After a season in Atlanta, we return to Greensboro, a city known for the ACC tournament and an abundance of space for business and trade conferences. It’s clearly good to be home. The first day of the tournament has recently been a concern for the conference, with attendance slumping on the day when all of the top teams stay in their hotels. The story of the attendance of the first day is an interesting subplot for a conference that is looking at an expanded and perhaps even more lackluster first day with the new teams coming in. Of course, as gripping as attendance figures and conference expansion are as topics, there will also be some basketball played today, so let’s look at what we can expect.

Georgia Tech vs. Boston College at 12:00 ET

If you are feeling an eerie sense of déjà vu that’s understandable: these two teams just played on Saturday with Boston College eking out a narrow win over Georgia Tech in the pair’s only scheduled meeting of the season. The two teams are strange mirror images of each other: BC is the 6th best offense in the conference with the 11th best defense while GT is the 6th best defense with the 11th best offense. The result is that we can expect a simultaneously lopsided and symetrical game, with Boston College’s competent offense meeting the strong defense of Georgia Tech on one end, while both teams look somewhat hopeless on the other.  Considering the Boston College only narrowly won at home while shooting 55.1%, it seems likely that Georgia Tech will have the edge on the rematch on a neutral court.

Virginia Tech vs. NC State at 2:00 ET

This game, by the seeding, should be the most lopsided game of the day. The high octane offense of NC State against the truly terrible defense of Virginia Tech should be enough to carry the day for the Wolfpack. And yet… there is some cause for concern. When NC State played Virginia Tech at home this season, the lowly Hokies pushed the Wolfpack to overtime. Ultimately VT lost, but a 4-point loss in overtime on the road is a fairly strong loss. The  Hokies are capable of winning this game, but it would most likely take a superhuman heroic effort by recently crowned ACC Player of the Year Erick Green to make it happen. The Wolfpack could take this one easily, but if they show up with no energy, Virginia Tech will look to steal this one.

Wake Forest vs. Maryland at 7:00 ET

Maryland swept the season series against Wake Forest by no less than 10 points both tries. The Terrapins match up well against the Demon Deacons. Playing in Greensboro is certainly an advantage for Wake Forest, but this team has struggled outside of the friendly confines of Joel Coliseum. The Demon Deacons have only two wins away from home: a win against Mercer on a neutral court and a win December 22nd against UNC-Greensboro in none other than the Greensboro Coliseum. WFU hasn’t won a single road game since then. Maryland feels like a heavy favorite for this one, but if Wake Forest fans can make Greensboro feel like Winston Salem, the Demon Deacons might have a chance.

Clemson vs. Florida State at 9:00 ET

These two teams played twice in January and Florida State won both times. Then after January ended, Clemson would go on to win only one more game for the rest of the season. Seems like Florida State is the easy favorite, right? Interestingly, Pomeroy’s log5 predictive system disagrees, actually seeing Clemson as having a very mild edge. There’s something to this. The magical buzzer-beating powers of Michael Snaer have given the Seminoles a strangely inflated record that is deceptive. A win is a win, but in the case of Florida State, these wins have come by the narrowest of margins, making the team look better than it truly is.  Pomeroy has a measure “luck” that tries to capture how much the actual win record outpaces the team’s performance in terms of efficiency and by this measure, Florida State is clearly tops in the ACC. The “unluckiest” team in the conference? None other than Clemson. In any case, this game figures to be an ugly match-up as two of the worst-shooting and most-turnover prone teams in the conference go at it in what should be a close game. Ugly and scrappy, but likely very competitive.

KCarpenter (269 Posts)

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 14th, 2013 at 8:01 am by KCarpenter and is filed under 2013 conference tournaments, acc, microsites. Tagged: acc, boston college, clemson, feature, florida state, georgia tech, maryland, nc state, 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.