Ugly Saturday
- UNC won ugly over Kentucky 75-63 with some horrible shooting, poor rebounding, and that general lacsidasical feeling that comes after overly hyped games on ESPN.
- Duke was down by seven at halftime to Georgetown before rallying to get a 61-52 win. The Devils had another abysmal shooting game hitting only 17 field goals out of 44 taken. Duke is looking like a team that will struggle to break 70 points against anyone from a major conference. In fact Duke has seen 80+ only once this season and that was in the opener versus Columbia.
- Wake Forest lost 87-86 to Georgia which tells me that the Bulldogs must really be in for some hurting come conference play in the SEC.
- Clemson gave the ACC a 2-1 day over the SEC with a resounding win over the two time defending NIT Champions by the score of 74-53. Clemson is 9-0, a very good record for the ninth best team in the ACC.
- Boston College beat UMass 84-73 in what I assume is some kind of rivarly game except really no one outside the respective campuses of these two schools really cares.
Bloody Sunday
- NC State tasted defeat for the first time this season losing at Virginia 67-62. This game was close the entire time which both teams shooting poorly but played a clean game for the most part with only 19 combined turnovers and 16 fouls apiece. The Pack only played six guys with Engin Atsur out for the time being. NC State hung much closer than I thought they would.
- Virginia Tech lost by one to George Washington 63-62 and I would imagine anyone who was sure VT was the sixth best team in the ACC is leaping from the bandwagon pretty quickly here.
- Florida State beat Florida 70-66. Either we can chalk this up to parity or we can chalk it up to Florida being about a #3 seed like they were last season when they won the title. Only time will tell but I just happen to think that this is not a good loss for the Gator to take. They must have been hungover from celebrating the football team winning the SEC Championship. ACC was 3-1 against the SEC on the weekend.
- Just when you thought it was safe to back Maryland as a legitimate ACC contender they go out and lose to Notre Dame 81-74. Is this a parity loss or a harbinger of things to come for Maryland who seems to trend towards being really good and then suddenly really bad.
- And if those two were not enough Miami beat Georgia Tech 90-82. I actually think this one is more shocking than the FSU win or Maryland loss. Miami had been downright horrible. Miami has losses against Buffalo and Cleveland State. For a while I thought GT was going to be much better than I expected and I was pondering why their freshman seemed to be playing better tha UNC's freshman. Apparently the UCLA loss had a huge pyschological impact on this team because they came back and struggled to beat Penn State and now lose to a team that I think is one of the worst in the conference. It may be a crisis of confidence or just a downturn for the Jackets that Paul Hewitt needs to find a way to correct.
- Exams are kicking off for some schools so the schedule will be lighter this week with the exception of Wednesday.