1. Charlotte Observer: Good story from David Scott on Ian Miller, a Charlotte native, and how he’s really matured over his career. He has had academic problems and injuries set him back, but this season Miller seems healthy and ready to run Leonard Hamilton’s team. He has upped his field goal  percentages pretty dramatically, along with his assists. When Florida State needs a bucket, his foul-drawing ability makes him tough to stop. Speaking of tough to stop, the Seminoles had a pretty jaw dropping box score from their win against UNC Charlotte. They took the 49ers behind a woodshed in Tallahassee, winning 106-62 (and it really wasn’t that close). Also don’t forget, Charlotte is the team that beat Michigan earlier this season. I’ll go ahead and say teams won’t enjoy coming to the Donald L. Tucker Center this season.
2. Charlottesville Daily Progress: One troubling part of Virginia’s start is Akil Mitchell‘s slide in production. Last year Mitchell was a double-double machine; this year he doesn’t have any. Part of that is due to minutes, as Virginia is much deeper this season in the frontcourt. But his percentages are down too, and his turnover rate is up. That’s a bigger issue. The good news is Virginia’s bigger, deeper frontcourt makes the Cavaliers an elite defensive rebounding team. The bad news is that this team really needs Mitchell’s missing offensive production (they’ve lost two of three games by a single possession and the other because the team only hit two field goals in the second half).
3. Daily Tar Heel: Whew boy, it sounds like student tickets for the North Carolina-Kentucky game were a total mess. The first administration faux pas was getting rid of half the student section (the upper deck student section was ticketed for alumni instead). The bigger mistake was in an effort to avoid students camping out, the UNC Ticket Office tried to “randomize” the order by picking a random number (in this case 468) and telling every student in front of that number to go to the back of the line. Needless to say the students who spent the afternoon in the rain weren’t pleased being sent to the back (and then not getting in at all). Next time a lottery would probably work a lot better.
4. Syracuse Post-Standard: It’s been a little too long since we had some good old-fashioned coach-speak, so here’s some from a master: “We have a chance to be a good team. We’re not anywhere near that now. We’ve got a lot of work left to do.” Truth is that could’ve been any coach off to a good start, but it was Jim Boeheim. Boeheim is slipping into a bit of a routine with his recent press conferences, which means he must be getting bored. Not to worry, with a hot Villanova team and ACC play around the corner, I expect we’ll here a little more variety in the coming weeks.
5. Fox Sports Carolinas and Real Tailgate: Need to catch up on the last week of ACC action? Lauren Brownlow and @WxMoose have you covered. Brownlow should be your go-to to get context on the week’s best (and worst) performances. The Weather Moose will translate those performances into GIFs.

mpatton (576 Posts)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 18th, 2013 at 7:40 am by mpatton and is filed under acc, microsites, morning 5. Tagged: akil mitchell, florida state, Ian Miller, jim boeheim, north carolina, syracuse, virginia. 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.