1. John Gasaway: Tuesday Truths are back! And with them, some interesting tidbits. Unfortunately, schedules are far from equal this season, but it appears there’s a top tier now separating itself from the pack. That group is Virginia, Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Duke. After Duke’s takedown of Miami in Coral Gables last night, I’d expect that foursome to further distinguish itself. As far as future head-to-head match-ups go, Virginia gets Syracuse at home and Pittsburgh away; Syracuse gets Virginia on the road, Duke at home and away, and Pittsburgh away; Pittsburgh gets Virginia at home, Duke at home and Syracuse at home; and Duke gets Syracuse at home and away and Pittsburgh away. Catch all that? On the surface, this schedule favors the Cavaliers and Panthers in the quest for the ACC’s top seed in Greensboro.
2. Winston-Salem Journal: Don’t look now, but Wake Forest won a conference road game! Sure, it was against a beaten-up Virginia Tech team, but now isn’t the time for qualifiers. It’s a time for celebration. Even better news for the Demon Deacons is that Travis McKie found his shot (he went 5-of-6 from beyond the arc en route to scoring 24 points). The highlight of Dan Collins’ article is the interaction with Jeff Bzdelik, though.
3. WRAL: ACC media legend Caulton Tudor pulled no punches in his preview of North Carolina and Clemson. Weirdly, he also hit Virginia with an undeserved drive-by insult (as mentioned above). But the goods are his discussion of the three shoulda-coulda-woulda games for the Tigers. The first came in 1982 (yep, the national title team with Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins and James Worthy) when Matt Doherty and Jimmy Black dragged the Tar Heels from a 10-point second half deficit to win by five. Both teams should be hungry on Sunday, coming off of bad losses.
4. Testudo Times: Jake Layman is in a slump and has been for the last five games. And his slump is likely symptomatic of and a reason for Maryland’s ACC skid. This team needs his outside shooting to spread the floor for its penetrators and bigs to work. It’s no coincidence that Maryland’s three least efficient offensive outings this season came during that stretch, although the only head-scratcher was this week’s loss at NC State. The Wolfpack are not a great defensive team, but Maryland looked lost for the entire second half.
5. Daily Tar Heel: Here’s an editorial calling for North Carolina to relax its rules on the size of the signs students can bring to the Dean Dome. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for letting students bring signs of any size and most any content. But signs won’t erase the “wine and cheese” stereotypes about North Carolina (though the rule certainly enforces them). Letting students vote on ideas to get approved by the athletic department might look like an even more controlled “cheer sheet” that draws so much ire down the road.

mpatton (576 Posts)

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 23rd, 2014 at 7:31 am by Matt Patton and is filed under acc, microsites, morning 5. Tagged: clemson, duke, jake layman, north carolina, pittsburgh, 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.