It was not a weekend of tight games in the ACC, with all but one of the seven contests featuring a final margin in double figures. Saturday’s heavyweight matchup between Virginia and Louisville turned out to be completely one-sided, as the visiting Cavaliers dominated from the outset in the nationally-televised game. N.C. State pulled off the biggest upset of the weekend by taking out Miami behind a remarkable performance from its star point guard. North Carolina easily dispatched Boston College, as expected; Florida State avenged an earlier loss by beating Clemson in Tallahassee; and Syracuse edged Georgia Tech in the only close contest on Saturday. Sunday featured two home wins for teams that remain a part of the crowded upper half of the ACC standings – Notre Dame easily handled Wake Forest, and Pittsburgh took care of Virginia Tech. Here are some of the highlights from the weekend around the ACC.

Malcolm Brogdon led the way in Virginia’s domination over Louisville.
(Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

• Best Win: Just a short week ago, we still weren’t sure what to make of Tony Bennett’s team. They were clearly in a rut, having lost all three league road games, and they were facing a week with two more away games. For 39 minutes in Winston-Salem on Tuesday it appeared as if those woes away from home would continue. But a miracle comeback gave Virginia its first ACC road win and appears to have sparked something more. The Cavaliers manhandled the ACC’s second place team, 63-47, in a masterful defensive performance that held Louisville’s two leading scorers (Damion Lee and Trey Lewis) without a point in the first half (the pair finished with 10 points on 3-of-13 shooting). The Cardinals never challenged, allowing Virginia to cruise to its most impressive ACC performance of the year. Seniors Malcolm Brogdon and Anthony Gill led the charge with 13 points each. If this weekend’s performance is any indication, it may be a bit premature to count out the Cavaliers with respect to a third consecutive ACC regular season title.

Read the rest of this entry »

With approximately four weeks of conference play now in the books, it’s time to take a closer look at the ACC. This is the first edition of a weekly look at the current ACC standings and team performances, focusing on which teams are playing better or worse than their records may indicate. We will also delve into some advanced metrics to find a few interesting teams or player stats and trends. Finally, we will forecast how the final standings may look, and what that means for ACC schools’ postseason aspirations.

Note: All numbers are current for games played through Wednesday, January 27th.

Current Standings

So far, the league standings mostly reflect how well the teams are playing on a per possession basis. Syracuse is the only team with a losing record that has a positive scoring margin. That’s due to the Orange’s blowouts of the two schools at the bottom of the list, Wake Forest and Boston College. We have heard some in the media describe the ACC as having a clear best and worst team, as if North Carolina is as far above the rest of the league’s schools as Boston College is below them. The per possession numbers paint a slightly different picture – the Tar Heels are the best team, but they have not been nearly as good as the Eagles have been bad. Also noteworthy is the fact that Clemson has built its unexpectedly gaudy conference record despite playing the second toughest ACC schedule. What’s more, the four schools ahead of the Tigers in efficiency margin have faced the four easiest ACC slates thus far. Perhaps Brad Brownell’s group is a true contender for a top four league finish and the ACC Tournament double-bye that comes with it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Once again, it wasn’t exactly a weekend of mega-matchups in the ACC. Going into Saturday’s action, the league had seven teams rated in KenPom’s top 38, yet none of them faced each other over the weekend. Some of the games were affected by winter storm Jonas, which caused the rescheduling of two games. On Sunday afternoon, North Carolina continued its undefeated ways in the ACC by holding off a feisty Virginia Tech squad in a game that was moved from Sunday night due to travel concerns in Blacksburg. Syracuse probably faced the toughest travel adversity, finally arriving in Charlottesville less than seven hours before Sunday night’s tipoff. In a game that had been originally scheduled for Saturday night, Virginia pulled away in the closing seconds to hang on against an Orange team that is suddenly playing well. Saturday, three road teams were successful in tight contests; Duke snapped its three game losing streak by beating N.C. State in Raleigh; Louisville gave Georgia Tech another tough home loss; and Pittsburgh rallied from a big halftime deficit to overtake Florida State. In other Saturday action, Miami broke open a tight game late to defeat Wake Forest, and Notre Dame blasted Boston College even though the Irish lost point guard Demetrius Jackson to injury just minutes into the game. Here are some of the highlights from the weekend in the ACC.

Tony Bennett and Virginia earned a hard fought win over Syracuse on Sunday night.
(Stephen D. Cannerelli/syracuse.com)

• Best Win: Since we didn’t have any blockbuster matchups or big upsets this weekend, we will declare Virginia‘s home 73-65 victory over Syracuse as the best ACC win of the weekend. The Cavaliers came into the contest with a disappointing 3-3 ACC record and were facing one of the hottest teams in the league. After dropping their first four league games, the Orange had ripped off three straight wins, including two on the road. The Syracuse surge looks to be directly related to the return of Jim Boeheim, who had to serve a NCAA mandated nine-game suspension that included the school’s first three ACC games. The Cavaliers led most of the way but couldn’t shake the Orange, who made 13 three-pointers, until the end. Tony Bennett‘s big three led the way as usual; Malcolm Brogdon scored 21 points; Anthony Gill had 16 points and eight rebounds; and London Perrantes finished with 16 points and seven assists.
• Worst Loss: After 20 minutes of play, Florida State was looking good against Pittsburgh. The Seminoles were at home, leading by 10, and playing a team coming off a confidence killing home loss to NC State earlier in the week. But two weaknesses from the past came back to haunt Leonard Hamilton‘s team, who let the Panthers come back to take an important 74-72 win in a matchup of NCAA Tournament hopefuls. Somehow, Florida State managed to lose despite outshooting Pitt from the field by a wide margin (53.7 percent to 39.3 percent). Pitt won as a result of having more chances to score, thanks to a +6 edge in both offensive rebounds and turnovers. Those two areas have long been an issue for the Seminoles during Hamilton’s tenure, but hadn’t this year until conference play began. Currently, Florida State ranks 13th in the league in turnover margin and last in defensive rebounding percentage in ACC games.

Grayson Allen had a strong all-around game to help Duke end its losing streak.
(Ethan Hyman/The News & Observer)

• Most Outstanding Player: Few Duke teams have needed a regular season win as desperately as this team needed this win on Saturday against rival N.C. State. The Blue Devils had lost three consecutive ACC games coming into the day, all of which had been winnable in the final minute of play. Grayson Allen made sure the Blue Devils’ losing streak came to an end with an excellent all-around performance. The sophomore guard led all scorers with 28 points, shooting 11-17 from the floor and 5-5 from the line. Allen also dished out seven assists and helped out on the glass, finishing with seven rebounds – six of them on the defensive end. Allen is making a strong case for first team All-ACC honors, as he currently ranks second in the ACC in scoring. He’s also fifth in both field goal percentage and assists in ACC games.
• Unsung Heroes: The most obvious choice here is sophomore big man Anas Mahmoud of Louiville. The native of Cairo, Egypt more than doubled his previous career high, finishing with 15 points in the Cardinals’ road win over Georgia Tech. Mahmoud has been gaining more confidence and playing time from Rick Pitino lately, averaging close to eight points and six boards in his last four outings. Pitt’s Jamie Dixon was glad to see Sterling Smith snap out of his slump, as the graduate transfer tied his season-high with 16 points, including four three-pointers. Smith was much more aggressive than he was in his three prior contests, when he only attempted a total of four shots in 56 minutes of play. Finally, Miami’s Ja’Quan Newton deserves recognition. Newton helped break open a tight game with Wake Forest by scoring 13 of his 18 points in the second half. The aggressive sophomore has been solid off the bench all year for the Hurricanes – he’s second on the team in both scoring and assists, and leads the team in free throw attempts despite playing less than 22 minutes per game.
• Most Efficient Offense/Least Efficient Defense: At half-time of Saturday’s game in Raleigh, Duke trailed by seven, which was due in great part to a soft Blue Devil zone defense that allowed N.C. State to shoot 56.7 percent from the field. But according to Mike Krzyzewski after the game, despite the deficit and defensive struggles, the zone at least allowed his thin Duke team to be much fresher for the second half than they had been in their previous three losses. The strategy worked (at least for one game) as Duke scored 52 points on 31 second half possessions. For the game, the Blue Devils averaged 1.33 points per possession. Duke shot the ball well in all areas: 65 percent on two-pointers, 40 percent on threes, and 78 percent from the foul line.
• Most Efficient Defense/Least Efficient Offense: We don’t expect to see Notre Dame’s defense win this honor very often, but when the opponent is Boston College, even the Irish’s normally generous defense can look good. The Eagles managed only 0.74 points per possession on Saturday in South Bend and rank 338th in the country in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency ratings. You can safely expect to see them in this category a few more times this season. The biggest issue for BC in this game was two-point shooting, as the Eagles made just eight of their 38 two-point attempts.

Saturday was a day for upsets in the ACC as four underdogs were victorious. Notre Dame won a shootout over Duke in Cameron Indoor Stadium in the marquee matchup of the weekend; the Clemson Tigers continued their amazing run with a home rally over Miami; Virginia Tech overcame a large late deficit to beat Georgia Tech in Atlanta; and Syracuse got its second ACC win by blasting Wake Forest in Winston-Salem. The other two games on the day ended as expected – Pittsburgh handled Boston College at home and North Carolina, the ACC’s only undefeated team in conference play, overcame a slow start to finish off North Carolina State in Chapel Hill. In the only ACC action on Sunday, Virginia‘s road woes continued in a loss to Florida State in Tallahassee. Here are some of the other highlights from the weekend in the ACC.

Brad Brownell and Jaron Blossomgame have had plenty to celebrate during Clemson’s five straight ACC upset wins. (AP Photo/Richard Shiro)

• Best Win: In one of the most improbable occurrences in college basketball this year, Clemson has overcome one of the ACC’s toughest early league schedules by winning five straight games as an underdog. The latest victim was Miami by a score of 76-65 on Saturday afternoon in Greenville. With seven minutes to go and Miami holding a six point lead, it looked like the Tigers’ streak was near its end. But Clemson closed out the game with a 25-8 run and has now won five straight ACC games for the first time since Rick Barnes was coaching the Tigers in 1997. Jaron Blossomgame led the way with 25 points on 9-for-15 shooting. During the Brad Brownell era, the Tigers have always played good defense, but the difference this year is the Tigers’ offense. After finishing among the bottom three in ACC offensive efficiency the last three years (and never above 1.00 points per possession), Clemson is currently sixth in the league at a much improved 1.12 points per possession. A huge part of that success is the Tigers’ ability to punish teams from the foul line – they rank second in the ACC in free throw rate (45.1%) and first in accuracy (79.6%).
• Worst Loss: Even though Wake Forest’s dismal effort in a home blowout to Syracuse technically may be the worst performance, we instead will go with the squad that suffered the most heartbreaking defeat, mainly because of what it may mean for that team’s confidence going forward. The team in question is Georgia Tech, who suffered a total meltdown at home against Virginia Tech. In our last weekend recap, we lauded Brian Gregory’s team for finally getting over the hump in winning a close league game. Well, the praise may have been a bit premature. The end of Saturday’s game in Atlanta played out exactly like many of the Yellow Jackets’ league games did a year ago, as the Jackets blew a 10-point lead over the last 4:14 of the game. In its final 12 possessions, Georgia Tech had more turnovers (4) than points (3). It certainly didn’t help that Adam Smith, the Jackets’ main outside threat, only made one three-pointer in seven tries from deep.

Notre Dame’s Bonzie Colson punished Duke with 31 points in the Irish’s big road win.
(Mark Dolejs/USA TODAY Sports)

• Most Outstanding Player: Notre Dame’s Mike Brey has many weapons at his disposal, and that includes sophomore Bonzie Colson, who apparently loves to play against Duke. Colson helped the Irish defeat the Blue Devils in last season’s ACC Tournament semifinals with a then career-best 17 points. He nearly doubled that output on Saturday afternoon, finishing with 31 points and 11 rebounds (eight offensive) to lead the Irish to their fourth win over Duke in five meetings as ACC members. Colson scored in a variety of ways: post moves, putbacks, free throws (5-5) and even from deep (2-3 on threes). Afterwards, Brey commented on his play, “He gets pretty fired up when he does play them. Bonzie’s a big game guy. He loves a big game, and I thought he helped his teammates get confident.” Colson did not start the contest but logged 33 minutes as Brey recognized early on that the burly forward was a huge matchup problem for the Blue Devils’ thin frontcourt.
• Unsung Heroes: With North Carolina’s top three scorers struggling against NC State, Roy Williams needed someone else to step up. That someone turned out to be Kennedy Meeks, who scored 25 points, grabbed six boards and blocked three shots to help the Tar Heels pull away from their rival. In only his second game back from a knee injury, Meeks had his highest point total since he tallied 25 in the season opener. Syracuse has not been a balanced team this year, having been carried by its backcourt to this point. But in Saturday’s rout of Wake Forest, junior forward Tyler Roberson delivered a dose of frontcourt production with 16 points and 13 rebounds. That makes four consecutive double figure scoring games for Roberson, who also helped the Orange’s defense Saturday with three steals. Pittsburgh’s Cameron Johnson only played 15 minutes in the Panthers’ win over Boston College, but he maximized that time with 20 points on an efficient seven of ten shooting performance. The redshirt freshman wing flashed a nice touch from deep, making four of his seven long-range attempts. He is now shooting 42.4 percent for the season from three-point range.
• Most Efficient Offense/Least Efficient Defense: With Notre Dame visiting Duke in a game featuring two of the top four offenses in the country, we expected a shootout. Boy did we ever get one. Rare are games in which both teams score at a rate higher than 1.30 points per possession, but that’s what happened in Cameron Indoor on Saturday. The Irish prevailed with an offense that posted 1.36 points per possession in the exciting 95-91 win. That’s the most points per possession allowed by Duke to an ACC foe at home in the 15-year KenPom era. As one might expect in a performance that efficient, Notre Dame was outstanding in multiple offensive areas. They made 51.8 percent of their two-point attempts; hit 43.8 percent from three-point range; converted 80 percent from the foul line; grabbed 16 offensive rebounds, and only gave the ball away six times. It took every bit of that efficiency to hold off a Duke team that made half of their 24 three-point attempts.
• Most Efficient Defense/Least Efficient Offense: In the weekend’s most lopsided game, Wake Forest managed only 0.77 points per possession in its 83-55 home loss to Syracuse. The Deacons had a tough time figuring out how to attack the Orange’s 2-3 zone from the outset and finished with 18 turnovers. When the Demon Deacons did get shot opportunities, they failed miserably, making just two of 20 from deep and missing 17 of 42 free throw attempts. Coming into the game, Wake figured to take advantage of Syracuse’s normally weak defensive rebounding, but things played out differently, as the Deacons only grabbed 25 percent of their misses. That percentage is well below Wake’s season average (35.1%) and that of Syracuse’s opponents (also 35.1%). Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim said, “This was the best defensive game we’ve had all year. We just were tremendously active. We had been doing a good job at the three-point line, but not so much inside. We were much better inside tonight.”

1. The State: All hail our Clemson overlords (and Ken Pomeroy). First, the Tigers. Clemson is on a five-game ACC win streak, which includes wins over presumed contenders Louisville, Duke, and Miami. If the Tigers can find a way to win two of their next three (at Virginia, vs. Pittsburgh, and at Florida State), the schedule looks very favorable going forward. One caveat: Clemson has been incredibly lucky in close games, but don’t spend time hating. And why is Ken Pomeroy a wizard? His ratings had Clemson 55th in the country to start the season; after a rough patch pushed the Tigers over 100, they’re now back to 56.
2. Newport News Daily Press: On the other end of the spectrum, Virginia is reeling. The Cavaliers have lost three of their last four (and four of five true road games on the season). David Teel does a great job exhausting perspectives on Tony Bennett’s team. The most important thing to remember is that road wins are nearly impossible to come by in the ACC. This Virginia team whipped a very good West Virginia team on a neutral court. The difference between last year’s team and this one is how well teams are shooting against Virginia (maybe Darion Atkins was just that good?). This year, the Cavaliers are pedestrian when it comes to field goal percentage defense; last year they were top five in the country.
3. Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician: Syracuse likely won’t make the NCAA Tournament this year for the second season in a row. This is the second “rebuilding cycle” in the last ten years. Michael Burke does a good job looking at the causes behind both dance droughts. Relatedly, this team’s poor performance has led to awful (relatively speaking) attendance this season. The poor attendance is unlikely to improve much with a mediocre slate of conference home games on the schedule this year (notably no North Carolina or Duke, but also no Miami or Virginia). Look for Pittsburgh and Notre Dame to still be big draws, though.
4. Orlando Sentinel: Don’t look now, but Florida State may be righting the ship. Malik Beasley has been tremendous the last two games (39 points on 22 shots). If Dwayne Bacon can improve his efficiency some, this team should be able to make a run at a bid to the Big Dance. The only home loss the Seminoles have is to a great North Carolina team (in a game that was close until the last couple of minutes), and the only “bad” loss is a neutral-site loss to Hofstra. There’s still work to be done, but things are looking up.
5. Duke Basketball Report: This year is just nuts. We’ve talked about Clemson, but Virginia Tech is also tied for second in the ACC in the loss column. Duke (admittedly without Amile Jefferson) and Miami have each lost its last two games. The only teams that are performing as expected bracket the conference: North Carolina is undefeated and Boston College looks like a dumpster fire. The Tar Heels will lose eventually (a mediocre defense makes that a certainty), but picking a Boston College win is harder to do. Home against Virginia Tech is the only one that looks remotely feasible. But alas, if there’s one thing ACC play should have taught us, it’s to keep predictions to ourselves.

The ACC currently has five teams that rank among KenPom’s top 10, but two of that group fell on the road in the second weekend of conference play. On Saturday afternoon, Georgia Tech finally won a close ACC game by knocking off Virginia in Atlanta. Clemson also pulled off a solid upset by beating Louisville in the Tigers’ makeshift home gym this year – Greenville’s Bon Secours Wellness Arena. Syracuse put up a good fight in Jim Boeheim’s return on Saturday before wilting down the stretch at home against North Carolina. In other action, Duke blew out Virginia Tech in Cameron Indoor Stadium; Miami cruised at home over Florida State; and red-hot Pittsburgh won a shootout over Notre Dame in South Bend. Wake Forest got its first conference win last night by holding off N.C. State in Winston-Salem. Here are some of the other highlights from the weekend in the ACC.

Brian Gregory finally got over the hump with Georgia Tech’s big win over UVA. (Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

• Best Win: It’s been a long time coming for Georgia Tech fans, but Brian Gregory’s team was able to close out a tough conference opponent for the first time in a long while. After suffering through a brutal stretch of tight ACC defeats last season, the Yellow Jackets started this year in similar fashion, dropping their first two games on the road. But those demons were exorcised Saturday in McCamish Pavilion as Georgia Tech outplayed two-time defending ACC regular season champion Virginia. The Jackets flashed their newfound long-range marksmanship by making 8-of-15 three-point tries, including three straight during a crucial 11-0 spurt when the score was tied with six minutes to play. Georgia Tech also owned the glass, finishing +12 in rebounding margin for the game. For Virginia, this loss, coming just days after a shocking defeat at Virginia Tech, completes the Cavaliers’ roughest week of ACC play in a very long time.

Read the rest of this entry »

The ACC tipped off the New Year’s first weekend of conference play without many high profile match-ups. The league currently has eight teams rated in KenPom’s top-40, but only one game this weekend matched two of them together. In that game, Virginia cruised past Notre Dame in Charlottesville, leading by double digits the entire second half. Three of Saturday’s contests featured second half comebacks – North Carolina trailed by three at the half before passing Georgia Tech late; Miami needed a huge second half to overcome Syracuse; and in the most exciting game of the day, Virginia Tech rallied from a big second half deficit to defeat North Carolina State in overtime. Also on Saturday, Clemson knocked off Florida State, and Duke beat hapless Boston College. In the only Sunday ACC action, Louisville held off Wake Forest at the KFC Yum! Center. Note that so far this season, home court matters in the ACC – visitors have only won once (Duke at Boston College) in the first nine league games. Here are some of the other highlights from over the weekend in the ACC:

Jordan Roper was on fire Saturday – making 7 threes in Clemson’s win over Florida State. (Dawson Powers/USA TODAY Sports)

• Best Win: Even though Virginia beat a higher rated team in Notre Dame (KenPom #31), we will go with Clemson and it’s win over a good Florida State (#40) squad. Brad Brownell’s team was desperate for a win after dropping three straight, and losing all six of its previous meetings with teams rated in KenPom’s top-220. Surprisingly, the Tigers did it with offense, scoring 1.25 points per possession against a Seminoles’ defense that had previously not allowed better than 1.07. Senior guard Jordan Roper led the way with 23 points and made a sizzling 7-of-10 from deep. Five other Tigers scored at least nine points, and Clemson controlled the boards by a +11 margin. Brownell hopes this performance can give his team confidence, because the Tigers will be underdogs in its next five games – at Syracuse on Tuesday, followed by four straight games against top-25 ACC teams.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

It’s Secret Santa Time in the ACC!

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. We expected last night’s match-up between Oklahoma and Villanova to be one of the more entertaining non-conference games this season. Instead, Oklahoma’s 78-55 victory appears to have sent the two teams headed in opposite directions at least in terms of how they are being perceived. Coming into the season we thought that everybody had Oklahoma on their short list of potential Final Four teams given their combination of talent and experience while Villanova was probably slightly below them. Last night’s blowout will do nothing to open up seats on the Sooner bandwagon, but it has made many question Villanova’s ceiling particularly with their reliance on three-point shooting (and more importantly their inability to hit three-pointers consistently given how many of them they shoot). Having said that we wouldn’t be so quick to bail on the Wildcats particularly given with their best player being a freshman (Jalen Brunson) playing in his first big college game against more experienced opposition.
2. By now all of you are familiar with Jay Bilas and his penchant for trying to pick fights with the NCAA. Still his tweet yesterday that his “sources” had told him that the NCAA was discussing enacting new policies to limit bench celebrations was a little bit much even by his standards. David Worlock quickly squelched those rumors by saying that the NCAA had merely responded to questions regarding rules interpretations of bench celebrations and that those celebrations were not interfering with the games. We are sure that Bilas will try to argue that he was not incorrect (technically the NCAA may have had discussions about it based on the questions), but the overall nature of his tweet and many others like it seem to have devolved into nothing more than trolling the NCAA, which is approaching Bayless/Trump levels at this point. We can’t really fault Bilas for this because he has parlayed this into a very profitable venture that has made him into a media personality despite his livelihood essentially being profiting off the work of the same individuals he says continue to be exploited. The NCAA has plenty of issues that should be fixed so it doesn’t need trolls making up stories like this for their own personal gain.
3. It appears that Chipotle’s E. coli problems may have hit Boston as eight Boston College basketball players appear to be the latest victims of the burrito chain’s ongoing food poisoning issues. According to reports out of Chestnut Hill, the eight players are among 30 Boston College students complaining of symptoms consistent with food poisoning. While many national media outlets will be quick to claim that there is an established link and that the symptoms are directly related to eating at Chipotle, the actual investigation by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health will takes days (more likely weeks). In the mean time, the basketball team will have to figure out if it will be ready for its game tomorrow at Providence. We cannot remember the last time a game was cancelled because of team illness, but this seems like a distinct possibility right now.
4. We don’t talk about high school basketball much here with the exception of a few top recruits, but when a high school hires former Rutgers coach Mike Rice to coach its basketball team we take notice. Rice, who was fired in 2013 after multiple video surfaced of him throwing balls at his players and berating them with slurs, will serve as the interim head coach at The Patrick School in Elizabeth, New Jersey for the month of December while the regular head coach deals with his duties as the principal before presumably returning to coach the team afterwards. We aren’t sure what is so special about this month that it requires the principal’s attention more than other months as it seems more like a nice excuse to give Rice a trial run as its head coach without as much scrutiny as they would see if he was named the head coach without having an interim tag attached. While we feel that Rice deserves another shot, we expect that the practices will be the most closely supervised high school basketball practices in the nation.
5. We are a little late in posting Luke Winn’s Power Rankings, which explains Villanova being ranked over Oklahoma, but as usual it is filled with interesting stats so it’s still well worth linking to despite our tardiness. It’s still early in the season so we are not sure which stats Luke will adopt as his pet projects this year, but our favorite one so far this year is his Transition/Press Matrix that graphs the relationship between how much a team presses and how much of its offense it generates in transition. Technically we think the x- and y-axis should probably be flipped, but it doesn’t really matter in this case as the analysis still holds. If he continues to track this, which seems like more work than the Turnometer, we will be interested to see if these relationships change in conference play where schools will presumably play better competition than what they faced in non-conference play.

After two days worth of games, the annual ACC/Big Ten Challenge is deadlocked at four games apiece with six games left tonight. Michigan, Purdue, and Northwestern picked up wins for the Big Ten last night, while North Carolina, Virginia, and Miami notched wins for the ACC. To prepare for the final night of play, the ACC and Big Ten microsites are once again here to defend the leagues they cover. Brendan Brody (Big Ten) and Matt Patton (ACC) make the case for each team in their respective leagues for all six contests that will take place tonight on the ESPN family of networks.

Penn State at Boston College (7:15 PM, ESPNU)

• Matt: The Eagles are coming off a disastrous trip to California which they ended getting pummeled by Santa Clara. How the team responds is the x-factor. On paper this looks like a fairly even matchup, which should give the advantage to the home team. Additionally, Jim Christian’s team has the pieces to be a better offensive team than they’ve shown thus far.Expect Christian to throw a few different defensive looks at Brandon Taylor to try to keep him uncomfortable, but the Eagles will win or lose this on the offensive end. Boston College has to make shots, and will need a strong performance out of freshman Jerome Robinson and transfer Eli Carter.
• Brendan: When they’ve won, Penn State has only given up 56.7 ppg. When they’ve lost, it’s because they’ve given up an obscene amount of three-pointers. Boston College has some shooters, but their two leaders in three-point attempts (Carter, and AJ Turner) are both shooting below 30 percent from deep. Look for the Nittany Lions to make sure they guard on the perimeter, and look for them to squeak out a close win in a low scoring game.

Wisconsin at Syracuse (7:15 PM, ESPN2)

Jim Boeheim Will Stay in New York For Another Game Tonight (US Presswire)

• Brendan: Syracuse has been one of the biggest surprises nationally after starting the season 6-0. Wisconsin has struggled to a 4-3 mark, but have showed some flashes of getting things together despite playing a tough schedule. The key aspect that they can exploit in this game is in getting extra possessions on the glass. They rebound 41.0 percent of their misses, while the Orange struggle to close out possessions by snagging a defensive rebound (308th nationally in defensive rebounding rate). Look for the Badgers to take advantage of these extra possessions to get the road win here.
• Matt: Raise your hand if through six games you thought Trevor Cooney would be the least efficient Orange player. Syracuse has totally reinvented itself, and it hasn’t needed Dajuan Coleman to do so. Michael Gbinije has been outstanding running the offense (with Cooney’s help). If the Orange can keep their starting five on the floor most of the game, they’ll be in good shape. Neither team will be interested in running the floor, so that’s an achievable goal. Tyler Roberson and Tyler Lydon can’t let Wisconsin’s ball movement hurt the Orange inside, though the Badgers have not had a banner year offensively to date.

Read the rest of this entry »