1. ESPN:  North Carolina will be allowed to leave for its game at Long Beach State (en route to the Maui Invitational) more than 48 hours before tipoff. NCAA rules typically do not allow teams to leave for away games more than 48 hours before its tipoff, but North Carolina was able to lobby to successfully get a waiver (after it had been previously denied) to bypass this rule. This will reportedly save the school up to $120,000, as the team can now fly commercially instead of needing a charter flight.  It is definitely a change to see an off-the-court (or gridiron) headline that does not detail more doom and gloom for the athletics programs over at North Carolina. It is also good to see the NCAA exercising some common sense in this situation.
2. Richmond Times-Dispatch:  Travis McKie is just one of two upperclassmen remaining on Wake Forest’s team, and he is the only one left from his 2010 recruiting class of five. Michael Phillips interviewed McKie recently, finding that his college experience has not been quite what he expected, as he has only won five conference games in his time at Wake Forest. But McKie has definitely learned through the adversity, saying, “I think now I appreciate things more.” The junior and coach Jeff Bzdelik are certainly confident that McKie’s leadership which has developed during his time at Wake Forest (including spending this summer mentoring all of Wake Forest’s freshmen) will get through to his extremely young teammates, and that the team can finally escape the ACC basement as a result.
3. Washington Post:  Freshman Marshall Wood has been a pleasant surprise in practice for Virginia Tech. On a team with just eight scholarship players, coach James Johnson already envisions Wood playing many minutes at the power forward slot, and he was particularly impressed with Wood’s rebounding and outside shooting prowess. This is significant news for the Hokies because Wood, who put up great numbers in high school, was very lightly recruited and his high school competition in rural Virginia was not particularly strong.
4. USA Today:  Andrew Wiggins is the most highly-touted high school player in the class of 2014 (although he is considering reclassifying and graduating this year), and possibly the best in high school regardless of class. Eric Prisbell’s detailed piece covers Wiggins’ growth in maturity since he moved to the United States from his native Canada to play for Huntington (WV) Prep,  previously home to OJ Mayo and Patrick Patterson. Wiggins has long thought to be favoring Kentucky and Florida State (his parents’ alma mater), although North Carolina, along with Kansas and Ohio State, has come into the running recently. Refreshingly, Wiggins is extremely humble and hates all the hoopla (inspired by his idol, Kevin Durant) so much that his coach believes that when Wiggins decides on his college, he will just text him the choice rather than announce it in an ESPNU televised special.  If Florida State could land Wiggins, it would undoubtedly be the biggest recruiting coup in the program’s history.
5. CBS Sports:  Going along with Virginia Tech head coach James Johnson vowing to push the tempo this year, Sean Bielawski decided to take a closer look at the overall tempo stats in the ACC.  The ACC has historically been thought of as one of the higher-scoring, more up-tempo of the major conferences (at least in contrast to the Big Ten, for example), but last year, only one ACC squad, North Carolina, was in the top 75 in the Pomeroy adjusted tempo rankings. Overall, the ACC was ranked fourth out of the six major conferences in terms of average tempo, and 20th out of the 33 Division I conferences (weighed down by Miami, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, and Virginia, who were all outside the top 250).  If Johnson is true to its word, that could be enough to shift the ACC into the upper half of college basketball in terms of its pace.

EMann (30 Posts)

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2012 at 6:01 am by EMann and is filed under acc, microsites, morning 5. Tagged: Andrew Wiggins, florida state, Marshall Wood, north carolina, travis mckie, virginia tech, 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.