Orlando Sentinel and Tallahassee Democrat: Coley Harvey’s post from Friday is looking prophetic after the Seminoles collapsed (with a little help from bad luck to boot) down the stretch against Cincinnati. For the first time since their incredible turnaround — which is worth reading about too — Leonard Hamilton’s team looked complacent. The Bearcats out-hustled them down the stretch, including the forcing of a couple untimely turnovers. Still, don’t lose sight of the forest through the trees: The fact that this Florida State team was in the Final Four discussion is a tribute to the incredible job Hamilton did with this team.
Sports Illustrated: Florida State may be gone, but the ACC has another conference Cinderella in NC State. Last night Hubert Davis (a North Carolina graduate) picked the Wolfpack as his team outside of the top two seed lines to make the Final Four. Given that you don’t want to put too much weight on late night TV comments, but it’s shocking Mark Gottfried’s team is in that discussion (frankly, it’s a little surprising the Wolfpack made the NCAA Tournament at all).
CBSSports.com: Jeff Borzello checks in on the status of Virginia’s program under Tony Bennett. While I am much less optimistic about next year, his comments definitely alleviate my concerns about Bennett’s ability to recruit top-100 guys with his system. Those concerns won’t totally evaporate until Bennett puts together several years of solid classes. As for next year, losing Mike Scott alone will be devastating. The Cavaliers’ goal in 2012-13 should be to compete in conference play and make the NIT.
CBSSports.com: Unless you locked yourself in a lead box last night, you probably heard that Kendall Marshall broke his wrist in UNC’s win over Creighton. Gary Parrish found out that Marshall will have surgery today and is questionable for Friday’s game against Ohio. He’ll be evaluated after the surgery, but it’s tough to envision a way that Marshall plays this weekend. The good news for the Tar Heels is their first game is against a #13 seed, and John Henson is healthy again. The bad news is that Marshall is the Tar Heels’ most important player.
Washington Post: Liz Clarke sat down with Mike Gminski to talk about Alex Len. It sounds like Gminski is pretty high on the Maryland center’s prospects going forward, especially once Len gets his English down. He also brings up a good point that the biggest increase in productivity for big men normally comes between freshman and sophomore year (see: CJ Leslie). I still don’t know if I see Len as an all-conference game changer next year, but he should definitely only get better as he gets in better shape and more accustomed to his new team.
Winning close games isn’t all about skill. Certainly the best team will come out on top more often than not. But when a game is decided in the final possession–or even the final minute–skill is trumped by chance. It certainly helps if a 90% foul shooter goes to the line to ice a game, but he still misses every one out of ten free throws. He’s not taking ten, he’s taking one. That’s why winning really close games is as much a matter of luck as it is skill.
Now, after splitting a series of two coin flips with NC State, Virginia may be looking at a trip to the NIT. The Cavaliers won the first meeting in Raleigh by a point. The Wolfpack came back and won the rubber match in Atlanta by three. Virginia got outplayed in the second half. CJ Leslie continued his torrid stretch with the best performance of the ACC Tournament, going 9-11 from the field for 19 points to go with a game-leading 14 rebounds. Two monster threes to answer Cavalier runs from Lorenzo Brown (one with 16:44 left in the game after Virginia cut the lead to one and one seven minutes later after it cut the lead to three) complimented Leslie’s performance and propelled the Wolfpack to victory.
Mike Scott Deserves A Chance To Dance.
I’m going to make two cases: why you should pull for the Selection Committee to call Virginia’s name this weekend, and why I think they should.
Starting with the second argument, Virginia’s profile isn’t scintillating but it’s solid. The most glaring part of Virginia’s profile are the three RPI 100-2oo losses (to TCU, against Virginia Tech and at Clemson). They also own a 3-6 record against the RPI top-50 (updating NC State’s ranking), and a 4-0 record against teams ranked 51-100. That’s a relatively weak profile that has enough meat on it to be in the 11-12 conversation. Now factor in the eye test: the Cavaliers’ style isn’t pretty, but they played Duke to a one possession game on the road, North Carolina to a one possession game at home and Florida State twice to a one possession game. That’s four games (against the ACC’s top three teams) decided by one possession. Close wins shouldn’t count for much, but when we’re talking about a borderline team I think they should count for something.
After a chalky Thursday (outside of Virginia Tech’s big win over Clemson), we get to the good stuff. Friday is when the stakes get higher and the going gets good. Today is critical for NC State and Miami, with Maryland and Virginia Tech hanging around to play spoiler, and everyone else with their eye on the big prize: the championship.
New York Times:Karl Hess drama continues with the story of how Hess, infamous for ejecting two NC State legends from an RBC Center crowd against conference protocol, turned down a chance to referee the ACC Tournament. Though while Hess may be absent, his presence is still being felt. The three referees who officiated the first game of the tournament wore pieces of masking tape on their shoes with the initials “KH.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Virginia, a team that had been decimated early in the season by defections has seen it’s depth take a few more hits this week. Malcolm Brogdon, Virginia’s freshman sixth man, underwent surgery for a broken foot on Wednesday and is out for the rest of the season. The Cavaliers had been hoping that Assane Sene, their senior center might be able to return for the tournament, but such hopes were dashed earlier this week when Tony Bennett suspended him for the rest of the season for a violation of team rules. The already shallow Cavaliers may have a tough time sustaining a tournament run with this further blow to bench depth.
Washington Post: While Seth Greenberg‘s Hokies managed the only upset of the day against Clemson, Greenberg’s heart seems to be divided. Post writer John Feinstein details the troubles that have beset Greenberg’s brother, Brad. After NCAA infractions as coach at Radford, Brad Greenberg was unceremoniously drummed out of college coaching, thanks to the dreaded show-cause clause. Now in effective exile coaching in the Venezuelan league, Seth can’t help but feel for his beloved brother.
News and Observer: Leonard Hamilton won a much deserved award for ACC Coach of the Year, but how did he end up rebuilding a dying a program? A system based on sound defensive principles as well as time and luck seem to be the simple recipe that led to slow but sure rise of Florida State. Leonard Hamilton seems like a good coach and even better person. It’s hard not to root for his continued success.
CBS Sports: Though most of the action in the conference is in the tournament, Maryland made some waves on the recruiting trail yesterday. Securing the services of Charles Mitchell, the Terrapins look to greatly shore up their front line with a recruiting class that now features three top-100 recruits. Mitchell joins fellow forwards Shaq Cleare and Jake Layman in the wave of young men that should be descending on College Park to bolster the Terps’ front line.
On the eve of the kickoff of the Pac-12 Tournament comes news that the conference has reached an agreement to move at least the next two conference tournaments to Las Vegas. No official announcement has been made yet, but it could be official as early as Saturday night. The games would be played at the MGM Grand Arena, making it the fourth different conference tournament to be held in Las Vegas (joining the WCC, MW and WAC). Given declining attendance and a reputation for a less-than-thrilling atmosphere at its current home at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, this could be a welcome boost of adrenaline for a flagging event.
Heading into the tournament, we’re still wondering whether the Pac-12 can get two teams, maybe even three, into the NCAA Tournament. Of all the teams, it appears that California is the safest best to get in, with an RPI of #37 and a couple wins over top 50 RPI teams. California Golden Blogs notes that Joe Lunardi says that the Bears can get in even with an opening round loss to Stanford this week, but, of course, if they want to be safe, they get that win and even another one against Oregon (which could, paradoxically, knock the Ducks out of the top 50 in the RPI and knock the Bears back down to 0-3 in that metric) to tighten up their case.
At the Autzen Zoo, they’re making a case for three Pac-12 teams worthy of bids, a stance that is not particularly surprising given that the third team would be their beloved Oregon Ducks. They write that “the Pac-12 isn’t as bad as the biased east-coast fans think it is” and I would agree with that – I think that the top four, maybe even as deep as the top six teams are capable Pac-12 squads, even if there is no one great team here. The problem is of course that the tournament resumes of these teams are not good at all. There are no real statement wins against great teams; there are precious few wins against any teams of NCAA Tournament-caliber; and there are poor RPI numbers right on down the line. If there is disappointment around the conference on Selection Sunday, it is deserved.
John Gasaway takes the stance that, although this conference is literally the weakest major conference in years, it’s not as bad as some make it out to be. What really drags the overall conference numbers down is the bottom of the conference – teams like USC, Utah and Arizona State that have suffered through horrifically bad seasons. Further, he sees the top five or so teams as consistent with what we’ve seen out of similar teams in the past two years in the conference. The bad news is, the past two years in the conference have been down years for the league as well, albeit not as far down as this season. Still, Gasaway sees promise in California and Washington, as well as UCLA, who he notes has been better on a possession-by-possession basis than the Huskies and right in the same general area as Arizona and Oregon.
Lastly, Jeff Faraudo and Jon Wilner try to provide some reasons for the depths to which the Pac-12 has plunged. Among their reasons: 1) the decision to sign a TV contract with Fox instead of ESPN, hurting their national TV exposure and keeping Pac-12 teams off the radar of some recruits; 2) changes in personnel not only on rosters (early NBA entries, outgoing transfers), but on benches (Lute Olson, Tony Bennett, Tim Floyd); 3) UCLA’s well-publicized problems in their program; and 4) the fact that there just haven’t been a ton of elite-level recruits coming out of California in recent years.
Washington Post: This isn’t related to Mark Gianatto’s article, but last night was not a good night for commonwealth basketball. The Virginia Cavaliers started the evening, opening up a solid lead in the second half over Florida State. A win over the Seminoles behind a man’s man performance out of Mike Scott would have worked wonders for a weak NCAA tournament resume and answer Tyler Zeller’s performance against Maryland in the ACC Player of the Year race. Long story short, Virginia blew the lead by allowing a 16-2 Florida State run to close the game before losing on a three from Ian Miller with 0.8 seconds left. Fast forward to Clemson, where by some anti-miracle neither team managed to score in the last 2:45. Watching their teams lose important games while announcers plugged the Duke – North Carolina game hurts. This screenshot of Seth Greenberg from @DarrylSlater really sums things up.
Seth Greenberg's Face Speaks for Virginia and Virginia Tech Fans Alike.
Moving back to the article, Gianatto looks at the silver lining from Victor Davila’s enigmatic injury: more playing time for Cadarian Raines. Raines spent most of the last couple of years sidelined with foot injuries, but he’s stepped up big for Greenberg in Davila’s absence.
Oxford Public Ledger: In the March Madness spirit, here’s a Selection Sunday-style All-ACC team. Tyler Zeller, Mike Scott and John Henson own the three “automatic bids” thanks to terrific conference play. That leaves Michael Snaer, Austin Rivers and Kendall Marshall duking it out with CJ Leslie, Terrell Stoglin, Kenny Kadji and Harrison Barnes for the other first team spots (in case you can’t tell, I favor two of the first three). That still leaves five spots on the second and third teams available, which will be earned by “bubble” players like Erick Green, Travis McKie, CJ Harris and Seth Curry to fill out the teams (for the record, I like two of those guys to make the second team).
Durham Herald-Sun: He may not be an All-ACC candidate, but Justin Watts doesn’t have any regrets about his time spent in Chapel Hill. Watts sounds like a laid-back guy who is happy to make his team better without any time under the spotlight. Veteran players like Watts are crucial to a team. Bill Simmons in an article earlier this year called Watts’ role “the chemist: “He’s the last guy every starter greets during the introductions, and he’s the guy who waits at midcourt before the opening tap for one last round of “good luck” hugs and hand slaps.”
SCACCHoops.com: If you’ve ever been curious how “Game Sim” works, John Pence wrote a mini-biography of one of the most underrated tools available (especially during the offseason: I can’t count the hours I spent matching up different teams of recent greatness and trying to make sense of the resultant box score). In addition to being a fun time-waster, Game Sim has picked an impressive 80% of ACC games this season; additionally, as more and more data is compiled, it’s getting more and more accurate against the spread. So next time you have a few minutes and want to find out how this year’s Duke team would fare against the Blue Devils’ national championship team from 2010, just hit up Game Sim.
Baltimore Sun: More bad financial news out of College Park. The commission appointed to address Maryland‘s athletic department’s budgetary issues called for the university to cut six more sports (men’s tennis, men’s track and field, men’s and women’s swimming and diving, women’s water polo and women’s acrobatics and tumbling). Kevin Anderson has some tough decisions to make. If the football team looked stronger, one might be able to make the argument that revenues should increase and temporary budget cuts would be enough. But reality sometimes hurts. Maybe in a few years things will be different.
EXTRA: Gene Wojciechowski points out that the ACC may actually be in the driver’s seat in conference realignment. Specifically, the Big Ten will not want the ACC to surround Penn State (which would happen if the conference added Rutgers and Connecticut). I’m not sure if I buy the ACC having that much influence (Jim Delaney, Mike Slive and Larry Scott seem to be running the show), but Wojciechowski definitely makes a strong case.
Over the next week we will be taking a look at the ACC teams whose names should be called on Selection Sunday. The series started with Duke (seed prediction: #1-#2), North Carolina (seed prediction: #1-#2) and Florida State (seed prediction: #5-#8).
Virginia came within a possession of knocking off Duke at Cameron, Florida State in Tallahassee, and most recently, North Carolina in Charlottesville. But the fact is that the Cavaliers came up short each time. Now Tony Bennett‘s team has a resume featuring one very good win (Michigan at home in November) and a few more decent wins (against Drexel, NC State and Miami). That’s not a lot to work with. The Cavaliers also own one horrible loss against TCU early in the year and an unfortunate loss at home against Virginia Tech.
Mike Scott and Virginia Need To Close Out Conference Play with Two Wins.
The good news for Virginia is that its RPI profile looks slightly better, as it owns a 7-5 record against the top 100 (5-1 against #51-#100, 2-4 against the top-50). Additionally, the committee knows the Cavaliers played the ACC contenders close.
The issue for Virginia won’t be getting to the NCAA Tournament: The issue will be getting off the #8/#9 seed line. This is a team that has an elite defense. The offense has dry spells, but Bennett’s team can hang with almost anyone in the country. Still, I’m sure he’d rather avoid a top seed in the round of 32. If Virginia beats Florida State at home, I think that moves the Cavaliers to a seven. If it loses, probably a nine. The biggest issue is that nothing happens in a vacuum, especially around conference tournament time. Between now and Selection Sunday, Virginia needs to beat Duke, North Carolina or Florida State at least once to solidify a good seed.
Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Mountain West and Pac-12 conferences.
Reader’s Take
Top Storylines
We have heard it all before. The Pac-12 is down. The Pac-12 is terrible. The Pac-12 is a one-bid league. The Pac-12 sucks. There’s some relative truth in some of those and in others, not so much, but one thing is for sure as we sit here with three weeks remaining the regular season and five teams within a game of the regular season title. The Pac-12 is tight. Going into this week, California and Washington are tied for first (with the Golden Bears holding the tiebreaker between the two teams on the strength of their win in Seattle a couple of weeks back), while Oregon, Colorado, and Arizona are all lurking just one game back. We have got a race.
Cal, Currently In First Place, May Have The Best Chance At An At-Large Bid To The NCAA Tournament (George Nikitin/AP)
Aside from a couple of games between top five teams last Thursday night, when Oregon throttled Washington and Arizona took care of Colorado, every other team in the top grouping took care of business against lesser opponents. In fact, looking at the standings right now, the top six teams in the conference are all riding winning streaks while the bottom six are all headed in the wrong direction. At least it now appears that the top of the conference is gaining some separation from the bottom. California, Washington, and Oregon all saw their RPIs improve this week, while Colorado and Arizona saw their number drop a bit, but at least now all five of those teams are at least in the at-large conversation. Our own Zach Hayes has California and Arizona in the tournament in his latest bracket, while Colorado, Washington and Oregon are all among the first eight out. Joe Lunardi’s latest bracket has the Bears and the ‘Cats in as well, with the Huskies and Ducks among the first eight out. Andy Glockner, however, is a bit more pessimistic about the conference’s chances, putting just California in the field with Arizona among the first four out and teams like Seton Hall, North Carolina State, Northwestern, and Xavier all currently higher in the pecking order than the Pac-12 schools.
What to Watch For
With all of the above in mind, every game is going to be critical from here on out for those five teams at the top of the standings. They all need to not only beat up on teams 6-12, but it is time for a couple or three of them to differentiate themselves from the others. We thought last week that Washington might be on the verge of doing that, and then they went out and got blown out by Oregon. Meanwhile, California, and Arizona are the hot teams this week with the Golden Bears on a three-game streak and the Wildcats on a four-game run. Both will find significant tests awaiting them this week, but Cal has the benefit of facing their tests in the comfort of Haas Pavilion, against Oregon Thursday night and then Oregon State on Saturday night. Arizona has to go on the road, and they head to Washington State tomorrow night before a Saturday afternoon marquee matchup with Washington.
Washington, meanwhile, will also have to take care of business against tenth-place Arizona State on Thursday while Oregon travels to Stanford on Sunday afternoon. The Palo Alto trip could be a problem for the Ducks, especially coming off of the big game Thursday night. The other game involving one of the top five schools comes Saturday afternoon, when Colorado travels to Utah. The Buffaloes have won just two conference games on the road thus far, and those came against the teams currently holding down two of the bottom three spots in the standings; if they can handle the Utes, it will become three wins against the three bottom teams in the standings.
Jesse Baumgartner is an RTC columnist. His Love/Hate column will publish each week throughout the season. In this piece he’ll review the five things he loved and hated about the previous seven days of college basketball.
Five Things I Loved This Week
I LOVED….objectively realizing that you just saw one of the more dramatic shots in college basketball over the last 10 years. Factor in everything – a freshman, playing on the road, time expiring, a three-point shot when you’re down two, UNC/Duke – and I’ll put Austin Rivers’ three up against anything I’ve seen. Cold-blooded doesn’t do it justice – that rainbow was sub-Arctic. The only mark against the buzzer-beater is that it came in the regular season, but for the silent (and I mean drop-a-pin silent) Carolina fans on Wednesday, that was little consolation as they watched Duke pile on their Baby Blue home floor in celebration.
As A College Basketball Fan, Austin Rivers' Three Was As Dramatic As They Come. As a UNC Grad...Well, You Get The Picture (AP)
I LOVED….Michigan State stoning Ohio State on the road. For me, it both validates this Spartans team as a contender and cements the Big Ten as one of the most balanced and competitive conferences this season (five teams currently in the Top 25). Last season might have been a big disappointment, but you can’t say enough about the coaching job that Tom Izzo has done this year.
I LOVED….Michigan State’s Draymond Green getting some love and validation this season. Not to make this a Spartan-happy column, but Green has really stepped up as a senior after maybe getting overshadowed a bit by the talent around him in previous years. He’s one of the most well-rounded players in the nation (15 PPG/10.5 RPG/3.5 APG/1.0 BPG/36% 3FG), and he kept this group focused after a bit of a rough start. Now MSU is looking more legit with each passing week.
I LOVED….Gonzaga reminding Saint Mary’s exactly which program has dominated the West Coast Conference for the last decade-plus. It’s easy to take the Zags for granted or root for more parity in the conference (I often do both), but don’t forget that Mark Few’s Bulldogs thrashed Notre Dame, Butler and Arizona, lost a close game to Michigan State and beat Xavier on the road. Don’t sleep on ‘em.
Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter. Night Line will run on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s games.
Remember when Virginia played Duke to a one-possession game at Cameron Indoor Stadium in mid-January, then followed that up with a 32-point road win at Georgia Tech and was ranked No. 15 in the succeeding AP Poll? That Cavaliers team looks completely different from the one that scored just 48 points in a 12-point loss on Tuesday night at Clemson to fall to 6-5 in the ACC. What once looked like a surging team with top four NCAA seed potential has turned into a squad in a bit of a free fall. UVA has not only lost starting center Assane Sene to injury, but also three of its last four games and four of their last eight overall to drop to sixth place in the ACC. Virginia needs to turn things around if they want to make the Big Dance with a chance to win in the postseason. They’ll have that opportunity with both North Carolina and Florida State coming into John Paul Jones Arena in the next two weeks.
Virginia Has Had Trouble Making Shots Recently (AP Photo/J. Bounds)
Back on January 16, the then-No. 15 Cavaliers were not only on a nice winning streak but also had developed a strong identity as a slow-paced, defensive team that was difficult to execute against. Their average game includes 60.5 possessions, one of the 20 slowest tempos in the nation. Led by fifth-year senior Mike Scott, who has developed into one of the best all-around forwards in the country, Virginia had the goods to beat opponents in a grind-it-out style that came down to whose offense could be most efficient in the half court. At 15-2, the results showed that they were making it work. However, the downside to that style of play given the tempo is always the potential to allow teams to hang in a game. And when you’re not executing well enough on your own end of the court, then the style can turn ugly in a hurry. That is exactly what has happened to Virginia.
ESPN: First, I wanted to start off with one of the more insane statistics I’ve heard in a while. According to the ACC office, the cumulative score of the last 75 Duke–North Carolina games is 5,858 to 5,857 in favor of the Blue Devils. One point separates them. The series is just as tight over that same stretch with the Tar Heels holding onto a slim 38-37 lead. Basically, this rivalry is insanely competitive and played at a very high level (the last time one of the two schools wasn’t on the top seed line at the Big Dance was in 2003).
Washington Post: Alex Len is coming around to ACC play after strong games against Miami and North Carolina. He struggled early in conference play, largely because of poor defense and lackluster conditioning. But Mark Turgeon’s strategy to try to make Len more confident (along with his workouts) has definitely paid off. Maryland may not be a very good ACC team this year, but it’s impossible to argue that the Terrapins aren’t competitive.
ACC Sports Journal: No one questions Tony Bennett‘s coaching. But partially due to his style of play, partially due to local recruiting rivals (Georgetown, Maryland, and Virginia Tech) and partially due to the program’s relative lack of prestige, there’s a very legitimate question about whether Bennett will be able to recruit and keep top area talent. It doesn’t help that four of his “Six Shooters” (Bennett’s first class) departed early. That said, if Bennett can bring talent to his system, the Cavaliers should be able to become a perennial ACC contender.
Oxford Public Ledger: I thought this article best captured the Blue Devils’ struggles against Miami. That game also reactivated my Reggie Johnson man-crush. Seriously, why did the basketball gods have to hurt his knees and keep him from getting in better shape? Back to the article, what’s especially interesting is Duke’s performance on the road versus at Cameron Indoor. Basically, the Blue Devils are playing significantly better on the road (they didn’t play Florida State and Virginia, two of the best defensive teams in the country on the road, but still). Duke needs a leader to step up and motivate this team to fight through every possession. It was abundantly clear that Duke was the better team on both ends of the floor in the second half against Miami, but it ran out of gas down the stretch.
Raleigh Telegram: Lefty Driesell is back in the news. This time it’s to dispute an account (which has since been corrected) in Sam Walker’s ACC Basketball. The book described a scene after Dean Smith convinced one of Driesell’s recruits to attend North Carolina instead of Davidson. Walker wrote that Smith offered his hand and Driesell spit in it. Driesell is emphatic that he did not spit. The other interesting anecdote from the book DG Martin brings up is about the South Carolina – Maryland blowout, which was called off because of a bench-clearing brawl with five minutes left to play. Interesting stuff.
EXTRA: Drew Cannon of Basketball Prospectus developed a fool-proof system for filling out the NCAA Tournament bubble with RPI and KenPom rankings: Add them together. It’s so simple it’s beautiful. It’s also quite accurate, never missing more than three teams.
