1. South Florida Sun-Sentinel: I’m starting to notice a trend with articles written about teams picked to finish in the bottom third of the ACC. Writers and coaches use phrases like “hope to compete” in lieu of buzzwords like “confident” or any mention of the league title. Miami is no different. The most impressive statistic Christy Chirinos drops at the start of this article is that the Hurricanes return one percent of their assists from last season. One percent. That’s insane. Luckily, Manu Lacomte may be the best player on Jim Larranaga’s roster, so assists may be the one area that Miami isn’t in huge trouble.
2. Syracuse Post-Gazette: Tyler Ennis and Trevor Cooney have huge shoes to fill on defense. Jim Boeheim called Brandon Triche and Michael Carter-Williams the best defensive backcourt he’s ever had (though Dion Waiters, Triche and Scoop Jardine wreaked all kinds of havoc on the perimeter too). As they lack the length of Carter-Williams and Triche, this might be another reason to hold back on buying too much Syracuse stock before the season gets going in earnest. Perimeter defense was the biggest reason Syracuse made the Final Four last year, so taking a step back on that front will definitely have a big impact.
3. Baltimore Sun: While it’s true Mark Turgeon‘s team looked like a headless chicken on offense for much of last season, Maryland improved dramatically down the stretch. The team showed flashes of its potential in two big wins against Duke, though inconsistency still shone through. But it’s weird that people think Turgeon can’t coach. His teams at Texas A&M weren’t stacked with talent and most of them overachieved. Last year’s Maryland team lacked a true point guard, which combined with an inside-out approach for a turnover-prone halfcourt offense. This year should be better, though Seth Allen’s injury doesn’t help the Terps’ turnover problems.
4. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Jamie Dixon does a good job explaining the struggles of crafting a schedule here. Interestingly he points out that the 18-game conference schedule gives teams less flexibility with the non-conference schedule. Another tidbit he offers is that it’s much less (directly) lucrative to play a big school on national television at a neutral site. That surprised me a lot. Obviously there are exceptions (for instance, Duke makes far more money on its trip to Madison Square Garden than normal home games because the school promotes the event itself), but Dixon estimated neutral games are only worth $100,000 and home games are worth $500,000 in revenue. That’s a huge per-game difference.
5. Fayetteville Observer: Bret Strelow writes that Duke‘s athleticism this season will bring back memories of the teams of the late 1990s and early 2000s. There’s one thing missing though: great bigs. The national championship teams of those years had Elton Brand and Carlos Boozer, two players with plenty of NCAA success between them. They’re also both really big guys. Amile Jefferson may be taller, but he’s at least 20 pounds lighter. However, if Jefferson can hold down the post without getting in foul trouble, Strelow’s comparisons may look very good.

Duke had a successful 2013-14 season but it will be remembered as three seasons in one. Led by the senior trio of Mason Plumlee, Seth Curry and Ryan Kelly, Duke got off to the best start in the country, winning its first 15 games against a very tough schedule. Then Kelly went down with a foot injury and the Blue Devils dropped to merely a good team, going 9-4 without him in the lineup. Kelly’s dramatic return in a 79-76 win over eventual ACC champion Miami gave hope to Duke as a national title contender, but they couldn’t quite get there, losing to a superior Louisville team in the Elite Eight.

Ordinarily, losing three quality starting seniors would indicate a worse season to come, but thanks to a pair of highly regarded new forwards, Duke is expected to remain a national contender. Mike Krzyzewski has also made it clear that a change in style is coming. Duke will not have the veteran post players it had last year, but it will be a much more athletic and deeper team so look for the Blue Devils to push the tempo on both ends of the court. It’s been said that the makeup of this team is similar to Coach K’s 2012 USA Olympic team. That team lacked a true post scorer and was built around versatile play-making forwards on offense and a switching pressure defense. Look for Krzyzewski to use that experience to build this Duke team in the same fashion.

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In the third and final segment of RTC ACC’s Twitter must-follow series, we take a further look at the remaining eight teams in the ACC. This list is not all encompassing but a quick look at some of the more prominent accounts to follow for news and insight on teams around the ACC. This may include coaches, players, writers, and/or bloggers. So without any further delay, Rush the Court brings you the part three finale of our ACC Twitter rundown (click here for Part I and Part II).

Malcolm Delaney of Virginia Tech finds himself in the ‘Alumni Spotlight’

Virginia

 Cavaliers Starting Five

• @UVAMensHoops The official account for UVA basketball.
• @VirginiaHoops Great source for UVA hoops and recruiting news.
• @virginiabuzztap A blogger’s take on Virginia athletics.
• @EvanNolte An entertaining follow and player’s perspective.
• @UVaHooCrew The Twitter account for the UVA fan section.

 Other Official Accounts

• @miketobey10 Sophomore center poised for a breakout campaign.
• @CoachWillyUVA Assistant coach Williford.
• @ajmitchell25 Akil Mitchell.
• @joeharrisuva Fan favorite Joe Harris.

 Alumni Spotlight

• @mikescott Mike Scott currently plays for the Atlanta Hawks and with a little over 17,000 tweets, he is certainly active on social media.

Duke

Blue Devils Starting Five

• @dukeblueplanet The official account for Duke basketball run by their recruiting and communications coordinator.
• @BlueDevilNation Run by Mark Watson, the publisher of Blue Devil Nation.
• @BlueDevilLair Adam Rowe (RTC alumnus) runs this account that represents 247sports.com and provides great insight into recruiting and Duke basketball news.
• @laurakeeley The Duke beat reporter for The Raleigh News & Observer as well as the Charlotte Observer.
• @dukebasketball Coverage of Duke hoops from The Chronicle, Duke’s independent student newspaper with their own articles.

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Fans of the storied North Carolina Tar Heels basketball program always anxiously await the arrival of the coming season. This year, however, after a string of off-the-court incidents, fans and the team itself probably have more reason to cheer the first minute of game action than in recent seasons. Guard P.J. Hairston’s legal woes stemming from an infamous traffic stop in Durham and speeding tickets thereafter, coupled with wing guard Leslie McDonald’s strange licensed mouthpiece storyline and forward J.P. Tokoto’s unauthorized summer league participation, left UNC fans reading about their beloved college basketball season all summer and into the fall for all the wrong reasons. Luckily, the season is right around the corner, and not a moment too soon.

Last year’s Tar Heels found themselves in a position head coach Roy Williams rarely finds himself having to acclimate to: an unsettling lineup situation. The team played uneven basketball over the first half of the year, struggling most glaringly with ineffective post play. James Michael McAdoo had returned for a sophomore season hoping to become a star and catapult into the NBA Draft’s upper tier; instead, massive expectations and having to guide a young group of frontcourt players overwhelmed him and left him playing out of position. The team’s switch to a four-guard lineup in February helped accentuate the strength of the team on the perimeter, and helped spark the Heels to wins in their final six ACC games and a run to the championship game of the ACC Tournament. But upon entering the NCAA Tournament, the team ran into a team with too much size in Kansas in the second round and realized their small lineup’s limitations in defeat.

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1. Baltimore Sun: According to Jeff Barker’s Public Information Act request, Maryland “sought to influence the debate [over the school’s move to the Big Ten] with a plan to lobby media pundits and plant positive comments into fan message boards.” Specifically, the department targeted ESPN‘s Scott Van Pelt, as “It would be in our best interest to let Van Pelt break the story and talk about all of the positives.” That’s not a great look for Maryland or Van Pelt, who was in fact a positive voice soon after the decision went public.
2. Raleigh News & Observer: Luke DeCock has a good look at the three Triangle basketball teams through one important question that needs to be answered. Duke‘s question is probably the most interesting, as it’s the most recent to appear: How will Rasheed Sulaimon adapt to his new role? On the surface, there’s not a lot here. But consider that Sulaimon played poorly in Duke’s first exhibition and didn’t play at all in the Blue Devils’s second (reportedly because he was recovering from illness). Now factor in that when Coach K announced the likely starters for this year he only listed four, and Sulaimon — who started most of last season — didn’t make the list. It should be interesting to keep an eye on this going forward.
3. Syracuse Post-Gazette: Jim Boeheim is warming up his saltiness for the season with a mini-rant on graduation rates. Last month the NCAA released its annual graduation statistics and Syracuse‘s number wasn’t great (47%). This wasn’t news to Boeheim, who lost two scholarships due to the APR a couple of years back, but that didn’t keep him from touching on the subject in a postgame presser recently. His argument is that Syracuse shouldn’t be punished for players choosing to leave the program. While the take certainly makes sense, other schools that have many early departures (ahem, Kentucky) don’t struggle with the APR because they force students departing for the NBA Draft to remain academically eligible through their spring semesters. It’s really not that hard to figure out.
4. Blogger So Dear: The gentlemen over at Blogger So Dear sat down and wrote a short prediction for the upcoming season. They chose Wake Forest at #11, hot on the heels of NC State’s young team (though one writer had the Demon Deacons as high as #9). The only two unanimous votes for All-ACC went to Joe Harris and CJ Fair. They also make a good argument for Tony Bennett winning Coach of the Year, as his team looks poised to comfortably make the NCAAs this season and normally a big jump earns attention in that award category (regardless of the actual coaching job done).
5. Orlando Sentinel: The ACC’s newest potential star from Alaska is Florida State’s Devon Bookert. He is definitely the player to watch on Florida State this year, as he had a very promising finish to last season. There are still plenty of reasons to question the Seminoles otherwise, but Bookert will likely surprise many ACC fans just as he apparently has surprised his teammates. He’s likely the difference between an average Florida State team this year and a horrible one.

Today we will look at some of the most interesting ACC non-conference games of 2013-14. For this feature we will not include games in early season tournaments because we earlier previewed those events in three parts – Part I, Part II, and Part III. Also, we will not look at any of the specific match-ups in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge in this feature because we’ll focus on that annual event at a later date. That still leaves a good inventory of ACC-related non-conference games to choose from, and as you will see, most of these games will be played in New York City, which is not entirely by accident. Counting tournament appearances, eight different ACC teams are scheduled to play a total of 16 games in the Big Apple — it’s obvious that the ACC is serious about taking advantage of the most recent expansion into the Northeast. A strong presence in New York is clearly part of the conference plan. By comparison, only four ACC teams played a total of five games in the New York area last season, counting a Duke-Temple game played in East Rutherford, New Jersey. In chronological order, here are the seven non-conference games that will be crucial to win for the ACC to meet its goal as the top conference in the nation this season.

Dez Wells Will Lead Maryland in Opener vs. UConn (Charlie DeBoyace/The Diamondback)

Friday November 8 – Maryland vs. Connecticut (Barclays Center – Brooklyn) – 6:30 PM  ESPN2

Without injured point guard Seth Allen, the Terrapins will be underdogs against the Huskies on opening night. The explosive Connecticut backcourt of Shabazz Napier and Ryan Boatwright will be hard covers for the bigger but slower Maryland guards. Dez Wells and Nick Faust must limit their turnovers, a problem for both last season, but the Terps hope to counter with the punishing post duo of Charles Mitchell and Shaquille Cleare.  A wild card for Maryland may be 6’8″ sophomore Jake Layman, who reportedly has been a standout in preseason scrimmages.

Tuesday November 12 – Duke vs. Kansas (Champions Classic – Chicago) – 9:30 PM ESPN

The college basketball world will be focused on the Champions Classic doubleheader on this night. #1 Kentucky squares off with #2 Michigan State in the opener, but most of the buzz seems to be about the nightcap. There are plenty of storylines for this one including the match-up of the top two freshmen in the country, Andrew Wiggins of Kansas and Jabari Parker for Duke. Also, the game is in Chicago, Coach K’s hometown, and the Midwestern backyard of Bill Self. This year’s #1 high school senior Jahlil Okafor lives in Chicago and reportedly will decide soon between Duke and Kansas. Finally, it should be a great game to watch with plenty of top athletes on the floor. Kansas holds a decided edge in the paint while Duke has a more proven backcourt. The game may come down to which team’s newcomers best handle playing on the big stage for the first time.

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Last season was a historic one for Miami basketball. The Hurricanes became the first school from outside the state of North Carolina to win the ACC regular season title outright and the ACC Tournament in the same year. Along the way came two home blowout wins over perennial league powers Duke and North Carolina, and a level of local support never seen before at Miami. They even had LeBron James and Dwayne Wade attend a game! Unfortunately, the top six players from that squad are now gone, so this will clearly be a rebuilding year for the Jim Larranaga’s squad.

The good news is that the man in charge is still Jim Larranaga. The 29-year head coaching veteran swept conference and national Coach of the Year awards last season, but he is best known for leading George Mason to the 2006 Final Four. Larranaga excels at putting pieces together to form a cohesive team and, despite his age, is known as a progressive thinking coach. He’s constantly looking for new teaching and motivational techniques, and has also embraced the new advanced statistics now available. To prepare for this season’s rules changes limiting contact, Larranaga has put a greater emphasis on defending without fouling. As he explained to the media at the recent ACC Operation Basketball, the Hurricanes’ goal each game is to limit opponents to less than one point per possession. If you put someone on the free throw line, all they have to do is hit one out of two to beat their goal. To combat that tendency, Miami preseason practices are stopped when the defense fouls and everybody runs sprints. Although the Hurricanes will have a dropoff this season, the program is in good shape moving forward. Next year, two transfers from Big 12 schools will be eligible, when Angel Rodriguez (Kansas State) and Sheldon McClellan (Texas) will form a solid junior backcourt.

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North Carolina State head coach Mark Gottfried’s squad entered last season with the loftiest expectations the program had seen in some time. His Wolfpack was ranked as high as #6 in preseason national polls and was chosen as the odds-on favorite to win the Atlantic Coast Conference. Instead, immaturity and inconsistency from a team loaded with talent landed the team in a fourth-place tie after the conference regular season.  NC State finished 24-11 and bowed out of its first-round NCAA Tournament match-up with Temple.

This year, expectations are drastically lower for Gottfried’s squad. Significant departures decimated his roster and left him with a very young team entering his third season in Raleigh. Gone are starters Richard Howell  and Scott Wood to graduation and C.J. Leslie and Lorenzo Brown to early entry. Add to that the transfer to Connecticut of highly-touted freshman Rodney Purvis, who had an up-and-down first season at NC State, and the Wolfpack find themselves down all five starters from a year ago. Gottfried has assembled an impressive recruiting class for 2013-14 (though it may pale in comparison to the one he’ll have next year), but replacing all of that scoring and experience will be a mighty task for this year’s team. Gottfried’s returnees this year have experience, but much of it was in reserve situations and in spare minutes giving the aforementioned starters a breather.

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1. Bleacher Report: This article is only peripherally related to the ACC, but it’s a fascinating read on how Synergy Sports Technology has changed the game. On the obvious scale, Synergy allows well-financed writers to cite statistics normally hard to come by (like offensive efficiency on pick and rolls). More importantly, it allows coaches to prepare more efficiently than ever before. It’s not that coaches stop watching film, now they can back up their informed observations with the help of tons of data that’s never existed before. The example CJ Moore provides is in Duke‘s preparation for the 2010 national championship:
   

   [Gordon] Hayward is right-handed, and the natural inclination for any defender would be to try to force a right-hander to go left. But when Duke went through the scouting report on Butler, it was clear you did not want to let Hayward go left. The numbers provided by Synergy Sports Technology had revealed that Hayward went left nearly 70 percent of the time.

   Singler ended up forcing Hayward right and he missed the shot.

2. Baltimore Sun: I know Mark Turgeon is framing his argument about how his team has matured, but when he says “Last year we had too many young guys who were worried about themselves,” it immediately makes me think about Alex Len. Len never had playing time issues, but his presence forced the team to play inside-out, which did not fit most of the roster. Again Turgeon was talking about his younger players, who are now a year wiser. It will be interesting to see if the improved chemistry helps with Maryland’s turnover epidemic.
3. The State: Here’s a good article on Clemson’s Jordan Roper, Brad Brownell’s undersized scoring point guard from nearby Irmo, South Carolina. Roper is the kind of player Brownell needs to blossom if he’s going to maintain success at Clemson. Not one to dominate the recruiting trail, cultivating local talent is one way to ensure there are always quality players on the roster. Roper still has a long way to go, but I think he has the chance to blossom into a player like Tyrese Rice at Boston College (assuming he can pack on a couple of pounds).
4. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Pittsburgh will likely continue its streak of sold out home games this season, as the Panthers sold out their season ticket allotment twelfth straight year (which unsurprisingly coincides with the first year they played at the Pete). While on the whole college attendance has fallen the last few years, it will be interesting to see if the bigger ACC–and the improving bottom of the league–boosts ticket sales around the league.
5. Pack Pride: Normally we stay away from message boards, but this investigation by Wufwuf1 is truly something else. The user has drawn intricate alleged connections from North Carolina boosters to agents and back to players. Everything from company websites to social network pages were combed for possible links that might bring the NCAA’s wrath down on North Carolina. I can’t speak to the validity of the work, but there’s plenty of it. Don’t let people tell you this isn’t a rivalry.

Typically, a rash of transfers is a major indictment of a college basketball program. It can signify instability, a coach who has lost control of his locker room and/or the faith of the young men he coaches, or a program that no longer offers the just desserts most college athletes seek. At the University of Virginia, where head coach Tony Bennett is now in his fourth season at the helm, the opposite appears to be the case. Though Bennett has lost six scholarship players to transfer since 2011, none of the departed left on acrimonious terms. This offseason, Paul Jesperson (who started 33 games last year at guard) and Taylor Barnette left the program for greener pastures, but it wasn’t because of a problem within the confines of the Cavaliers’ program. It was because Bennett finally has the depth and talent he’s been building toward since he arrived in Charlottesville, and there just wasn’t enough playing time to go around. Bennett has indicated his understanding of the depth “quandary“:  “Guys being the ninth, 10th or 11th guy and being patient and waiting are harder to come by. It’s not just here. It’s everywhere. It’s more of the immediate gratification of society nowadays. You hate that. […] You want guys to dream of playing professionally, but sometimes that’s not the way it’s going be.”

Last year’s Cavaliers turned in a solid if unspectacular year, winning 23 games and going 11-7 in the ACC. Unfortunately, the team’s lack of a solid non-conference schedule and a poorly-timed late-season swoon in league play cost them a shot at an NCAA Tournament bid. Virginia lost its last three ACC games, the last of which was an unceremonious blowout at the hands of NC State in the ACC Tournament’s first round, and with an RPI bordering on the bubble, they were relegated to participating in the NIT. This year’s team, with the return of proven starters like Joe Harris and Akil Mitchell and an influx of newcomers with promise at the biggest position of need for this team (point guard), has the expectations of exceeding last year’s successes. This is a team bent on gaining entry to, and making noise in, the Big Dance.

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