Rush The Court

In offices all across the nation this week, people are playing the Secret Santa game. So let’s pretend that our company is made up of the ACC’s 15 men’s basketball teams, and we drew every head coach’s name out of the hat. As tempting as it may be to hand out traditional gifts like cheese logs and fruitcakes (yuck!), we instead will look at the specific needs for each squad right now and try and make each team better with our gifts. In the first of two installments of this piece (check back on Christmas Day for Part II), let’s look at the eight ACC teams that need Santa’s help the most.

Here are our gifts of choice for the eight ACC schools that need them most (in alphabetical order):

• Boston College (Jim Christian) – This is the easiest coach of all to shop for. When you already don’t have anything, there is no such thing as a bad present. The Eagles desperately need quality players. Among the 65 power-five conference programs, only hapless Rutgers is lower in the current KenPom rankings than the Eagles are. So we would give Christian what he needs the most – a recruiting budget that is comparable with the upper level schools in the ACC. The only way this program is going to improve is for his staff to evaluate and talk with as many high school players as possible, all over the country. That takes money.
• Clemson (Brad Brownell) – What Brownell needs more than anything right now is a quality win. Actually, just a halfway respectable win would do right now. So far, the Tigers’ best victory this season is over Wofford (KenPom #234). Against teams rated higher than that, Clemson is 0-5 after being blown out by Georgia on Tuesday night. The next opportunity will come next Wednesday at North Carolina, but asking Santa Claus to help Brownell and company break their famous winless streak in Chapel Hill feels very greedy.

• Florida State (Leonard Hamilton) – Hamilton has the Seminoles playing defense like the old days (#19 in KenPom defensive efficiency), but they could use some help on the offensive end. So we will give the gift of outside shooting touch to this team, something this group has been lacking in a very costly way. Florida State is only connecting on 29.7 percent of its three-point attempts on the year, including a frigid 11-for-48 in its two losses.
• Georgia Tech (Brian Gregory) – It’s a little eerie when you look at where the Yellow Jackets were a year ago at this time. They were 8-3 and had split the two one-possession games they had played. That is the exact situation for this year’s Georgia Tech squad. Last year, in incredible fashion, they went on to lose all nine one-possession contests against ACC teams while the season spiraled right down the drain. With Gregory firmly planted on the hot seat, he can ill afford a similar performance in the upcoming conference campaign, so we will give his team mental toughness to pull out at least a decent share of the closely contested ACC games to come.

• N.C. State (Mark Gottfried) – For Gottfried, we will give him Terry Henderson back at the early end of the projected 8-10 week timetable for his return. Henderson injured his ankle in the Wolfpack’s opening loss to William & Mary on November 13. Without Henderson, the already thin N.C. State team only has one true guard, Cat Barber. Currently the ACC’s leading scorer, Barber has played almost 95 percent of available minutes thus far, which is the sixth highest minutes share in the country. Playing those kind of minutes is bound to catch up with him once ACC play begins, so the sooner Henderson comes back, the fresher Barber will be for the 18-game grind of conference play.
• Syracuse (Jim Boeheim/Mike Hopkins) Since Boeheim is in the midst of serving his NCAA mandated nine game suspension — and can have zero contact with the program while it goes on — we are unable to give our gift directly to him. So for Hopkins, we will put a post presence in a box and wrap it for him. To date, the Orange have not been a very balanced team, giving little interior help to their senior backcourt tandem of Michael Gbinije and Trevor Cooney. Syracuse is currently taking 43.6 percent of its shots from beyond the 3-point line (34th in the country) and ranks an embarrassing 326th in the country in defensive rebound percentage. At least Dajuan Coleman has looked better lately, scoring 13 points in Tuesday’s win over Montana State.
• Virginia Tech (Buzz Williams) – For Williams, we would like to grant his team better shot distribution between the two primary perimeter threats for the Hokies. Thus far, Justin Bibbs (career 47.8 percent 3-point shooter), is shooting a sizzling 61.5 percent on his 52 attempts from deep. Meanwhile Seth Allen (career 32.8 percent three-point shooter), has made only 25.8 percent of his 66 shots from behind the arc. Given these numbers, it makes little sense that Allen has taken 14 more threes than Bibbs. Let’s spread the long-range shots around, Seth.
• Wake Forest (Danny Manning) – When Manning awakes Christmas morning we hope he finds a stack of traffic cones under his tree so that he can take them to the Deacons’ practices and set them up on the floor to practice speed-dribbling. We also would put some stickem in Manning’s stocking to distribute to Wake’s primary ball-handlers. The Demon Deacons are the worst ball security team in the ACC so far this year with a turnover margin of -3.64 per game; in fact, they are the only ACC squad with a negative number in the category. And Codi Miller-McIntyre’s return to the lineup has not helped in this area as much as one would expect. In his three games since returning to the lineup, the senior guard has turned the ball over on 33 percent of his possessions. Ouch.