Impressions from ACC media day

Impressions from ACC media day:

- ACC coaches seem in favor of shortening the time underclassmen have to explore their NBA draft status.
Currently players have about two months after the season’s end to decide whether to withdraw from the draft if they enter . ACC officials are proposing NCAA legislation that will require athletes to decide within a week to 10 days whether they’re returning to school.
“That 50- or 60-day period, they’ve got to shorten it,” said Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg. “It’s not fair to the kids on your team more than anything else. Is he coming back? Is he coming back because he’s not going to go high enough? Then how good a teammate is that guy going to be?”

- Coach Sidney Lowe grew tired of answering questions about N.C. State’s chemistry (or lack thereof) last season.
“I hate to put that chemistry thing out there, because I played the game and to me chemistry is when everybody is playing for one reason and accepting that role,” Lowe said. “. . .I think ours, the major thing with ours was when Farnold (Degand, the point guard) got hurt.”

- Freshman DeQuan Jones gives Miami an athlete on the wing the likes of which it hasn’t seen before under coach Frank Haith.
Jones is 6-foot-6 and 217 pounds with the potential to become a fantastic defender, according to Haith – if Jones learns concepts quickly.
“He’s a tremendous athlete, but he also has good skills,” Haith said. “He can shoot the ball. He’s a good ball handler. But he’s just a physical specimen.”

- North Carolina guard Wayne Ellington was the most noticeable omission from the preseason All-ACC team.
Teammates Tyler Hansbrough and Ty Lawson made the team, so it would have been difficult to vote a third Tar Heel on the team with so much talent. Boston College’s Tyrese Rice, Miami’s Jack McClinton and Duke’s Gerald Henderson also made the team.
All are deserving, but nobody made more big shots last season than Ellington.

- ACC commissioner John Swofford opened the meeting by congratulating Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and his staff for directing Team USA to the Olympic gold medal last summer in Beijing.
“(They) certainly made our country very proud,” Swofford said.
With reporters later, Krzyzewski displayed understated satisfaction about what must have been the thrill of a lifetime.
“It was pretty good,” he said.


- Ken Tysiac