree Ron. That is exactly the point I was hoping to make.
I have a DVD of that Wake loss and I watch it from time to time, with no pain. That was a fun game to watch in terms of athletes really going at it, up and down the court. Remember McCants’ behind the back lay-up psych job in the last couple of minutes?
lol-if looks are any indication…”mouth-breathing nit-wit” comes to mind.