ACC Basketball Roundup(1/03)

Guard play.  You need good guard play.

• That is the lament presently being heard in Raleigh as NC State lost yet another game against a good team during the last minute.  The Wolfpack lost at Florida 68-66 very much because NCSU does not have the point guard play to run a decent half court offense much less when the game in the final 11 seconds.  From what I saw NC State in the halfcourt includes very little ball movement or motion from the players without the ball and a great deal of dribbling by Farnold Degand at the top of the key looking for penetration that is not there.  As for the final play, NCSU was trailing by one with 11 seconds left and called timeout.  I am not sure what Sidney Lowe drew up in the huddle but what was executed(poorly at that) was Degand dribbling up court into the lane and losing the basketball.  Somewhere Trajan Langdon is laughing or not depending on how good his therapy was after the 1999 title game.  Another question I have is whether Ben McCauley thinks pass first instead of trying to score? McCauley had position on the block with the ball and instead of making a move to the basket he passed. McCauley could afford to be more aggressive with his scoring.NC State has little to no margin of error because they do not have decent guard play which should make the Heels’ two games versus NCSU highly entertaining and I don’t mean that in a good way where the Pack are concerned.
• You have to think we are watching the slow death of Paul Hewitt’s tenure at Georgia Tech.  The only salvation for him is the fact he did go to the national title game in 2004 and he has been hard hit by NBA attrition.  That may lend him grace otherwise not available.  GT fell to 8-5 with a loss to Alabama that was a blowout for most of the game.  The Jackets are simply too young and not very deep.  If Hewitt can convince enough of his recruits to stay put longer than a year or two he might be able to build some consistency, otherwise they will continue to cycle downward.
• Bad news for Virginia: They lost to Xavier.  Good news for Virginia: They gave up 24 fewer points to the Musketeers than they did last season when they played.
• Wake Forest won on the road against BYU in a tough game as we edge ever closer to a top five matchup in Winston-Salem eight days from today.
• Clemson is 14-0 and only ranked 16th.  It would appear the voters have finally come to understand that caution is required when evaluating Clemson through the non-conference schedule.  I guess the repeated undefeated starts followed by major swooning when the Tigers came in contact with real teams in the ACC burned enough voters they have decided to move Clemson up slowly in the polls.
• No offense but Saturday was the undercard in the ACC, Sunday you have the two main bouts.  UNC gets Boston College and for whatever reason Virginia Tech vs Duke is always entertaining as heck.  Those two teams have a strange animosity.  Maybe it is the fact VT somehow has Duke’s number at times.  Perhaps it is the fact there seems to be fight waiting to happen.  Whatever the case, it won’t be the same without Deron Washington doing stuff like this:

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