In our attempt to bring you the most comprehensive Championship Week coverage anywhere, RTC is covering several of the conference tournaments from the sites. One of our RTC correspondents is at the ACC Tournament.  In addition to live-blogging select games throughout the tournament, he will post a nightly diary with his thoughts on each day’s action. Here is his submission for the quarterfinal games.

Duke 57, Virginia 46

• Virginia was again playing without second team all-ACC Sylven Landesberg, who was suspended by head coach Tony Bennett for the remainder of the season due to academic issues, and senior guard Calvin Baker, who left the team for personal reasons.
• Sammy Zeglinski did not score in today’s game after leading the team yesterday with 21 points. Duke did a good job of limiting his open looks and keeping him out of the lane. He shot 0-9 from the floor, 0-4 from three point range.
• Duke got its usual production from the big three of Singler, Scheyer, and Smith, accounting for 48 of the team’s 57 points. No other player had more than three points. This is going to bite Duke hard at some point, because one of those players is going to have an off night, and that will spell doom for their NCAA run. This looks like no better than an Elite Eight team, but I could easily see them losing in the Sweet 16.
• Give Virginia credit, they scared Duke for about 33 of the 40 minutes. They fought hard on both ends and did not back down. Tony Bennett’s team may not always be the prettiest thing to watch, but they do compete. This could be a very solid program in a few years after Bennett has a couple of recruiting classes under his belt.

Miami 70, Virginia Tech 65

• Miami starting PF Dwayne Collins was again not available for today’s game due to a “stress condition” of his left leg. Reggie Johnson, who scored a career high 22 points yesterday versus Wake, replaced him in the starting lineup. This game was not nearly as successful for him, scoring only five points.
• Virginia Tech’s Malcolm Delaney, the ACC’s leading scorer at 20.5 ppg, was held to seven points on 3-15 shooting today, one of his worst performances all season. He was short on just about every shot, including an airball from three on Tech’s last possession.
• Miami pulled off their second consecutive upset in as many days, having defeated the 4^th and 5^th seeds. No one was happier than coach Frank Haith, except for maybe the Duke fans who were cheering the loudest. They will now see a worn-down Hurricane team for a chance to advance to the championship game. As usual, the lucky ones get luckier.
• Who needs Dwayne Collins? Apparently not Miami. They’re playing better now than at any point since the conference season began. No Collins clogging up the middle allows the lightning quick guards to penetrate for either a lay up or a dish for three. The threes didn’t fall today (4-16) as much as yesterday, but continued penetration put Miami on the line, where they were 83% yesterday and 76% today.

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Welcome back to another edition of Boom Goes the Dynamite. I’m back as your semi-regular host after a day off with John Stevens covering for me. Today is a kind of weird day of basketball with the best games later in the day going head-to-head against the NBA All-Star game. So hopefully everyone will be sticking with us throughout the day and the real basketball fans (the ones who actually like defense and competition) will stay with us into the night.

1:00 PM: Our early games today are Illinois at  Indiana on CBS and Clemson at Virginia on ESPN Full Court and ESPN360.com. We’ll be updating you with highlights of those games throughout the day, but like always if there is something going on that we are missing or we make a mistake leave us a message in the comment section.

1:10 PM: Illinois is up 10-7 early. Bruce Weber‘s club must be riding high after their amazing comeback at Northwestern in their last game. Clemson is tied 3-3 in Charlottesville with 15:54 left in the first half. I’m guessing today is Sean Singletary day at UVA today based on the parts of the pre-game that I caught. Singletary, a 3-time 1st team All-ACC player, is one of three players in ACC history (Danny Ferry and Johnny Dawkins being the others) to have 2,000 career points, 500 career assists, and 400 career rebounds.

1:25 PM: Illinois is up 15-7 as we go to a TV timeout. CBS just showed a graphic about Indiana’s tough losses this year by featuring the games they led, but lost. You know the Hooisers are having a bad year when having a lead of 2 points at some point during the game is highlighted as a tough loss. Meanwhile, UVA is up 16-7 with 11:54 as they head into a timeout as well.

1:30 PM: I just noticed the electronic board on the side of the court at Assembly Hall. I guess it’s a nice fan friendly feature and probably generates some revenue through ads, but I think it looks horrendous in this famous arena. I haven’t noticed it at Cameron Indoor, but I think they should avoid it in the historic arenas.

1:40 PM: Jeff Jordan just hit a jumper for Illinois. As we noted before, he was recently was given a scholarship at Illinois. For those of you who haven’t seen him play, we think you might have missed his only big play of the day if his performance this season is any indication of what we can expect today. He’ll probably be out there quite a bit since Indiana is awful so watch for #13 on Illinois.

1:45 PM: UVA is up 22-16 coming out of a timeout with 5:11 left in the first half. Illinois is up 27-13 with a little less than 5 minutes left in the first half. I’ll be focusing on the UVA-Clemson game for now unless the Illinois-Indiana game gets interesting.

1:55 PM: UVA is up 33-25 at half. That 3 by Terrence Oglesby with a little over a minute left in the first half was Clemson’s first of the day after the Tigers missed their first 10 straight. The Cavaliers might have a chance if the Tigers continue to have difficulty hitting from the outside. Trevor Booker has had a big first half with 10 of Clemson’s 25 points, but it wasn’t enough as none of the other Tigers are playing well today. Illinois is up 38-21 at half.

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