Much was made of the three former Big East teams entering the league this season and having to adapt to the ACC’s style of play. This notion was supported by the simple fact of sheer numbers; the returning ACC teams would number 12 teams while the Big East was sending over only three units. What did not get enough preseason attention was how the ACC as a whole would adapt to the very different styles of play of the three incoming teams, all quite successful programs in their own rights. Notre Dame under head coach Mike Brey is known for its selfless team basketball, execution, cutting and the extra pass, while developing a litany of elite low post big men like Luke Harangody, Jack Cooley, and now Garrick Sherman. While the Irish lost its best player in Jerian Grant for the year, their style of play was on display and ultimately decided the outcome in a statement win against Duke.

Pitt’s James Robinson is a large reason the Panthers are 16-1 (Photo: pittsburghpanthers.com)

Syracuse’s famous 2-3 zone has helped in establishing itself as one of the best teams in the nation and has put the Orange among a group of three unbeaten teams remaining. Their defense has flummoxed ACC opponents to the tune of allowing only 50.0 PPG to ACC foes through their first four games. They clearly have taken charge and dominated the tempo in their outings, most recently holding UNC a full 30 points below its season average of 75.6 PPG. While it remains early in the ACC race, so far it seems obvious that both Syracuse and Pittsburgh have been forcing their own tempo and style of play on their opponents and not vice versa. Jamie Dixon’s Panthers are known for their toughness and gritty play, both of which were evident in their recent 12-point road victory over N.C. State. Famed ESPN analyst Dick Vitale confirmed this theory and perception when he noted: “There are certain programs that get certain labels that help them big-time psychologically… the mindset is where you’re at a negative before you ever start playing, and I think Pittsburgh has that, that label of being tough.”

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1. Baltimore Sun: Initially Mark Turgeon and Brenda Frese (Maryland’s women’s basketball coach) didn’t support the school’s move to the Big Ten. Turgeon went so far as to say that all the coaches he has talked to, except [football coach] Randy [Edsall], “are upset and opposed” to the move. It means Turgeon will have to redecorate his office, which currently has ACC team logos strewn about, and it will also potentially impact recruiting. Another fascinating tidbit from Jeff Barker’s piece is this excerpt from James Shea: “For some time, I have been bothered that these ‘traditional rivalries’ have provoked toxic reactions from abusive language at the games to riots and car burnings after victories.” Clearly Maryland’s ulterior motive was taking Duke off its schedule for good so the College Park fire department can get some rest.
2. ESPN: Tyler Ennis has had a remarkable freshman season so far. Based on win shares, he’s the most valuable freshman in the country and it’s not even close. His gaudy total probably comes from his elite assist-to-turnover ratio (4.2:1) or his knack for racking up steals. Whatever the case, I’m not sure anyone predicted Ennis would immediately prove to be one of the best point guards in the ACC. But he’s only got one challenger for rookie of the year, and Jabari Parker has not had a good start to conference play.
3. Duke Basketball Report: Guess how many halves of basketball in the last four years played by an ACC team finished with the team scoring fewer than 18 points? 26! And we’ve already had five of those this season. Clemson has two of the three with two 10-point halves over that time. As you might expect this recent low-scoring trend coincided with the ACC’s new group of coaches who have successfully stolen the slowest major conference title from the Big Ten even if they can’t win the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.
4. One Foot Down: Notre Dame is reeling. The Fighting Irish have looked just awful in conference play — the win against Duke excluded. Their most recent loss came to Maryland in a game where Mike Brey’s squad led by nine before going ice cold to start the second half. The good news is that Notre Dame can try and right the ship this weekend with a home game against Virginia Tech. The bad news is that three early losses won’t help come March, in ACC Tournament seeding, or Selection Sunday.
5. Tar Heel Blog: Good take here on the North Carolina scandal and how it’s starting to get ugly. There’s a lot of miscommunication going on right now as the university claims it hasn’t seen the data, but whistleblower Mary Willingham claims the school can get the data themselves. CNN went way above and beyond her actual findings — making claims about the athletic department in general up to the present — in its initial reports (including claiming to have the data in a second article while linking to her four-year-old thesis). We may get some sort of resolution soon, or at least a comment from the administration, as the student newspaper has reported that Willingham sat down with the Chancellor.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When the schedules initially came out, Notre Dame and Georgia Tech expected to look very different in their third ACC game than they did on Saturday afternoon in Atlanta. For the Irish, things started to devolve in the preseason with the redshirt of Cameron Biedscheid, who then announced his transfer to Missouri after Christmas. Then Jerian Grant, a preseason All-ACC selection who led the Irish in points, assists, and steals, was lost for the season due to an academic issue. Then on Saturday, frontcourt reserve Tom Knight didn’t make the trip to Atlanta due to a sprained ankle.

Georgia Tech’s defense on Eric Atkins and his Notre Dame teammates were crucial in Saturday’s win. (Getty)

Georgia Tech has health issues of its own. First freshman point guard Travis Jorgenson tore his ACL in the Yellow Jackets’ fourth game. Then sophomore Robert Carter, who was averaging 10.3 points and 9.3 rebounds per game (with a 29.8 defensive rebounding percentage, sixth best in the country), suffered a torn meniscus. Sophomore point guard Solomon Poole, the team’s top backcourt reserve, missed the game on Saturday with a migraine. As Georgia Tech coach Brian Gregory put it, “It was two teams who were trying to re-discover themselves with guys out.”

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It’s the second weekend of conference play in the ACC, so let’s take a look at the match-ups from an advanced statistics perspective. For each game we will show how the two teams compare in efficiency ratings and the four factors, offense versus defense. We will also look at interesting areas of particular strength and weakness that could hold the key to the outcomes of these games. All numbers are from Ken Pomeroy’s site and are current through games of January 8, 2014. The games are presented in the order of best combined Pomeroy overall team rankings (all times EST).

Saturday – North Carolina (10-5, 0-2 ACC) @ Syracuse (15-0, 2-0 ACC) – ESPN (12:00 PM)

CJ Fair and the Orange Look to Add to North Carolina’s Losing Streak

Pomeroy Prediction: (#5) Syracuse 75-64 (#34) North Carolina

There’s some chatter that it would be typical of this year’s up and down Tar Heels team to pull off another monumental upset in the Carrier Dome. But North Carolina has actually been more consistent lately, only in a bad way. The Heels do not look like a confident team right now. Still, Roy Williams has shown in the past (including this season) that he can motivate a team out of a slump. At least they appear to have one clear advantage on the offensive end they could exploit – offensive rebounding. Unfortunately for the Heels, the same is true on the other end with Syracuse hitting the offensive glass hard this season. Taking care of the ball will also be crucial against the long and active Syracuse zone. It will be interesting to see how many three-pointers each team takes. Neither likes to shoot many, but they both allow opponents to fire a bunch. Finally, a good start by the Heels (see: the Michigan State game) is important, but with the way the Orange has come back from big early deficits, even that may not be enough.

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1. ESPN and One Foot Down: Major team swag news as Darren Rovell reports that Notre Dame will be moving from Adidas to Under Armour after this year. In a weird way the move shows just how self involved the Fighting Irish are when it comes to these sorts of things. There was a minor uproar when Michigan became Adidas’s “flagship” deal a few years back, so it appears Notre Dame headed towards a smaller pond. Seriously, if this deal isn’t massive, I don’t understand it. But hey, this means the ACC will maintain two Under Armour schools (Boston College is the only other once Maryland leaves) to go with two Adidas schools once Louisville joins.
2. Blogger So Dear: A statistical breakdown of Winston-Salem’s very own Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? That’s right, Wake Forest has outscored its last ten conference opponents by 49 points at home, going 7-3 in the process. Ken Pomeroy expected that the Demon Deacons would be outscored by 40, meaning the team overachieved by a whopping 89 points (8.9 points a game). Meanwhile on the road the team is 0-10 in its last such games on the road. Opponents have outscored Jeff Bzdelik‘s squad by 161 points (16.1 a game) over the stretch which 46 points worse than Ken Pomeroy predicted. So Wake Forest’s current home-road differential is a 13.5 points a game more than what would be predicted by statistical models. That’s insane.
3. Greensboro News-Record: Good stuff breaking down North Carolina‘s struggles to start conference play, but I can’t help but wonder whether the skid has more to do with Marcus Paige returning to earth. Paige literally carried this team through non-conference play. Every time they needed a bucket he was there. But at Wake Forest and against Miami Paige had two of his worst games of the season. Also if you’re looking for another good take on Roy Williams’ struggles this season, Brian Barbour has you covered.
4. Raleigh News & Observer: Good work by Luke DeCock who agrees that Jabari Parker‘s mini-slump is nothing to be concerned with going forward. But wait. Did he notice that Parker and Paige had their two worst games at the same points? In all seriousness, Parker will be just fine once his jump shots start falling again. One (unrelated) thing I’m interested to see is how more teams playing more zone will affect the game in the long run. I think Syracuse’s zone is partially effective because opponents don’t play it very often. But with nearly everyone playing at least a little zone this season, I wonder if that will hurt the Orange against teams like Duke and North Carolina (though the Tar Heels haven’t exactly lit up the zones they’ve played).
5. Tomahawk Nation: With focus turned back to basketball, Florida State rebounded from its home beat down from Virginia with a win at Littlejohn Coliseum. Their defense was suffocating, exposing a Clemson offense gorged on non-conference cupcakes. Even more impressive is the Seminoles were only 1-11 from three. My only other takeaway is there’s a huge drop-off for Brad Brownell’s team after KJ McDaniels. He was the only player who had any offensive success.

EXTRA: Georgia Tech has decided to bribe students for showing up to men’s and women’s basketball games this year with a point system where students will be awarded prizes ranging from t-shirts and gift cards to the grand prize of a PlayStation 4.

1. With the decision by Colorado and Washington to legalize the use of marijuana the debate around drug testing student-athletes particularly for non-performance-enhancing drugs has come under increasing scrutiny. Troy appears to be going in the other direction, but not as the result of legal issues. The school has announced that it plans on drug testing all of its athletes in the next 30 days following the deaths of four students during the holiday break. We do not know the full details behind the deaths of these four individuals, but based on what we have read it does not seem like drug testing is the answer to what happened at the school. It will be interesting to see how the school handles these drug tests going forward as they say that a student’s first positive test will result in notification of a parent or guardian. Since nearly all college athletes are adults in the eyes of the law we are not sure how this will go over and also do not know how the NCAA will deal with these results.
2. With the FBI reportedly investigating three UTEP basketball players for gambling, it seems like the ideal time for an update on Varez Ward, the former Auburn player accused of point-shaving. Ward, who was accused of trying to fix a February 2012 game against Arkansas, is awaiting a decision from prosecutors about whether they will let him enter a pre-trial diversion program (basically he would have to follow some predefined rules for a period of time then the charges would be dismissed). Now he will have to wait a little longer as prosecutors have asked for more time to decide whether to let him enter such a program although a decision could come as early as next week. Ward’s trial is scheduled to begin on February 10 so he has a month to come to an agreement before this goes to trial.
3. It appears that the college basketball version of keeping up with the Joneses is keeping up with Calipari as Kansas announced that it plans on spending $17.5 million on housing for the men’s and women’s basketball teams as well as 34 lucky non-student-athletes. That figure more than doubles the figures that we have seen thrown around for Kentucky’s famed Wildcat Coal Lodge. The 34 non-student-athletes are basically being let in to comply with NCAA rules that any type of housing can be allowed as long as it is also available to non-student-athletes as well. We would be curious as to who these 34 individuals are (probably legacies or children of big donors). For comparison, Kansas is also building two other new residence halls for other students at an expected cost of $47.8 million, but at a cost of $68,000 per student compared to $265,000 per student for the basketball housing.
4. One of the things that we love about college sports is the atmosphere. Whether it is the students or the bands, college games have an atmosphere that few professional arenas can come close to. It is also one of the reasons why we are so opposed to neutral-site games. Schools occasionally bring along the bands and a handful of diehard fans, but in some cases they have to improve. In the case of Duke they turn to a volunteer band to fill in at times. This is hardly unique to Duke as several other schools resort to similar methods, but it is something to watch for the next time the cameras pan to the band and you see somebody who looks like he or she is too old to be in college.
5. One of the interesting areas of college sports that generally gets overlooked is the politics of shoe contracts. One of the best examples of this is Notre Dame, which made the surprising move of switching from adidas to Under Armour at the end of this season. Whatever you think of their basketball program, the Irish are one of the biggest name brands in college sports, but it appears that adidas may have ruffled some feathers in South Bend with their decision to reportedly offer Michigan more money than Notre Dame. Regardless of the politics, it is a huge coup for Under Armour as Notre Dame is by far the biggest program that they have landed.

Walker Carey is an RTC Correspondent. He filed this report following Saturday afternoon’s game in South Bend between Duke and Notre Dame.

In the preseason, expectations were fairly high for Notre Dame as it began its first campaign as a member of the ACC. While there were questions about the team’s frontcourt depth, the Irish returned three key starters in the backcourt in seniors Eric Atkins, Jerian Grant and junior Pat Connaughton. Unfortunately, the Irish quickly showed that they have some glaring weaknesses by suffering four losses in the first two months of the season. The first setback came on November 17 when Mike Brey experienced his first November defeat at the Joyce Center versus Indiana State. While Notre Dame then notched easy wins over Santa Clara, Army, and Cornell, its defensive shortcomings became more evident during its subsequent trip to Iowa City where Iowa handed them a 98-93 defeat. A week later, the Irish were stunned again on their home court in a game that North Dakota State controlled from start to finish. After regrouping to score an impressive victory over Indiana in the Crossroads Classic on December 14, the Irish then went to Madison Square Garden and choked away an eight-point lead with 51 seconds remaining in a defeat by Ohio State.

Notre Dame’s First ACC Game Went Swimmingly in South Bend (USAT)

The four setbacks on the court were not the only losses Notre Dame suffered in the 2013 portion of the season. A day after the Ohio State loss, news broke that Grant – the team’s leading scorer – would not be enrolled at the university for the remainder of the season due to an academic matter. The team also lost sophomore Cameron Biedscheid – who was already redshirting this season – a few days after Christmas when he announced his intention to transfer.

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With conference play arriving almost everywhere this weekend (it’s about time!), let’s take a peek at some of the major Saturday (and a few Sunday) games and storylines in college basketball’s seven major conferences.

Say What You Want About The AAC, But The Recently-Birthed League Will Pose A New Challenge For Memphis: Real Tests In January And February. The First Of Those Examinations Comes Today Against Cincinnati.

AAC. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first-ever weekend of American Athletic Conference basketball! OK, so maybe it isn’t that exciting, but an old Conference USA matchup does offer the league a headlining game on 2014’s first Saturday. Cincinnati visits Memphis (12:00 ET, ESPN2) in an early match-up of presumed upper-echelon AAC teams, but look elsewhere if you seek a battle of stylistic comrades; the deliberate, defensively stout Bearcats (286th nationally in tempo, eighth in defensive efficiency) will look to put the clamps on an explosive Memphis squad that rarely presses the pause button (39th nationally in tempo, 19th in offensive efficiency). UConn and SMU, both 0-1 in league play, offer an alternate viewing option (2:00 ET, ESPNU), and with a visit to Louisville coming next, Larry Brown’s SMU team would be well served to get a win Saturday to avoid staring down the barrel of an 0-3 league start.

ACC. Will there be life after Jerian Grant for Notre Dame? If yes, then a visit from Duke (4:00 ET, CBS) will offer the Irish the chance to provide a more convincing affirmation than they offered in their first game without Grant – a gut-check overtime victory over Canisius. Garrick Sherman should have a chance to exploit the smallish Duke interior, no matter what Doug Gottlieb thinks about his beard. Elsewhere, Pitt and Syracuse join Notre Dame in making their ACC debuts. The Panthers visit NC State (12:00 ET, ESPN3), while the Orange play host to Miami (2:00 ET, ESPN3). And if you like defense, two of the nation’s 10 most efficient defensive units are set to meet in Tallahassee; Virginia and Florida State (5:00 ET, ESPN2) will tussle in a race to 50 between ACC sleepers.

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It’s the first weekend of conference play in the ACC, so let’s take a look at the match-ups from an advanced statistics perspective. For each game we will show how the two teams compare in efficiency ratings, offense versus defense. We will also look at interesting areas of particular strength and weakness that could hold the key to the outcome of the game. All numbers are from Ken Pomeroy’s site and are current through games of January 1, 2014. The games are presented in the order that they will be played this weekend (all times EST).

Saturday – Pittsburgh (12-1) @ N.C. State (10-3) – ACC Network (12:00 PM)

Jamie Dixon And Pittsburgh Kick Off the First Weekend of ACC Conference Play vs N.C. State in Raleigh (US Presswire)

• Pittsburgh Offensive Efficiency – 114.1 (#24 in the NCAA)
•         N.C. State Defensive Efficiency – 100.4 (#110)

•         N.C. State Offensive Efficiency – 109.5 (#66)
•         Pittsburgh Defensive Efficiency – 92.5 (#11)

What to Watch For: In its first ACC conference game ever, Pitt looks to have a strong edge on the offensive end of the court. In particular, look for the Panthers to try to exploit the Wolfpack on the boards. Pitt comes in 11th in the country in offensive rebounding percentage, while N.C. State is 237th in defensive rebounding percentage. Another area to watch is the mismatch in free throw attempts. N.C. State ranks near the bottom of the NCAA in free throw attempts, while Pitt rarely fouls. In fact, the Panthers actually had a game earlier this year against Cal Poly in which Pitt did not commit a single first half foul.

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As the non-conference portion of the 2013-14 college basketball season nears its conclusion and conference play looms large in the New Year, the ACC has seen its share of ups and downs along an uneven early stretch. While some of its teams (Duke, Syracuse) appear to be capable of the preseason hype bestowed upon them, others have been a mixture of confounding (North Carolina), shockingly underwhelming (Boston College, Maryland) and utterly but pleasantly surprising (Florida State). The conference some were talking about being the greatest college basketball had ever witnessed hasn’t shown the depth and consistency in non-conference play to justify that acoolade, but there is still a long way to go as this new-look league embarks into ACC play. Here’s a look back at the RTC preseason ACC rankings as voted upon by the writers and how those teams have performed thus far and look to perform as the season progresses.

1. Duke Blue Devils (11-2)

Coach K and Duke look like the favorite heading into conference play. (AP)

• Signature wins: #22 Michigan, UCLA
• Signature losses: #5 Kansas,  #4 Arizona
• Reasons for optimism: Quinn Cook has shown he is the multi-threat point guard the team had hoped he would become, adding some serious offensive game to his role as facilitator. Jabari Parker is in the running for early NPOY honors and has done nothing to dampen his enormous expectations. Rodney Hood has stepped in and become an instant multi-purpose threat as a transfer, and Rasheed Sulaimon now appears to be ingratiating himself with Coach K again, making this a very talented offensive team with many versatile weapons.
• Reasons for pessimism: The team has looked lost defensively on the perimeter at times. While still very competitive, they lost to both of the best teams they played in the non-conference slate, displaying an inability to get key stops down the stretch. Parker’s need to control the offensive flow has come to the detriment of Sulaimon’s development. Will that change now that Sulaimon seems to be earning more minutes? There’s still no prominent big man (sorry, Marshall Plumlee), and the three-point shooters are not as scary as in years past.
• Forecast: This team has got plenty of talent, and Parker is a dominant go-to guy who can single-handedly rescue this team from an off night. Duke still lives and dies largely from the perimeter, though. They have won titles without significant impact in the paint before, but they have also flamed out of the NCAA Tournament early because of the same deficiency. Parker is too good and has enough complementary threats in Hood, Cook, and possibly Sulaimon to rely on for this team to underwhelm late in the season. This is a squad with Final Four credibility.

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