Without Milton Jennings, Clemson came remarkably close to a road upset of Virginia last night. Clemson’s more balanced attack looks like it will work out well for the Tigers while their disruptive defense was a nightmare for a Virginia team that struggled to hold on to the ball. Virginia, on the other hand, gutted out the tough win thanks to the super-efficient performances of Mike Scott and Joe Harris. Scott scored 23 points on 11 shots with ten rebounds and three blocks while Harris scored 19 points on nine shots, leading the team to 55.8% shooting from the field. Meanwhile, North Carolina managed a 15-point win on the road despite shooting 31.0% on the road in Winston-Salem. Such is the power of effective defense and managing 21 offensive rebounds.

Virginia Withstood Another Close Game To Get A Win (AP/J. Raoux)

Middle-Weight Brawl

• Maryland at Miami at 8:00 PM on ESPN3.com

Miami has a a Sunday date at Cameron Indoor and is riding a two-game winning streak where the Hurricanes have handled their business against the likes of Georgia Tech and Boston College that doesn’t yet qualify as momentum. Miami has been playing well, but a win against a Maryland team that has shown flashes of brilliance with Terrell Stoglin and a talented if underutilized frontcourt is a good start. It’s unclear if Miami has any answer for Stoglin, but it seems certain that Maryland doesn’t have any deffensive answers for the array of firepower at Jim Larranaga’s disposal.

The Standings Shakeout

• Georgia Tech at Florida State at 7:00 PM on ESPN3.com
• North Carolina State at Boston College at 8:00 PM on ESPN3.com

The ACC standings are finally beginning to approach some facsimile of reasonable. Florida State has looked clearly ascendant since their drubbing of North Carolina and the Wolfpack has been a few lucky bounces away from demonstrating that they belong on the national stage (if you pretend that last Thursday’s embarrassment at Chapel Hill didn’t happen). Meanwhile, Georgia Tech has looked simply terrible and Boston College has managed the alchemical feat of transmuting their early conference wins into unwatchable shot-jacking contests where Ryan Anderson tries to out-chuck the terrible offensive performances of the likes of Matt Humphrey and Jordan Daniels. Upsets are always possible, but the way that Georgia Tech and Boston College have been playing has caused me to question the philosophical underpinnings of the very concept of “hope.”

KCarpenter (269 Posts)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 at 2:53 pm by KCarpenter and is filed under acc, microsites. Tagged: acc, boston college, clemson, florida state, georgia tech, jordan daniels, maryland, matt humphrey, miami, milton jennings, north carolina, north carolina state, ryan anderson, terrell stoglin, virginia, wake forest. 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.