Rush The Court

[ed. note — for some reason, this scheduled post did not publish this morning; for that oversight, we apologize.]

1. Tar Heel Fan Blog: In honor of tomorrow and the inaugural Carrier Classic, Tar Heel Fan Blog has Top Gun quotes applied to the North Carolina basketball team. These are absolutely hilarious. I was going to quote my favorites and realized that almost all of them count. Well here’s a shot anyway.
   

   John Henson blocks a shot: “Negative Ghost Rider the pattern in full.” (h/t: @SamWalkerOBX)
   A player attempts to make a play, fails, and turns the ball over [Author’s Note: this is also called “The Plumlee Post Move”]: “Son, your ego’s writing checks your body can’t cash”
   Roy [Williams] puts Blue Steel in the game: “Too close for missiles, switching to guns.” (h/t @tarbender2)

   The moral of this story is that Twitter memes are awesome (and ACC Basketball starts tomorrow).

2. Grantland – ESPN: Mark Titus (Club Trillion) gives his ACC preview with a nice dose of subjectivity. He joined the Bernard James bandwagon, which I’ve been driving since this offseason. I have a few disagreements though. The first is that Harrison Barnes is underrated by casual college basketball fans. Maybe it’s because I live in ACC country, but casual ACC fans do not underrate Barnes. Most acknowledge his slow start last year, but he’s one of the top two choices to win National Player of the Year (with a player in Jared Sullinger who was much more consistent)! My other qualm was putting Duke as the most overrated team. I agree Duke is overrated nationally (the “most” is a stretch, but since only Duke and North Carolina are ranked from the ACC…), but this is an ACC preview. You could believe Duke is overrated if you think Florida State will take second place, but otherwise you’d think Duke is correctly rated. Regardless, it’s a fun article.
3. Raleigh News and Observer: Caulton Tudor thinks NC State can be the third best team in the ACC. No not this year, but consistently. I’ll hesitantly agree with him, but one thing beat writers often struggle with is tempering expectations for the teams they cover. It’s human nature to see the positive spins and start to empathize with people you see every day. But this article really undercuts both the recent success of Florida State (the clear third best team in the league the last couple of years) and the fact that the league’s relative slump is probably cyclical. Not to mention the fact that Syracuse and Pittsburgh are joining, which isn’t going to make the ACC any easier. All that said, I agree that a 9-7 ACC record is a perfectly reasonable goal for NC State this season.
4. Washington Times: It’s been going under the radar recently, but Maryland‘s athletic department is in serious financial trouble. So much trouble in fact that the Terrapins have reportedly decided to cut both men’s and women’s varsity swimming and water polo to help rein in the costs. Currently, Maryland has 27 varsity teams, which is good for third in the ACC behind North Carolina and Boston College, but the Terps are not alone in getting rid of its swimming programs: just in the ACC, Clemson is also currently “phasing out” its swimming programs.
5. Fox Sports Carolinas: Andrew Jones joins the band of reporters who are cautiously optimistic about Seth Curry‘s second shot at taking over the point guard position at Duke this year. An interesting point is that Mike Krzyzewski “insists that his team really doesn’t have a point guard, that once the ball gets in motion on offense the players just play. The Devils run a motion offense, do a lot of read and reacting, which stems from the motion, and sometimes run set plays.” That could be true, but it’s tough to run an effective offense without someone who can handle the ball and make plays when the game is on the line. Will that be Curry?

EXTRA: Covers.com released the Caesar’s over/under of conference wins for some of the top basketball teams in the country. Duke and North Carolina are the only two ACC teams to make the list. The casino places the line for the Tar Heels at 14.5, meaning the Tar Heels can only lose one game (I’d take the under; North Carolina wasn’t a juggernaut last year and the Heels should be beatable this year). Duke’s line is listed at 13, which seems very high as well. Maybe Duke will get things together, but based on the team’s exhibition struggles, the Blue Devils will drop at least three games in conference play. Other highlights include Ohio State set at 15 (the Buckeyes play 18 conference games), and Harvard set at 12.5 (the Ivy League has a 14-game schedule).