Yesterday was a lousy day for the conference. Aside from a breakout performance by Terrell Stoglin to lead a struggling Maryland team over Notre Dame, it was losses all round for the other three conference teams in action.  Turnovers did in North Carolina State who otherwise played a very strong game on the road at Stanford. Andre Young went cold and Clemson has now dropped three home games against in-state rivals after hosting South Carolina. Kansas State locked down Virginia Tech’s scorers in the second half and stole one on the road. While none of these losses is particularly “bad,” aside from Clemson’s loss to South Carolina, Virginia Tech needs to find some quality wins this non-conference season if it wants to make the tournament. The Wolfpack’s loss to Stanford is a “quality loss,” considering how close NC State came to getting a high-caliber road win against a Stanford team that has looked very good in the early going. Still, the win would have been that much more impressive.

As rough as yesterday was for conference teams, tonight promises to be a little bit better. The ACC has a very good chance to go undefeated this evening. Of course, there is only one game tonight, so maybe that’s not so impressive. Still, it’s all the Atlantic Coast Conference has going down tonight, so let’s talk about it.

The Only Game

• Charleston Southern at Florida State at 7:00 PM on ESPNU

So this has the making of a rout on paper. Those aren’t all that thrilling generally, but if you can get in the right mindset, this one has the potential to be a defensive masterpiece.  Florida State can play lock down defense on the perimeter and in the paint. They force turnovers and the whole team is pretty tall. Charleston Southern’s average shooting, not particularly good rebounding, and mediocre ball handling points to a low scoring game for the Buccaneers. As mediocre as the team is offensively, they are even worse defensively.

Let’s go back to the height thing for a second. The two tallest starters for Charleston Southern are 6’5″. The two shortest starters for Florida State are 6’5″. It’s a rough match-up.

Leonard Hamilton's Seminoles Should Win Easily Tonight

The one favorable match-up for Charleston Southern comes on the defensive end. Charleston Southern has actually been nearly as good as Florida State in terms of forcing turnovers while the Seminoles have displayed a shocking indifference to taking care of the ball. If the Buccaneers can force turnover and then get made baskets before the defense is set, they have a chance to get some points on the board and get an edge in terms of extra possessions. It’s a slim advantage, but it might be their best chance.

KCarpenter (269 Posts)

This entry was posted on Monday, December 5th, 2011 at 2:16 pm by KCarpenter and is filed under acc, microsites. Tagged: acc, andre young, charleston southern, clemson, florida state, kansas state, maryland, nc state, notre dame, south carolina, stanford, terrell stoglin, virginia tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.