Quick ACC blog

Interesting games last night in the ACC.  


The marquee game was Duke at Maryland.  I'm not a big General Greivis fan but late in the game, after Duke had asserted itself and taken a second-half lead, he made play after play to lead the Terps to their 12th win in the conference.  


Gary Williams has a right to feel pretty smug.  Two seasons after alums were screaming for his firing and the Post ran a 5-part series about how far Maryland has fallen he's got a team that looks average on paper (of course, games aren't played on paper, they're played on ESPN) in first place in the ACC.  It's easy to forgot how much success he's had in College Park.  


If Carolina doesn't win the ACC tournament I won't mind rooting for Maryland in the NCAA tournament.


Duke, on the other had, seems poised for yet another late season swoon, one I hope picks up momentum on Saturday night against the Heels. One weird feature of Duke basketball lately - since the Shane Battier-Jason Williams juggernaut - has been Krzyzewski's inability to develop any quality depth. As a result Duke teams of recent years always look gassed late in the year.


That seemed to be on display late in the game versus Maryland, where John Scheyer and Nolan Smith missed open shots that they had knocked down earlier in the game. Despite having decent size - Lance Thomas, Brian Zoubek and not one but TWO Plumlees - the Blue Devils continue to be a jump-shooting team. And if you have tired legs it's hard to be a good jump shooting team. 


The Plumlees, who seem to be athletic and skilled, only played 22 minutes last night. Seems like you should give them, and back-up point guard Andre Dawkins, more time especially when you consider that Singler played 40 minutes and Scheyer and Smith each played 38.  


Finally, one underreported story that obviously hurts Duke's depth has been the number of transfers lately. I'm assuming most of those are due to Krzyzewski being a demanding task master.  Just in the last 2 seasons Duke has lost 3 players - Elliott Williams (Memphis), Taylor King (Villanova) and Firstname Thompson (Northwestern) - who are contributing at schools playing big time college basketball.


ACCents:

• Add my voice to the chorus of critics who think football-driven expansion has hurt ACC basketball. Last night fewer than 4,000 fans showed up for Virginia's game at Boston College. It was spring break and Boston is a pro-sports town, but still, 4,000 fans?  BC should not be in the ACC.
• Miami made more sense in that the conference already had one Florida member, but they continue to draw flies for basketball, both in Coral Gables and on the road. Miami's game in Chapel Hill was not a sell. That's not the U's fault, but they do not generate ANY basketball buzz and probably never will.
• The only school that made sense to add was Virginia Tech. A geographic fit, natural rival for Virginia, and they have a hoops fan base. Last night they had a sell out for NC State, and almost all the fans stuck around last weekend when a water main break delayed the start of their game versus Maryland by 3 hours.