It may be tempting to add caveats, but make no mistake: The Miami Hurricanes really are the best team in the ACC. Sure, they haven’t played North Carolina State yet and, yes, Ryan Kelly makes Duke a significantly better team. There is a strong chance that both of these teams could beat the Hurricanes when they face them on their home courts later this season. On the other hand, Miami took the number one team in the country and administered the third biggest thrashing that the highest-ranked team in the country has suffered in the history of college basketball. Kelly and home court are important factors, but does anyone think that those two things are honestly worth 27 points?  If so, I’d like to present you with this honorary plaque commemorating your dedication to the Ryan Kelly Fan Club.

Miami Fans RTC’d the Blue Devils After Last Night’s Destruction (credit: WaPo)

The caveats don’t stand up against scrutiny. Miami sits at the top of the standings without a single conference loss because of the Hurricanes’ incredible commitment to defense under Jim Larranaga. Outside of Rasheed Sulaimon, the entire complement of Duke’s normally excellent guard corps combined to shoot 1-of-29 from the field. This wasn’t just luck on Miami’s part (though it helped).  Before last night, Miami had the eighth best defensive efficiency mark in the country, achieved by consistently excellent interior defense, limiting three-point attempts, contesting the ones that were put up, and a deliberate and marked effort to avoid putting their opponents at the line. With this team, Larranaga has opted for a cautious and conservative style of play: Miami mostly eschews the offensive glass in order to set its defense and limit transition buckets. They don’t try to force turnovers by risking fouling. The defense gets set, chases shooters off the three-point line, and funnels the offense to shot blockers who force opponents to attempt contested mid-range buckets (the worst shot in basketball). The defensive concept is simple: Make your opponent take difficult shots and then focus (as a team) on securing the defensive rebound. It’s how the San Antonio Spurs won four NBA championships and Larranaga has demonstrated that these concepts work well in college basketball as well. The Miami Hurricanes simply play phenomenal team defense and that goes a long way towards winning games.

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RTC’s East Coast Boss was courtside for Miami’s dominating 90-63 win over #2 Duke on Wednesday night.

Five Key Takeaways.

1. Before the season all of the talk in the ACC was about North Carolina State, but that quickly evaporated as we saw that their run last March was nothing more than a hot streak. Duke stepped in to fill the void as the dominant team in the ACC and appeared for a while to be the best team in the country, but with Ryan Kelly’s injury which we will get to in a bit, the door to win the ACC is wide open and Miami has stepped in. After tonight the Hurricanes are two games up in the ACC with only three truly challenging games remaining — at home against North Carolina and on the road at North Carolina and Duke. While they can certainly slip up in conference road games, they are successfully positioning themselves to be in contention for the ACC regular season title. I’m still not sure how good this Hurricane team is, but they have wins over a Duke and Michigan State at home and North Carolina on the road. All of those teams have their weaknesses, but Miami is looking like it could be a very dangerous team in March.
   

   Miami Fans Might Be Rushing The Court A Lot This Year

2. Duke really needs Ryan Kelly to come back. I am not sure I can emphasize that enough. Kelly won’t win any Player of the Year awards and he might not even be First Team All-ACC, but the way this Duke team is constructed they might need his presence more than any other player on the team. Mason Plumlee is by far the best all-around player on the squad, but he lacks Kelly’s versatility, which is key when your bench is as short as Duke’s. Having said all of that, Duke needs to weather this stretch without Kelly which should theoretically be close to ending based on earlier reports from the school. Of course, that says nothing of how Kelly is actually healing. If he returns at 100% Duke should be fine, but their performances thus far following his injury demonstrates just how fragile this team is.
3. Reggie Johnson could be an asset to Miami down the line, but he isn’t there yet. Before the game there had been rumors that Johnson might play tonight, but it wasn’t until just before tipoff that it was apparent that he would play (he was in the lay-up line without any protection on his broken left thumb). Johnson contributed in spots primarily with his girth filling space against a small Duke front line, but his impact was largely minimal (fill in your ground-shaking jokes). Johnson was only out of the lineup for about a month, but his conditioning looks horrible. He will never run up and down the court with the Cody Zellers of the college basketball world, but Jim Larranaga should have put Johnson on the treadmill for the past month. If Johnson can regain his previous form in the next few weeks, he could insert another dimension to this team although his return could affect the obvious chemistry the Hurricanes developed without him. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Tar Heel Monthly: Chad Ford wrote an article last week that included a list of the college programs that best prepare players for the NBA. He left North Carolina off the list because Roy Williams‘ “players don’t really seem to get any better the longer they stay in the program.” Adam Lucas didn’t take kindly to Ford’s admittedly tired argument and eviscerated it for all to see. This is what happens when facts are fitted to narratives instead of the other way around. Ford published what was becoming a more and more popular narrative (following Harrison Barnes’ “disappointing” career). Lucas shut him down.
2. Orlando Sentinel: Unfortunately, this was an injury you could see coming. Terrance Shannon‘s strength opened him up to injuries like the one he sustained against Virginia on Saturday. If you’ve watched much of Florida State this year, you’ve seen Shannon’s style. He hurls himself at every rebound, every 50/50 ball; he’s not the most athletic guy on the floor, but he wants it more than anyone else. That recklessness caught up to him on a rebound where Shannon landed wrong and sprained his neck. Losing him will really hurt Florida State’s front line — for one reason, Leonard Hamilton will have to cut down his rotation (or add someone else to the mix, which appears unlikely). Additionally, Shannon provided a huge spark off the bench, which the Seminoles will need to replace.
3. Independent Weekly: This is a terrific article that uses Iron Chef as a metaphor for coaching college basketball. Eric Martin also makes a very good point about what Duke may do without Ryan Kelly. Long story short, look for the Blue Devils to push the pace. Especially at the points without Seth Curry in the lineup (which is only 10 minutes a game, but still), look for Duke to start running. Kelly was built to thrive in the halfcourt, but Amile Jefferson, Mason Plumlee, Quinn Cook and Rasheed Sulaimon are all meant for running the floor. In the second half against Georgia Tech, Martin points out that Duke cut its time per possession 25 percent from the first half. Not coincidentally, the Blue Devils pulled away.
4. Charlottesville Daily Progress: After the Manti Teo incident, Virginia players are watching their backs on Twitter. If they’re to be believed, all reported girlfriends of the Cavaliers are real. Jontel Evans claims to believe Teo (disclaimer: I don’t), but can’t believe Teo didn’t try to Skype with his girlfriend — especially if he couldn’t meet her in person. Evans himself avoids making relationships of any type over social media, but also has a (real) girlfriend at Virginia.
5. Fayetteville Observer: Well it’s gut-check time in Raleigh. The loss at Maryland was OK (Maryland appears to be a solid team and was desperate for a win), but the loss at Wake Forest wasn’t. Wolfpack fans can blame the officials all they want (and the officials did miss two key fouls down the stretch), but the game shouldn’t have been close enough to matter. What should have been a tune-up before NC State‘s first big showdown with North Carolina became the Wolfpack’s first bad loss. The Demon Deacons scored over 50 points in the second half, they intercepted sloppy passes, and they managed to hang on down the stretch. This game is the reason people are scared to pick NC State to improve on its Sweet Sixteen finish from last year.

EXTRA: Former Miami coach Frank Haith is in hot water with the NCAA. The water may be hot enough to get him fired at Missouri with a show-cause to boot.

1. Sports Business Daily: It was only a matter of time for this, but word has leaked that the ACC is looking into a conference channel like the Big Ten Network or Pac-12 Networks. Currently, ACC ratings are actually surprisingly strong in football (although without many huge games) considering the conference’s recent play. But a network wouldn’t be easy to pull off. My guess is that any ACC network would get pushed to the back burner until after the SEC’s network gets distributed.
2. Raleigh News & Observer: Not enough love for Richard Howell‘s performance was given here in the aftermath of NC State’s win over Duke. In the first half the Blue Devils kept things close (and looked like they might run away with the game for a while) thanks to strong work on the boards, but Howell grabbed almost every available board in the second half. He’s one of the strongest players in the league and he’s finally found a way to use his exceptional motor without also fouling. The Wolfpack need Howell to give them more games like that one if they want to finish on top of the league this season.
3. CBSSports.com: Ryan Kelly‘s injury may have opened the ACC race up. The biggest related questions are: (1) Can NC State play with the intensity it played with Saturday on a regular basis; and (2) Can Miami avoid its trademarked losing streaks? Based on the Wolfpack’s first two ACC games, their prognosis is troubling, but the game against Duke was excellent all-around. Miami is a bigger question mark. Its ceiling is decidedly lower than Duke or NC State’s, but it’s also a proven commodity on the road. In the end, look for Duke and one other team to vie for the top spot if Kelly is out of the lineup for more than two weeks.
4. Baltimore Sun: Mark Turgeon is starting to see familiar signs plaguing his point guard. The Terrapins are reeling after two straight losses and have gone from popular darkhorse contender to completely overrated in the span of a week. Now Turgeon is looking at a brutal four-game schedule that is like this: against NC State, at North Carolina, against Boston College, and at Duke. Those are three very losable games (I’d be surprised if Maryland was favored in any of them) with a classic trap game stuck in there too. Now’s not the time for dramatic changes, but Turgeon doesn’t have a lot of choice. The results of these four games will likely determine where Maryland’s postseason will be decided.
5. Daily Tar Heel: And in the inane Letters to the Editor category (from an alumnus no less), we have a letter calling for the firing of UNC head coach Roy Williams. Now, a pessimistic case could be made for Williams’ talent-driven system being disrupted by one John Calipari’s annual raids on the five-star recruit pantry. A much more reasonable argument would see this year as Williams getting burned by Kendall Marshall departing for the NBA early (something few expected) and the Wear twins transferring back home.

Poll Thoughts: There was a lot of discussion about who the new number one team should be after the last of the unbeatens, Michigan, went down over the weekend. The ACC part of the argument essentially came down to the fact that Duke is a very different team without Ryan Kelly on the floor and should be ranked as such. This (essentially a small sample size eye test), to me, is just as good an argument as basing your rankings entirely on resume. The one caveat to such a standpoint is that once Kelly returns, Duke should — assuming he’s at 100% — jump back to its previous standing. This is where the justification is flawed, as voters rarely jump teams near the top of the rankings without a loss. Luckily polls mean nothing but pride for college basketball.

EXTRA: In case missed the Miami-Maryland brick-laying contest, this GIF sums the game up remarkably well.

We are now three games into conference play and after a tremendous weekend that saw some of the best teams squaring off, the number one team go down, and a session of overtime, the hierarchy of the conference is coming into focus. Or maybe it is getting more muddled. In any case, even if it is still not clear which teams (besides Duke) are actually good, we did learn some other things this weekend:

1. Duke Isn’t Invincible. No one seriously thought this, but the occasional loose talk of the Blue Devils going undefeated turned out to be, unsurprisingly, a bit premature. Obviously, a road loss to North Carolina State with Duke’s most efficient scorer, Ryan Kelly, sitting on the bench is not bad. Still, it is hard to win games when your opponent shoots over 50% from the field, 50% from three, and makes 20 free throws. Duke’s defense has been solid this year on the whole, this was Duke’s first true road game, and the Wolfpack is one of the better offensive teams in the whole country, yet none of these excuses changes the fact that NC State handled the Blue Devils’ on the inside and Duke had no answer for Richard Howell.
   

   Duke Clearly Is Not The Same Team Without Ryan Kelly

2. Miami Doesn’t Miss Reggie Johnson Yet. It seemed like the Hurricanes would miss the formidable big man after a two-game losing streak that not so coincidentally began when Johnson was injured. Since those two games, however, Miami has played very well, with veteran Julian Gamble filling Johnson’s shoes convincingly. The Hurricanes share a spot with the Wolfpack on top of the ACC standings, currently undefeated in conference play. Gamble’s production has looked great on the offensive end, and Miami’s defense has looked impressive. Still, the tempo-free percentages tell a story: Gamble just doesn’t match the rebounding prowess of Johnson. It hasn’t cost the Hurricanes yet, but it’s something to keep an eye on going forward. Read the rest of this entry »

And then there were none. We entered last week with four undefeated teams — Duke, Michigan, Arizona, and Wyoming — but all faltered. Michigan was technically the last remaining undefeated team, but that lasted for less than 24 hours as the Wolverines lost Sunday afternoon to Ohio State in Columbus. Due to the crazy week that was, Louisville now moves into the #1 spot for the first time this season. The Cardinals’ lone loss came against Duke in the Bahamas back in November, and they hold the slimmest of edges on the Blue Devils in our poll (more on that after the Qn’D). It was also a tough week for two Big East teams while the Pac-12 is experiencing a resurgence with two teams entering the RTC25.

The Quick n’ Dirty after the jump…

Quick n’ Dirty Analysis.

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With Duke’s first big ACC road test against pre-season conference favorite NC State looming on Saturday, all eyes have turned to how the Blue Devils will function without stretch forward Ryan Kelly. Kelly, who has been red-hot in Duke’s last three games as teams have started to meet NPOY candidate Mason Plumlee with frequent double-teams, is a huge component of Duke’s offense. Kelly leads Duke in offensive rating and for the season is shooting over 50% from the arc.

Ryan Kelly’s absence could provide Duke with the opportunity to develop some depth (Chicago Tribune)

While nothing seems certain, most people are estimating Kelly to be out for around a month, depending on how the foot (which is not fractured) responds to treatment. This opens up a phenomenal opportunity for Duke over this period to establish something that they have struggled with this season:  post depth. Duke has essentially used a 6.5 man rotation this year, with its bench consisting of Tyler Thornton (over 20 minutes per game), along with junior Josh Hairston, will start at Kelly’s position in his absence, who averages just over 11 minutes a game. Freshmen Alex Murphy (5.6 mpg)and Amile Jefferson (8.8 mpg) are also likely to see extended minutes at the 4 with Kelly being out with his injury.

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Brendon Mulvihill is an RTC contributor. You can find him @TheMulv on Twitter. See bottom of the post for the Official RTC Star System.

College football is officially in the books and that means college hoops takes center stage. It’s going to be a great weekend of action highlighted by two Big Ten showdowns and an ACC battle that will shape the national picture. Good luck deciding which game you are going to watch at 12:00 PM EST tomorrow. Let’s get to the breakdowns.

#1 Duke at #21 North Carolina State – 12:00 PM EST, Saturday on ESPN (*****)

With the injury to Ryan Kelly, Mason Plumlee will need to muscle up on defense against NC State.

• The ACC is starting to look like Duke, North Carolina State, Miami, and then everyone else. The big news for the Blue Devils going into Saturday is the loss of forward Ryan Kelly to a foot injury for an indefinite period of time. Kelly’s loss appears to be significant for Duke but we really will not know the entire story until Saturday’s game is over. Kelly’s outside shooting and overall scoring threat will be missed, but it may be his size on defense that is missed most. Duke will be left with either freshmen Amile Jefferson and Alex Harris or junior Josh Hairston to help Mason Plumlee defend the interior. With an extremely athletic front line, NC State will test the Blue Devils’ resolve right away. Expect the Wolfpack to try to overwhelm Plumlee down low by attacking the inside. By doing this, they will attempt to put Plumlee in foul trouble and get to the line. If Plumlee gets into foul trouble, it will be a very long afternoon in Raleigh for the Dukies. The team that plays better defense will win this game.

#9 Minnesota at #4 Indiana– 12:00 PM EST, Saturday on BTN (*****)

• Minnesota made a statement in its blowout win at Illinois this week. They are looking for the Big Ten title and it’s going to take a great team to beat them. What’s most impressive about the win is actually their lack of offensive rebounding. That may seem like a crazy statement but when you consider how good they are on the offensive boards it makes sense. The Gophers lead the country in offensive rebounding percentage (OR%) at 48.5%. They are absolutely dominating that statistic. So when their OR% dipped to 25% against Illinois, their worst performance of the year, and yet they still won by 17 points, it means this team can do a lot more than just grab boards. Shooting 61% eFG proved that. Interestingly enough, however, it could be rebounding that derails the Gophers against Indiana. Minnesota actually struggles on the defensive boards and Indiana is ranked in the top 10 nationally there. With the incredible offensive weapons that Indiana has at its disposal, grabbing a bunch of misses is just salt in its opponents’ wounds. This game is going to be a great spectacle with tremendous match-ups all over the floor. Trevor Mbakwe against Cody Zeller might be the best big man battle we will see all year. If Minnesota can make it two road wins a row against the best in the Big Ten, watch out for Tubby Smith’s team.

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1. CBSSports.com:The biggest news of yesterday was that Ryan Kelly‘s foot injury is significant. It’s the same foot he hurt at the end of last season, requiring surgery and a lengthy layoff. Sources told Jeff Goodman that Duke hopes Kelly will be back in two weeks, but it’s more realistic that it will be closer to four weeks. While the exact impact on Duke and its rotation remains to be seen, it will be significant. Last year with Kelly out, the mighty Blue Devils offense sputtered to a stop (it doesn’t help that Kelly was playing his best ball of the season before re-injuring the foot). The only real silver lining is that the young guys on the team (namely Alex Murphy and Amile Jefferson) should see a few more minutes.
2. The Sporting News: As the saying goes, “hindsight is always 20/20.” Unfortunately, Ryan Fagan didn’t have hindsight when he wrote this article. Fagan acknowledged that it was possible the Cavaliers would lose to Wake Forest Wednesday night. Even if North Carolina is down, there’s often a pretty big emotional crash after beating Duke or UNC (see: Virginia Tech in 2010-11). Also, Virginia is going to lose some head-scratchers when the shots aren’t falling just because fewer possessions make each brick more important than in a faster-paced game.
3. Baltimore Sun: Mark Turgeon is currently using two point guards, and it’s working out pretty well (the Terps’ home loss to Florida State notwithstanding). Pe’Shon Howard distributes, Seth Allen scores. Allen is clearly the point guard of the future, but his forced three in the waning seconds against Florida State show he’s still got a ways to go. In the meantime, Turgeon can rely mostly on Howard as Allen matures. My guess is Turgeon would love some of Allen’s aggressive nature to rub off on Howard too.
4. Duke Basketball Report: Barry Jacobs took a look at the longest winning streaks (against a single conference opponent) of the ACC in light of Duke beating Wake Forest for the sixth straight time last week. The longest streak ever was Duke over Virginia, which Duke won 16 straight times following the beatdown that the Cavaliers and Ralph Sampson gave the Blue Devils in the 1983 ACC Tournament. But North Carolina is knocking on the Blue Devils’ door, as the Tar Heels currently hold a 10-win streak over Miami and a 13-game win streak over NC State (both of which, it says here, will likely come to an end this season).
5. NC State Technician: Speaking of NC State, the student newspaper at the school put together midseason grades for the Wolfpack. Rightfully, Andrew Scheutt gives major props to Richard Howell, who hasn’t necessarily been NC State’s most valuable player, but he’s improved dramatically even since his huge leap in production last season. He’s shooting outrageously well, rebounding even better, and he’s quit fouling (his Achilles’ heel last season).

1. Yesterday morning we mentioned the pending imaging studies on Ryan Kelly (foot)and Laurence Bowers (knee). Even though it seems like most of the concern from the public was for Bowers (likely due to the fact that he missed last season with an injury to his other knee) it was Kelly who appears to have suffered the more significant damage as he will be out indefinitely with an undisclosed injury to his right foot. With no additional information on what Kelly’s injury is we will not even bother speculating as to how long he will be out other than to say that we doubt he will be playing at North Carolina State on Saturday. Meanwhile, Bowers will be held out for the next two games and then be reevaluated after an MRI revealed that he had a sprained MCL in his right knee and nothing more serious. While Bowers will miss the next two games he could be back just in time for the Tigers’ showdown in Gainesville with Florida.
2. Some of you may be a little perplexed by how much time Luke Winn spend on free throws in his power rankings this week, but he also has some interesting non-free throw shooting analysis including some statistics that suggest that Jeff Withey could be having a better defensive season than Anthony Davis did last year and looks at how much worse Phil Pressey is in pick-and-roll situations this season without the type of shooters he had last season. If numbers make your eyes glaze over and you are into more juvenile humor (see his sidenote about J.J. Redick and Adam Morrison for an example), Mark Titus has his own power rankings that provide inside in the way that only The Shark can. Overall, their rankings are fairly similar with the exception of Arizona as Titus, who isn’t just looking at the numbers (just kidding, Luke), considers their game against Colorado to essentially be a loss.
3. Boise State picked up a huge win yesterday night as they knocked Wyoming from the ranks of the unbeatens, but they may have ended the night as losers after they suspended Derrick Marks, Mikey Thompson, Kenny Buckner, and Darrious Hamilton indefinitely just before their trip to Wyoming. Marks, the team’s leading scorer, is obviously a huge loss, but both Thompson and Buckner both see significant playing time in a rotation that is not particularly deep. While the Broncos escaped with a last second win last night, the loss of these players will make things extremely difficult for them in a challenging Mountain West Conference.
4. As if things were not bad enough for Illinois State, which has started 0-4 in the Missouri Valley Conference after coming in as a potential threat to Creighton, things appear to be on the way to getting worse before they get better as the team announced yesterday that it had suspended senior guard Tyler Brown indefinitely for conduct detrimental to the team. After starting 9-3 with their three loses coming against stiff competition (three-point overtime loss versus Northwestern, three-point loss at Louisville, and a 14-point loss against Montana in which the Redbirds led by three with five minutes left), the team has completely fallen apart. While their first two losses in conference (by two at Indiana State and by seven against Creighton) are excusable their next two losses, which came against Northern Iowa and Missouri State, have raised some serious questions about the team. We are not sure how the loss of their second leading scorer (15.3 points per game) will do anything, but make things worse, but perhaps Brown’s absence will bring the team closer together and get them back on track.
5. Now that we are about halfway through the season, it is a good time to reevaluate which conference games are worth your attention as there have been some significant surprises both for better and for worse. To that end, Jeff Borzello counts down the 30 best conference games this season. Now this list comes with the caveat that Borzello didn’t want to feature the same teams over and over again or this could have easily turned into a countdown of the best Big Ten games. One thing that is definitely worth pointing out is that several of these games are coming up very soon including three this Saturday.