- Raleigh News & Observer: When Caulton Tudor drops a story, it’s good to make a point to listen to him. His three anecdotes in this piece don’t have any special significance but are a cool look back at recent and less recent college basketball history on Tobacco Road. He marvels at Christian Laettner (and his competitiveness against Shaquille O’Neal), Jim Valvano and Roy Williams in stories dating from three different decades. Stories like this are why Tudor will be missed after his retirement.
- Testudo Times: Maryland got the marquee win it desperately needed, providing more evidence about Duke’s horrible interior defense without Ryan Kelly along the way. Despite 25 turnovers (!) the Terrapins were led by Alex Len‘s evisceration of Mason Plumlee to a close victory that should prove very helpful on Selection Sunday. Duke’s excuse will be that it was the team’s third game in six days, but it was a team that got smacked in the mouth by the atmosphere at College Park and could never get any offensive flow together because of its poor defense. After the game, Mark Turgeon had some very interesting comments that placed the game at incredible importance to he and his family (who apparently had to leave game last week because fans were being so crude).
- D1scourse: Patrick Stevens took a look at the lowest scoring ACC games in the shot clock era after Miami–Clemson set a new low over the weekend at 45-43. Between 1985-86 and 2009-10, there were three games where neither team reached 50 points (two coming thanks to a 1986 Wake Forest team that went 0-14 in conference play and didn’t top the half-century mark five times). Since 2010-11 there have been five such games. People will probably read into this (extraordinarily interesting) stat and decry the recent down years in the ACC. But this trend, if you can call it that, comes down to new coaches — specifically Brad Brownell and Tony Bennett — with a little help from two very defensive minded teams (Florida State and Virginia Tech) last year.
- Shakin the Southland: This is a pretty thoughtful support of Clemson head coach Brad Brownell. One interesting thing is the harshness with which the author looks at Devin Booker and Milton Jennings. Both probably deserve the frustration, as they have rarely lived up to their talent (especially Jennings), but Booker in particular has kept Clemson reasonably close on his own in many games this year. Specifically, the article parallels Clemson and Virginia, tracking Brownell and Bennett in the process. Bennett has definitely had his share of success this year but don’t discount a very generous conference schedule. If (and it’s a big if) Brownell can consistently recruit ACC-caliber players, he’s a strong enough coach to win.
- Wilmington Star-News: On the heels of Ken Pomeroy’s surprising find that more teams lose when committing a foul up three with between five and 12 seconds left on the game clock, NC State found itself in that exact situation over the weekend. Conventional wisdom says that the team should foul, but the opportunity for an offensive rebound on a missed free throw probably pushes the needle the other way. Virginia Tech ran arguably the coolest set play of the year (it was illegal but still…) to get a tip-in from Jarell Eddie to tie everything up before losing by four in overtime. I think Mark Gottfried made the right choice considering his team’s obvious three-point defensive struggles.