It appears that the ACC is on a regular rotation this season that provides us with a great set of games every other weekend. Still, there were some interesting things happening on Saturday around the league; Louisville almost blew another late lead before holding on to edge Clemson, 56-55; and Virginia had an unexpectedly tough time with Notre Dame, winning 60-54 in Charlottesville. Elsewhere in the conference, North Carolina routed Wake Forest, 95-57, in Winston-Salem, and first-place Duke handled NC State in Durham by a score of 94-78. Here are the highlights from the weekend around the ACC.

• Best Win: Coming off back-to-back heartbreaking losses to Florida State and Duke — games in which Louisville led both games by double-figures late — Chris Mack’s club almost did it again. This time, the Cardinals led Clemson by eight points with 30 seconds to go, before falling apart again in front of a stunned crowd at the KFC Yum! Center. At the end, Louisville practically handed the game to the Tigers when Marcquise Reed stole Jordan Nwora’s inbounds pass in the lane with three seconds to go — had Nwora not redeemed himself by blocking Reed’s short jumper to preserve the one-point victory, the Cardinals would be in full meltdown mode. Normally, we wouldn’t bestow “Best Win” status to a ranked team that barely survived against a squad with a sub-.500 conference record, but in this case, Louisville gets that distinction because it possibly saved its season.
• Worst Loss: We also have an unusual choice in this weekly category. Nobody expected lowly Wake Forest to give North Carolina much of a game on Saturday, but the enormous margin of defeat — 38 points represents the largest in series history — may be the final nail in the coffin for Danny Manning’s tenure in Winston-Salem. After barely squeaking into the 2017 NCAA Tournament First Four, Manning was given a six-year contract extension — reportedly with a huge buyout attached. Since then, the Demon Deacons have posted a 20-35 record, including a pathetic ACC mark of 6-24. If Manning gets fired after the conclusion of this season, we recommend that the school have someone other than athletic director Ron Wellman choose the next head basketball coach. He’s certainly whiffed on his last two selections (Jeff Bzdelik and Manning) and as a result, Wake Forest is now one of the worst power conference programs in college basketball.

While this weekend doesn’t feature a signature showdown in ACC play, it still provides plenty of intrigue for the many teams vying for NCAA Tournament position. Rush the Court ACC writer Mick McDonald (@themickmcdonald) gets you set. (All rankings via KenPom)

Saturday, February 16

• #32 Clemson (15-9, 5-6) at #13 Louisville (17-8, 8-4). While Louisville’s collapse against Duke got most of the attention around the ACC this week, it was Clemson that suffered more long-term damage with its loss to Miami. Clemson had been grinding opponents down, holding their previous three opponents under 35 percent in effective field goal percentage, but in their loss this week, Brad Brownell’s club allowed Miami (48.1% eFG) far too many easy baskets. A positive sign for the Tigers has been the recent play of Shelton Mitchell. In his last three games, Mitchell (15.0 PPG, 46.9 FG%, 44.4% 3FG) has become the necessary complement to Marcquise Reed that Clemson expected to have this season. They’ll need both Mitchell and Reed at the top of their games when they face the defensive ball-pressure facilitated by Louisville’s backcourt.

• #22 Florida State (19-5, 7-4) at #99 Georgia Tech (11-14, 3-9). Here come the Seminoles… Leonard Hamilton’s club has now reeled off six consecutive victories, and in typical Florida State fashion, they are getting significant contributions from different players every night. Against Wake Forest earlier this week, Christ Koumadje scored 20 points, grabbed 12 rebounds and shot 10-of-12 from the field in a dominant victory over the Demon Deacons. Last weekend in a win over Louisville, Terrance Mann scored 20 points while knocking down three-of-four of his attempts from long distance. In their previous win against Syracuse, Mfiondu Kabengele notched 18 points and eight rebounds while making 7-of-10 shots from the floor. Florida State has lots of different ways to win games, which makes them well positioned for another deep run in March.

Despite being ranked 10th in the national polls, Marquette is continuously overlooked and forgotten, a filler team of sorts between the elite teams and the dark horses. The Golden Eagles are lost in the shuffle — they stand behind the Dukes, Kentuckys and Virginias, places ahead of Michigan State, Purdue and Kansas, yet ranks last among all in recognition of a successful season. It’s easy to see why, too. Steve Wojciechowski‘s program has come to be known for elite offenses without any semblance of defensive ability, resulting in just one NCAA Tournament appearance in the last five seasons. So what’s different this year? It isn’t Markus Howard, despite the junior’s scintillating 43.8 percent three-point shooting and headline-grabbing 40+ point performances — rather, it’s the defense.

Many have been quick to blame Wojo’s coaching for the team’s chronic under-performance on the defensive end of the floor, but now that the ship has seemingly righted itself, perhaps the blame should have gone to his personnel. The Golden Eagles of years past rolled out lineups that featured the 5’11” Howard and 5’10” Andrew Rowsey in the backcourt and a physically unimposing center tasked with anchoring the post. Per HoopLens, lineups featuring both Rowsey and Howard gave up a staggering 1.17 points per possession, compared to 1.02 PPP from any other lineup combination. It didn’t matter how much offensive firepower the duo provided because opponents shot an astonishing 67 percent against them at the rim (18th nationally).

With a new season came a new cast of characters as well as player development. Now, Howard finds himself surrounded by several long, multi-positional players. On the wing, junior Sacar Anim has quietly taken a massive leap forward in his on-ball defense and is playing smarter — his improved footwork has led to a drop from 4.1 fouls per 40 minutes to 2.4 F/40. While not evident in the box scores, Wojciechowski has tasked Anim with defending everyone from point guards to stretch forwards and rarely suffers from the painful lapses that allow easy baskets.

Providence’s offense this season is among the worst in high-major basketball. In fact, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest, Rutgers, Northwestern and Stanford are the only high-major teams that are worse, per KenPom. If you are a team with postseason aspirations, you do not want to be associated with this group.

Poor shooting plays a role in the Friars’ offensive ineffectiveness, as they rank dead last in Big East play in both three-point and two-point shooting, and ninth in free throw shooting. Providence has multiple capable shooters on the roster, but all too often, their open looks do not fall. Their best shooter, AJ Reeves, is still not fully acclimated from a mid-season foot injury. The bigger concern, however, is point guard play. The trio of Makai Ashton-Langford, David Duke and Maliek White have, quite simply, not gotten the job done. They have been largely ineffective at creating offense for themselves, but more importantly, have not been able to create for others either.

Here’s another edition of our weekly view at the current ACC standings with a focus on which teams are playing better or worse than their conference records may indicate. We will also delve into some advanced metrics to share a few interesting notes on teams, statistics and trends around the conference. This week we look at something Duke is doing offensively that is better than any ACC team has done in the last 17 years. Finally, we will forecast how the final league standings may look given current efficiency margins, and what that may mean for teams’ ultimate postseason aspirations.

Note: All numbers are current for games played through Monday, February 11.

Current Standings

Virginia maintains its lead in efficiency margin, but the gap between first and second place was closed significantly after Duke’s recent win in Charlottesville. Syracuse continues to be the most fortunate team in the ACC this season. The Orange have achieved their lofty record despite a slim scoring margin, and Jim Boeheim’s club has faced the league’s easiest conference schedule to date.

Even though Miami is part of the jumbled mess at the bottom of the standings, the Hurricanes have suddenly become dangerous. In their last three outings, Jim Larranaga’s guys played Virginia tough on the road, stomped Notre Dame at home, and took North Carolina into overtime before losing at the Smith Center. If any of the league cellar-dwellers can play the role of spoiler down the stretch, Miami would be the smart pick to do so.

Advanced Statistic of the Week: Duke’s Good Shooting

In getting off to a superb 9-1 start in SEC play, LSU served notice that it should be taken seriously in the conference race. But in comparison with the golden resumes of top-five stalwarts Tennessee and Kentucky, there were lingering concerns about whether the Tigers were quite at their level. While much of the college basketball world had its sights on Saturday night’s blockbuster clash between Tennessee and Kentucky, LSU entered Lexington last night with a chip on its shoulder. After falling behind 48-39 with 16:51 left to play, Will Wade‘s club began to attack the basket with regularity. The result of a raucous final few minutes was a 73-71 win in Rupp Arena on a controversial last-second tip-in by Kavell Bigby-Williams.

Based on the stellar recruiting Wade has done since arriving in Baton Rouge two years ago, expectations for the LSU program were reasonably high coming into the season. Early losses to Florida State and Oklahoma State in the Advocare Invitational tempered some of that excitement, but a strong start to conference play slowly garnered some fringe national attention. The problem was the schedule: Coming into Tuesday night’s game, LSU’s most impressive victories had come in the last week (at Mississippi State and versus Auburn in Baton Rouge). But everyone knew Kentucky, which had reeled off nine straight SEC wins of its own, would present an entirely different challenge. Now, after pulling off the upset, LSU has solidified its status as a contender and is well-positioned to make a serious run at the SEC title. The Tigers, which are now 6-0 on the road in SEC play, have winnable road games left against Georgia, Alabama and Florida, and other than a looming showdown with #1 Tennessee on February 23, they will be heavy favorites to win their remaining home contests. If they can take care of the Volunteers, a share of the regular season championship, at minimum, is likely.

It is difficult to dream up a more daunting back-to-back scenario than playing host to #2 Duke on Saturday followed by visiting the #8 team on its home floor 48 hours later. And after the disappointment of losing the front end in a season sweep to the Blue Devils, Virginia faced a must-win situation at North Carolina on Monday night if it had any designs on repeating as the ACC regular season champion.

In staking itself a seven-point halftime lead, the Cavaliers controlled pace while managing to keep the Tar Heels from getting anything going in transition. The second half was a different story, however, as North Carolina dictated tempo early and opened up a seven-point advantage of its own with fewer than eight minutes remaining. Tony Bennett‘s team could have easily collapsed under the weight of the physical and mental pressure at that point, but that’s not what happened.

This was perhaps the best potential weekend slate of games in ACC play this season and it didn’t disappoint in terms of excitement. In the national headliner, Duke completed a regular season sweep of Virginia by besting the Cavaliers, 81-71, in Charlottesville on Saturday evening. In a surprisingly close call, North Carolina remained tied with the Blue Devils atop the league standings with a comeback overtime win over Miami in the Smith Center. In other key contests, a pair of ranked ACC squads fell on the road — Clemson handled Virginia Tech, 59-51, in Littlejohn Coliseum; and Florida State rallied to take Louisville into overtime in Tallahassee, winning by a score of 80-75. Here are the highlights from the weekend around the ACC.

• Best Win: Duke once again showed it can solve Virginia’s pack-line defense, mostly because of an unanticipated Blue Devils’ explosion from behind the arc. Tony Bennett’s squad gave up 13 three-pointers — the most it had given up previous to this game was eight against Notre Dame — but great outside shooting wasn’t all that went well for Mike Krzyzewski’s club. Duke held a 17-0 edge in fast break points as well as a 14-9 advantage in second-chance points, despite the fact that Virginia grabbed six more offensive boards than the Blue Devils. RJ Barrett led the way with 26 points, giving him a total of 56 in two games versus the Cavaliers. This contest marked the beginning of an extremely tough stretch of games for Duke — its next five games are all against top 45 teams, three of which are on the road. Meanwhile, Virginia has a quick turnaround, traveling to face ACC co-leader North Carolina tonight.

• Second Best Win: With no real bad losses over the weekend, we opt to highlight another big ACC win. Florida State won its fifth ACC game in a row with a gutty comeback win over Louisville, a game in which the Seminoles trailed by double-figures midway through the second half. Leonard Hamilton’s guys were outshot from the field by a wide margin (48.1 percent to 37.7 percent), so how did they pull it off? Two ways — by posting a huge edge in turnover margin (+15) and dominating the free throw game — Florida State went 27-of-36 at the stripe while Louisville was 13-of-16. The Seminoles have definitely righted the ship after their 1-4 start in conference play, and are now in contention for a top-four finish in the league, which comes with the cherished double-bye in the ACC Tournament.

It’s a busy weekend around the ACC, including the #1 vs. #2 rematch we’ve all been waiting for in Charlottesville. Rush the Court ACC writer Mick McDonald (@themickmcdonald) gets you prepped. (All rankings via KenPom)

Saturday, February 9

#9 Virginia Tech (18-4, 7-3) at #35 Clemson (14-8, 4-5). This feels like the kind of game Clemson needs to win if it realistically hopes to make the NCAA Tournament. The Tigers’ current resume has no meat on the bone, so an opportunity to beat a top 10 KenPom team is one they can’t squander. They’ll need to take advantage of a Virginia Tech club without much interior size, which means feeding Elijah Thomas (29.6 PER, 65.9% eFG) like they did in their win over Wake Forest last Sunday (23 points on 10-of-11 FG). What cannot happen is that Thomas instead gets into foul trouble, like he did on Wednesday night at Georgia Tech (seven points in 17 minutes). Given the Hokies’ firepower from the outside, it’s difficult to envision a Clemson victory without another monster performance from its big man.

#42 NC State (16-7, 4-6) at #75 Pittsburgh (12-11, 2-8). My, how things can change in just a week. Only 10 days ago, NC State was *this close* to taking down Virginia. After losing in overtime, however, the Wolfpack followed up with embarrassing displays on both offense (24 points in a home loss to Virginia Tech) and defense (allowing 113 to North Carolina in Chapel Hill). So what we have is something that feels like an important game for Kevin Keatts, one in which he really needs a breakout performance from Torin Dorn. The senior shot just 35.3 percent from the field and made only one three-pointer in the last two games, but the bigger issue is that Dorn hasn’t played well since conference play began. In league games only, Dorn (14.3 PER, 41.9% eFG) has been much worse than his overall numbers (20.8 PER, 50.7 eFG%) — if the Wolfpack expect to turn things around, it starts with their small-ball four recovering his groove.

Saturday’s rematch between Virginia and Duke looked for a while like it would be the deciding factor in this year’s ACC regular season race. Maybe it will turn out to be just that, but let’s not rush so fast on calling it the game for the crown.

Stock Rising

North Carolina’s Backboard Dominance: Don’t look now, but Roy Williams’ bunch has officially made the ACC regular season championship a three-horse race. Since its curious blowout loss to Louisville three weeks ago, North Carolina has ripped off six consecutive wins, including a return-the-favor beatdown of the Cardinals on Saturday. Despite some hiccups, North Carolina has never dropped out of KenPom‘s top 10, and currently rates seventh nationally on the strength of both a top-20 offense and defense. During their recent run, it has been notable how the Tar Heels have gotten back to dominating the backboard, a staple for Williams’ squads in Chapel Hill. Since being outrebounded in the January 12 loss to Louisville, the Heels have averaged more than 10 rebounds per game than its opposition, highlighted by a +17 advantage on Saturday. Now 19th nationally in offensive rebounding percentage and 15th in keeping jits opponents off of the offensive boards, North Carolina has gotten back its identity as an elite rebounding unit. If the Heels hold serve against Miami at home on Saturday, Monday’s home tilt with Virginia could set up as a battle for the top slot in the conference standings — assuming the Cavaliers can protect their home court against Duke — which will be no easy task thanks to…