Saturday, March 10, 2007

ACC Quarters

Finally a couple top seeds played like it. UNC cruised over Florida State behind their best defensive performance in weeks. Florida State couldn't hit the ocean from a boat yesterday - 17 for 55 from the floor = not very good. For the Heels, it was a good thing their defense played as well as it did, because the offense was not so hot. Ellington had a nice game, and the shooting overall was solid, but the combination of a really bad turnover rate and very bad offensive rebounding (particularly for UNC) contributed to UNC putting up less than a point per possession for only the third time this year.

BC almost coughed it up to Miami, and only Tyrese Rice could save the day. Jared Dudley, your ACC player of the year (but not mine) scored just 12 on 3 of 9 shooting and committed 5 turnovers. This was a Big-10 level slow game - just 61 possessions, and it went to overtime.

NC State did it again, but made it a little more interesting this time after falling behind by 14 at halftime. JR Reynolds had his 6th consecutive sub-par shooting game - since the drubbing of Longwood he's just 15 of 49 on twos and 10 of 32 on threes. That's simply not going to get it done. The Cavs were really hurt by a thigh injury to Singletary - he played through it, but he had absolutely no bounce, quickness, or lift in the second half. NC State torched Virginia in the second half. They scored 53 points on 17 of 23 shooting. State has to like their potential odds today, seeing as they've smoked Virginia Tech both times they've played - the game at NC State was the single best shooting performance by any team in ACC play, and in the two games combined, they've hit 42 of 64 twos and 16 of 33 threes.

In the nightcap, it was just too much to ask Wake to come back from a high energy, high emotion double overtime game that ended around 1 in the morning. Turnovers were the story of this game - 18 for Wake Forest, and an amazing 2! for Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech took 21 more shots from the field than Wake - you'll win an awful lot of games when you do that. And as much as NC State is looking forward to a three-match with VT, you've got to believe the Hokies are angry after being embarrassed twice by the Pack.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's not so easy playing with an acrylic faceplate. You should try it sometime.

Paul Rugani said...

You know, I wasn't watching the game, but I could swear that 12 of the 13 Tar Heels didn't have masks on. The turnovers and bad rebounding was a total team effort, and not Hansbrough's fault.

Anonymous said...

The Tar Heels have looked bad. They are very fortunate that their last three games versus Duke, FSU and BC were not against top competition or likely NCAA tourney teams, or they would have been exposed.