[ed. note — for some reason, this scheduled post did not publish this morning; for that oversight, we apologize.]

1. Tar Heel Fan Blog: In honor of tomorrow and the inaugural Carrier Classic, Tar Heel Fan Blog has Top Gun quotes applied to the North Carolina basketball team. These are absolutely hilarious. I was going to quote my favorites and realized that almost all of them count. Well here’s a shot anyway.
   

   John Henson blocks a shot: “Negative Ghost Rider the pattern in full.” (h/t: @SamWalkerOBX)
   A player attempts to make a play, fails, and turns the ball over [Author’s Note: this is also called “The Plumlee Post Move”]: “Son, your ego’s writing checks your body can’t cash”
   Roy [Williams] puts Blue Steel in the game: “Too close for missiles, switching to guns.” (h/t @tarbender2)

   The moral of this story is that Twitter memes are awesome (and ACC Basketball starts tomorrow).

2. Grantland – ESPN: Mark Titus (Club Trillion) gives his ACC preview with a nice dose of subjectivity. He joined the Bernard James bandwagon, which I’ve been driving since this offseason. I have a few disagreements though. The first is that Harrison Barnes is underrated by casual college basketball fans. Maybe it’s because I live in ACC country, but casual ACC fans do not underrate Barnes. Most acknowledge his slow start last year, but he’s one of the top two choices to win National Player of the Year (with a player in Jared Sullinger who was much more consistent)! My other qualm was putting Duke as the most overrated team. I agree Duke is overrated nationally (the “most” is a stretch, but since only Duke and North Carolina are ranked from the ACC…), but this is an ACC preview. You could believe Duke is overrated if you think Florida State will take second place, but otherwise you’d think Duke is correctly rated. Regardless, it’s a fun article.
3. Raleigh News and Observer: Caulton Tudor thinks NC State can be the third best team in the ACC. No not this year, but consistently. I’ll hesitantly agree with him, but one thing beat writers often struggle with is tempering expectations for the teams they cover. It’s human nature to see the positive spins and start to empathize with people you see every day. But this article really undercuts both the recent success of Florida State (the clear third best team in the league the last couple of years) and the fact that the league’s relative slump is probably cyclical. Not to mention the fact that Syracuse and Pittsburgh are joining, which isn’t going to make the ACC any easier. All that said, I agree that a 9-7 ACC record is a perfectly reasonable goal for NC State this season.
4. Washington Times: It’s been going under the radar recently, but Maryland‘s athletic department is in serious financial trouble. So much trouble in fact that the Terrapins have reportedly decided to cut both men’s and women’s varsity swimming and water polo to help rein in the costs. Currently, Maryland has 27 varsity teams, which is good for third in the ACC behind North Carolina and Boston College, but the Terps are not alone in getting rid of its swimming programs: just in the ACC, Clemson is also currently “phasing out” its swimming programs.
5. Fox Sports Carolinas: Andrew Jones joins the band of reporters who are cautiously optimistic about Seth Curry‘s second shot at taking over the point guard position at Duke this year. An interesting point is that Mike Krzyzewski “insists that his team really doesn’t have a point guard, that once the ball gets in motion on offense the players just play. The Devils run a motion offense, do a lot of read and reacting, which stems from the motion, and sometimes run set plays.” That could be true, but it’s tough to run an effective offense without someone who can handle the ball and make plays when the game is on the line. Will that be Curry?

EXTRA: Covers.com released the Caesar’s over/under of conference wins for some of the top basketball teams in the country. Duke and North Carolina are the only two ACC teams to make the list. The casino places the line for the Tar Heels at 14.5, meaning the Tar Heels can only lose one game (I’d take the under; North Carolina wasn’t a juggernaut last year and the Heels should be beatable this year). Duke’s line is listed at 13, which seems very high as well. Maybe Duke will get things together, but based on the team’s exhibition struggles, the Blue Devils will drop at least three games in conference play. Other highlights include Ohio State set at 15 (the Buckeyes play 18 conference games), and Harvard set at 12.5 (the Ivy League has a 14-game schedule).

CBS Sports conducted a survey of one hundred high-major coaches, asking them to answer a few questions about how their peers performed on the recruiting trail. While the bulk of the story wasn’t particularly surprising, there were a few tidbits that are of particular interest to ACC fans. Though North Carolina coach Roy Williams was pegged as the third best recruiter in the nation after Kentucky’s John Calipari and Arizona’s Sean Miller, what is more interesting is the list of coaches who are apparently overrated as recruiters. I didn’t expect to see Bill Self and the very good Kansas program pegged as overrated in terms of recruiting and somehow, I was even more surprised to see none other than NC State’s own Mark Gottfried as the third most overrated coach in terms of recruiting.

Gottfried Isn't Impressing His Peers on the Recruiting Trail (Yet)

This is a little stunning considering how excellent a job it seemed that Gottfried was doing in his first year recruiting for the Wolfpack. Do the coaches know something we don’t about the players that Gottfried landed? Or is this just sour grapes; coaches jealous of a guy who was able to burst back on to the scene and make an immediate impact? Whatever it is, it’s fascinating that a coach who, in his first year after taking a break from coaching, made the list. I’d be eager to know why the other coaches think so little of a coach who seems to be doing the right things on the recruiting trail.

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Can you feel it? Basketball is in the air and we are just a few short days away from ACC teams playing real basketball. It’s exciting to say the least. Though conference play is still a ways off, we thought it would be helpful to compile our pre-season look at each of the Atlantic Coast Conference’s twelve teams into one place, so that it will be easy to look up how totally wrong we were about the season, or conversely, to praise us for uncanny insight into the future. Yesterday we broke down the individual awards, but today, it’s all about the teams.  Here’s how we see everything shaking out, in terms of standings, conference records and postseason placement:

1. North Carolina (14-2) – NCAA top overall seed
2. Duke (11-5) – NCAA #3 seed
3. Florida State (10-6) – NCAA#3 seed
4. Miami (9-7) – NCAA #9 seed
5. Virginia (9-7) – NCAA #8 seed
6. NC State (8-8) – NCAA #12 seed
7. Virginia Tech (8-8) – NIT
8. Clemson (7-9) – NIT
9. Maryland (6-10)
10. Wake Forest (5-11)
11. Boston College (5-11)
12. Georgia Tech (4-12)

In short, we see North Carolina at the top with Florida State challenging Duke (more closely than might be imagined) for the second place spot. We like Miami, Virginia, and NC State to take leaps forward. While Wahoo and Wolfpack fans are probably happy that we see a return to the Tournament for their teams, we can’t offer that same degree of optimism for a Virginia Tech team that seems bound for just the wrong side of the bubble. Again. At the bottom of the standings, we see Wake Forest and Boston College doing slightly better than most, mostly due to our lack of confidence in this year’s Georgia Tech squad. We feel that Clemson and Maryland are due for down years and potential rebuilding growing pains, though if we had to name two teams whose performance in the conference we are the least sure of, we’d probably name those two. If you want to check out more storylines for the upcoming conference season, we’d refer you to the ACC Conference Primer which is chock full of information for this coming year and encourage you to get pumped for a dynamite season.

1. Scout – Inside Carolina: This is a terrific article on Michael Jordan‘s recruitment to North Carolina from Al Featherston. Everyone has heard about how Jordan was cut from his high school team duing his sophomore year before later etching his place in basketball history in Chapel Hill and the NBA. Jordan wasn’t actually a national prospect until Roy Williams let the cat out of the bag (first to a media friend) against Dean Smith’s wishes. It also probably helped that fellow North Carolina powers, Duke and NC State, were between coaches at that point. The story also gives an interesting look at national recruiting three decades ago, long before the Internet, when coaches basically relied on two summer camps to see the top prospects.
2. Washington Post: It’s easy to wonder if Seth Greenberg is on the hot seat based on Virginia Tech’s recent love of the NIT-side of the NCAA Tournament bubble. But don’t forget that the year before Greenberg arrived in Blacksburg, Virginia Tech was 3-9 in the Big East, good enough for last place. He’s made the Hokies into a perennial 20-win team on the brink of its first NCAA Tournament in years. Also with the construction of a new state-of-the-art practice facility, I think Greenberg will continue to see recruiting success in southwest Virginia.
3. USA Today: The Carrier Classic is back in the news, but this time with more philosophical questions. The game is on Veteran’s Day (this Friday), and will be played on the deck of the aircraft carrier which carried Osama Bin Laden’s body to its burial. Speaking with Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed, Marlen Garcia cleared up any questions about insensitivity with regards to Islam. Luckily she doesn’t believe that there are any — which should allow fans to enjoy the game for what it is instead of worrying about its setting and any indirect political fallout. However, fans should worry about the weather… yes, even in San Diego.
4. Orlando Sentinel: Florida State‘s record may be a perfect 2-0 after exhibition season, but Leonard Hamilton still has a lot of things he’d like to work on. Most notably, the turnover bug (nine in the second half of a dominating win over Georgia Southwestern) is still troubling the Seminoles, who finished ranked #311 out of 345 teams by Ken Pomeroy last season. The good news is that both Bernard James and Michael Snaer played very well, and the team’s smothering defense only allowed Georgia SW to make eleven shots from the field on four assists. There’s still definitely room for improvement, but I’m bullish (which is definitely the word of choice) on FSU coming into this year.
5. Burlington Times News: If you can get past the terrible title pun, this article is actually informative. While initial reports had NC State’s lone senior CJ Williams out for a few weeks with a hairline fracture in his thumb, he was cleared by the doctors and suited up for the Wolfpack’s exhibition against Flagler. Williams went 2-3 from beyond the arc and dished out five dimes in an inconsistent NC State effort. The real offensive star of the game was sharp-shooter Scott Wood, who caught fire going 6-8 from downtown. NC State’s first game is at home against UNC Asheville.

And finally, in memory of one of the greatest heavyweight boxers ever, check out Mark Kram’s 1975 piece on “The Thrilla in Manilla” between Muhammad Ali and the recently-departed Joe Frazier (you can also watch the fight below). Frazier was by all accounts one of the toughest fighters who ever lived. He was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, and spent his formative years working on a farm. His professional career was headlined by three fights against Muhammad Ali. Frazier died on Monday after battling liver cancer for the last few months of his life.

While college basketball starts tonight, ACC fans still have to wait until Friday evening at 7 PM EST.  Simultaneously, Wake Forest, Florida State, North Carolina State, Miami, and North Carolina will all tip off with the first actual games of the season. While their are a number of intriguing match-ups scheduled for several of these teams, there is one game that’s going to get the lion’s share of attention. Specifically, I’m talking about, you know, the one that’s going to be played on a modified deck of an aircraft carrier.

North Carolina and Michigan State Will Battle For This Huge and Heavy Trophy This Friday.

It’s ridiculous-sounding, but it’s really happening and it’s less than a week away: the Tar Heels will take on the Michigan State Spartans on the deck of the USS Carl Vinson in front of President Barack Obama and the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. Honestly, I still can’t quite believe that it’s happening. Right now, the make-shift arena is under construction, and even in an incomplete state, it looks pretty cool.

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North Carolina fans are developing a severe case of whiplash. In 2009, the Tyler Hansbrough and Ty Lawson squad led the team to a dominant and resounding NCAA championship. The next year, Roy Williams had arguably his worst year ever as a coach as the Tar Heels missed the NCAA Tournament entirely. Last year, a late-surging UNC team came within spitting distance of the Final Four, losing to the ever-young and ever-loaded Kentucky Wildcats in the Elite Eight.

This year? North Carolina is again the overwhelming favorite to win it all.  Let me put that on a timeline. A year ago, a despondent UNC fan base was praying for a great start to the new season to wipe away the memories of a catastrophically disappointing season. This year, Chapel Hill is bubbling over with excitement. People are throwing all kinds of superlatives around when they talk about this team. We can talk about whether those superlatives are earned or not some other time, but let’s make one thing abundantly clear: UNC is a championship caliber team.

Harrison Barnes Leads A Loaded North Carolina Team

The only losses from last year’s Elite Eight crew are graduate school transfer Justin Knox, who served as a solid if not spectacular backup for the starting frontcourt.  The loss of Leslie McDonald to an ACL tear during the summer, however, is slightly more troubling. Though still a backup, McDonald made the second most threes on the team and was the Heels’ most reliable threat from behind the arc. If he comes back at all this season, which seems unlikely considering the severity of the injury, it would apparently be near the start of the ACC Tournament. So for the regular season, I think it’s safe to say that McDonald won’t be playing.  Larry Drew, II, of course, left the team mid-season after he lost the starting point guard job. It’s hard to call this a loss, however, since Drew’s departure seemed to catalyze a middling North Carolina team and transform it into the tough and capable offensive team that played deep into March. It’s a textbook case of addition by subtraction.

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Matt Patton of RTC’s ACC Microsite is the RTC correspondent for the ACC. You can find him on Twitter @rise_and_fire.

Reader’s Take I

The ACC looks like it has three tiers this year. The top: North Carolina, Duke and Florida State. The bottom: Boston College, Georgia Tech and Wake Forest. And then there’s everyone else.

Top Storylines

• Can North Carolina Win Its Third Ring in the Roy Williams Era?: By all counts, yes. And to this point I haven’t heard any “undefeated” nonsense from anywhere, which means people’s expectations aren’t totally out to lunch. There are several other very good teams this year. Last year’s Tar Heel team wasn’t unstoppable, even at the end of the season (they lost to a #4 seed, remember?); I don’t expect them to be unstoppable this year, either. But if you’re looking for the most complete team with the fewest unknowns, you won’t find it anywhere else in college basketball. My one peeve with the offseason coverage of this team is the idea that four of the five starters should be first team All-ACC (or even All-American). There are only so many possessions in a basketball game. Only so many players can be integral. Part of the intimidating nature of this team on paper is that no one player controls the team’s fate: On any given night, Harrison Barnes, Tyler Zeller or John Henson are all candidates to blow up the scoreboard (though in Henson’s case, it’s usually keeping opponents off it). It’s the fact that the combination could be more than the sum of its parts that makes the Tar Heels a lock for preseason number one.

Another Season, Another Set of Huge Expectations in Chapel Hill

• Will Florida State Challenge Tobacco Road And Make The ACC Interesting Again?: Yes. I was pretty low on Florida State for my summer update, but I’m currently very high on the Seminoles. Specifically, I think Bernard James is the best defender in the country (though John Henson is a significantly better rebounder), and Jeff Peterson will be able to find offense more effectively than Chris Singleton and Derwin Kitchen last season. Oh, and the Seminoles are also hungry after an ugly loss to VCU left them stranded in the Sweet Sixteen last year (and they then had to watch the Rams march on to the Final Four).
• How Will This Year’s Batch Of New Coaches Fare?: I think Jim Larranaga will objectively perform the best, but I also think he has the most talent at his disposal. Against my better judgment, I’m warming up to this NC State team and Mark Gottfried’s leadership (at least for the first few years). As for Georgia Tech and Brian Gregory, yikes. There’s been a little recent buzz about the Yellow Jackets being better than people expect (which is a very low threshold), but I don’t see it. Gregory has an undermanned roster full of guys he didn’t recruit with nothing to speak of in the post, and he doesn’t have a dedicated home court. Not the combination for success. In College Park, Mark Turgeon should return Maryland to regular conference title contenders again once he reopens the pipeline to Washington, D.C., talent.

The Tsar of the Tempo-Free, Ken Pomeroy, released his second annual preseason rankings with some surprises atop the list. The top ten teams are fairly consistent in content with most preseason rankings, but the order is definitely different.Pomeroy’s projections don’t love the Tar Heels, who slide from consensus number one in human polls to third. On the other hand, the rankings are relatively bullish on Duke, putting the Blue Devils at fourth. Kentucky checks in at the top spot, followed closely by Ohio State. As for the ACC, I thought North Carolina‘s ranking made some sense if you consider their whole season last year instead of just the last quarter. The high rankers of the Tar Heels make the assumption that they will pick up where they left off last season, rather than regressing to their early season struggles.

Ken Pomeroy's Preseason Top Ten

Duke will see its rating fall over the first few weeks, if observations about the team’s middling defense prove true. Right now Pomeroy has the Blue Devils ranked fourth in defense, which seems very high. But the rest of the ACC is very interesting. Miami checks in ranked above Florida State and the Seminoles’ top-ranked defense. This definitely could be true once Reggie Johnson returns to the lineup, but I suspect the teams will flip-flop fairly quickly. Pomeroy also doesn’t share the media love for Tony Bennett’s Virginia squad, which he predicts to finish tenth behind Georgia Tech.

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1. Basketball Prospectus: The statistically inclined need to check out this piece looking at shot creation for North Carolina last season (and as a side note, I have literally no idea how I never linked to their earlier piece on “clutch” shooting). Basically the article looks to quantify Kendall Marshall‘s importance. For instance, take Tyler Zeller‘s mid-range jumper: 100% of his made shots are assisted! Marshall on the other hand had 0% of his mid-range shots assisted, but 100% of his threes were. It’s a fascinating piece and just another reason to order the College Basketball Prospectus.
2. American Way Mag: Everyone’s favorite Young Jeezy quoting college basketball analyst gives an excellent preview of the rapidly approaching season. No surprises at the top with North Carolina sitting just above Kentucky. Jay Bilas on the impact of the one-and-done era: “Fifteen years ago, you and I could’ve sat down at the Final Four and we would have had a really good idea of who the top ten teams in the country were going to be the next year. We’d know exactly who would be the preseason All-Americans. […] Now, you can’t.” Bilas’ alma mater, Duke, is lumped in his second tier with Vanderbilt and Louisville.
3. Washington Post – Terrapins Insider: The NCAA finally ruled on Alex Len‘s eligibility. Len has to sit out ten games “based on NCAA rules governing amateurism.” The only vague hint about what that might mean came from Athletic Director Kevin Anderson: “It has been a difficult situation in light of Alex’s educational pursuits.” While the athletic department hasn’t decided whether it will appeal the NCAA’s decision, this is great news as far as Maryland’s conference outlook. Len gives the Terrapins desperately needed size. The other good news is that he will be able to practice with the team until he’s officially cleared December 28 against Albany.
4. ACCSports.com: With Duke and North Carolina’s consistent presence at the top of college basketball (both have finished the season ranked in the Top Ten of the AP poll 15 of the last 27 seasons), having to play and recruit against them every year is a daunting task. But Florida State’s Leonard Hamilton welcomes the challenge: “In my opinion, that’s an advantage for everybody in the ACC. What better challenge could you ask for?” Hamilton has a pretty talented team of his own this season that I’ll bet gives both Tobacco Road powers everything they can handle.
5. ESPN: Speaking of taking on Tobacco Road, Mark Gottfried is taking it by force. In case you missed it yesterday, Gottfried added another top recruit to NC State’s already strong 2012 class in TJ Warren, a great scoring small forward. With the addition the Wolfpack’s recruiting class for next year has surpassed both of its rivals in the Research Triangle (it includes two five-star and one four-star recruits so far). According to Evan Daniels of Scout.com, they may still have a couple of more recruits to add.

And for Wake Forest fans looking to relive the glory days, I present Chris Paul (and his family) on Family Feud! (h/t Ball Don’t Lie)

1. ACC Sports Journal: Mike Lananna sat down with Wake Forest star Travis McKie to talk about the upcoming season. McKie is only a sophomore, but he’s already one of the veterans on the team because of the frequent and numerous departures out of Winston-Salem. Last year, the 6’7″ wing averaged 13 points and 7.7 rebounds a game as a freshman, but this year he hopes to move his game more to the perimeter. I don’t want to read too much into the interview, but McKie sounds very excited about playing for Wake Forest and understands that rebuilding takes time. Assuming the Demon Deacons get more solid recruiting classes, McKie could see the Big Dance by his senior year.
2. Sports Illustrated: I know they’ve already been linked everywhere, but Luke Winn’s Power Rankings are back! Winn’s in-depth, original analysis makes for a must-read article every week. This week three ACC teams make the cut: (1) North Carolina, (4) Duke and (20) Florida State. He looks at Kendall Marshall‘s “pass first” mentality, finding that Marshall was the only point guard from the Power Rankings to average more assists last season than field goal attempts. Duke’s analysis makes up for its lack of statistics with a great anecdote about Austin Rivers choosing his number (“0” was actually his fourth choice).
3. Slam Online: Is Harrison Barnes actually underrated? Slam‘s Matt Domino looks at Barnes’ transition from being overrated as a freshman to underrated as a sophomore. Domino also addresses the logical fallacy that “Barnes needs [Kendall] Marshall,” which makes him less valuable. I totally agree. Just because Barnes needs Marshall to run the point, doesn’t mean that North Carolina isn’t relying on Barnes to be its most productive offensive player in most games.
4. Gaston Gazette: Mike Krzyzewski doesn’t sound thrilled with his team’s performance against Bellarmine this week, as many players are still finding their new roles. The Blue Devils ended up winning the game against the D-II national champions by 25, but the game was much closer than expected. The tough love is already flowing liberally: “’I wanted to see if they could figure it out,’ [Coach K] said, ‘and they didn’t.'”
5. Cavalier Daily: Virginia’s student newspaper takes a look at the early season expectations for Tony Bennett‘s squad. I was shocked when the Cavaliers received votes in the Coaches’ Poll released last week. Bennett cited Mike Scott as a big part of improving Virginia’s woeful field goal percentage both by taking higher-accuracy looks and by forcing defenses to pay attention to the interior. He also said that this team is their best chance to make the NCAA Tournament since he arrived in Charlottesville in 2009.