Well, it’s that time of year. With conference play looming on the horizon it’s time to dedicate the Morning Five to the ACC’s performance (both past and future).

1. ESPN: We’ll start with the Worldwide Leader. I know Robbi Pickeral is writing a blog focused on North Carolina, but I wish she’d write it for a broader audience. Addressing the MVP paragraph to “Tar Heel fans” decidedly doesn’t qualify. She also proceeds to ignore the fact that Duke also beat Michigan (on a neutral floor no less), and I can’t find any real logical thread that accounts for “Losses that Sting.” Stylistic criticism aside, I think Pickeral’s predictions are spot on.
2. CBSSports.com: Moving along the internets Gary Parrish checks in with a much more in-depth look at the ACC heading into conference play. The most interesting tidbit from the piece is the story (which I somehow missed) about Milton Jennings yelling and then being physically separated from Clemson coach Brad Brownell. Jennings is the guy many people thought could help the Tigers right the ship, but this incident definitely bodes poorly. Again, the predictions are solid, though I like Pickeral’s at the bottom of the conference a little more (even though it’s a total crapshoot down there).
3. ACC Sports Journal: Moving down to the conference-level coverage, Denny Kuiper assesses his preseason predictions with short blurbs for each team. His most overrated team is Clemson while Virginia Tech steals the most underrated honor (NC State and Virginia are the respective runner-ups). One beef I have with many of these predictions is their treatment of Virginia. The Cavaliers are 13-1 any way you slice it. Sure, the schedule wasn’t the strongest, but give Tony Bennett‘s squad credit for beating the teams it was supposed to beat (how many other conference teams can say that?). My final beef is that Kuiper fails to mention the growth of the Plumlees, who dominated Temple in the Blue Devils’ loss Monday.
4. Durham Herald-Sun: Moving more local, Steve Wiseman and Harold Gutmann take a look at each team, calling Florida State, Miami and NC State bubble teams (I’d include Virginia Tech and probably ditch the Hurricanes and Wolfpack). They do give Mason Plumlee credit for his huge improvement, but some of the “Wins to tout” and “Losses to hide from” show a lack of national perspective.
5. Duke Hoop Blog: Finally, let’s go team-specific with the Devil Wolf’s game-by-game breakdown of ACC play. He predicts Duke to win the conference title with a 14-2 record, followed closely by the Tar Heels at 13-3. While I don’t agree with his choice atop the league (Duke will lose at least three conference games), I do agree with the general distribution of teams. Past North Carolina and Duke I expect a real logjam for the middle-of-the-pack teams (with one team rising to take third, and a fourth conference at-large being awarded on a strong ACC Tournament performance). But mad props for taking the time to predict every conference game.

EXTRA: On a more normal note, check out Barry Jacobs’ statistical look at the worst free throw shooting of the last decade. Mason Plumlee is bricking his way towards history, though he’d have to return for his senior season and continue his negative trend to make a run for the top spot (even this season two players in the conference sport a lower percentage).

mpatton (576 Posts)

This entry was posted on Friday, January 6th, 2012 at 6:00 am by mpatton and is filed under acc, microsites. Tagged: acc. 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.