The ACC announced on Friday new scheduling formats that will take effect when Pittsburgh and Syracuse begin league play, officially making the ACC a 14-team conference. Among the changes:
-A nine-game conference schedule in football.
-And an 18-game conference schedule in basketball, in which each of the 14 teams will play twice a year against one permanent partner. Games between permanent partners are only ones that will be guaranteed to happen twice per season. Given that North Carolina’s permanent partner is Duke, that means that in two out of every three seasons North Carolina and N.C. State will play just once during the regular season.
It’s the announcement of the changes to the basketball schedule that has created quite an uproar among ACC traditionalists. After all, UNC and N.C. State have played one another twice during the regular season in every year since 1920. And now, in most seasons, the Tar Heels and Wolfpack will meet but once per season.
John Swofford, ACC Commissioner, spoke on Friday with The Charlotte Observer about several issues related to the announcement of the new scheduling formats. Here’s the Q-and-A:
Q: Given the announcement of these new scheduling formats, is there a clearer idea now about when Pitt and Syracuse will officially begin play in the ACC?
John Swofford: Well not in terms of a certain point. You know, I think what [with] the decisions that have been made, the good point is that the competition decisions are now complete with the input of Pitt and Syracuse and we know how we will schedule. We know the championship formats, generally, going forward. We’ve got a little work to do with a few of those. But we know how we will compete, how we will schedule. And therefore, when the appropriate time comes for Pitt and Syracuse to join us, we’re ready to go with that. So we’ll be able to move quickly when we know a date certain on that.
Q: In regards to basketball, the first thing that caught a lot of people’s attention is that UNC and N.C. State will no longer be guaranteed to play twice a season. What is your reaction to the criticism the league has received?
JS: With a 14-team league, what our athletic directors and coaches wanted first and foremost was an equitable schedule. And a schedule in which people saw and played each other as much as possible, given some parameters that you have some limitation of the number of conference games you can or should play. But the commitment by the schools was to as equitable a schedule as possible, from a competitive standpoint. Which you can’t totally have unless you’re playing a full round-robin. But you want to get as close to that as possible.
As it turned out, in the discussions there, there was a strong feeling, pretty much across the board, that the one partner approach was the best way to accomplish the most equitable schedule and accomplish the commitment to playing each other as much as possible year in and year out. And I think any traditionalist would like to see certain games guaranteed to be played twice a year, but you have to look at this as the schools did – as a full conference and as a 14-member playing conference. And sometimes as you do that, and as our schools, athletic directors and coaches did that, it’s a little difficult to pick out certain games and set them aside outside of a reasonable and fair and equitable scheduling format.
So you gain an awful lot of good things and I think without question fans throughout the footprint will enjoy seeing Pitt and Syracuse, which have been two of the most successful programs in the country. Pitt’s the winningest program in the Big East over the last decade and obviously Syracuse’s tradition and history is evident, as well as their current success. And those games that will be created with those partners throughout the footprint will be very, very appealing. But you lose certain things and you can a lot of other things. You know, the State-Carolina rivalry is a special one and has been for a long time and that without question will continue to be.
Q: Is there any chance the permanent partners could be readjusted going forward?
JS: We really haven’t discussed it in that light. I don’t know that anything is absolutely in concrete, but I don’t think the schools are going into this with the intention of altering those down the road.
Q: One of the concerns with a nine-game football schedule is that it creates imbalance with some teams playing five home games, others only four. How much discussion was there about that particular problem point that comes with a nine-game schedule?
JS: Well it complicates life a little bit for [athletic directors] in terms of their scheduling. One of the things that was requested, and it appears that we can do is to do that by divisions. So that all the teams in each division are playing the same number of home and away games in any particular year. From a fairness standpoint, at least that’s the way we intend to start out in our scheduling. That can be certainly addressed. Some of us have been in situations before where you have an unequal number of conference games. And you just have to work a little more diligently in balancing your home and away schedules during those years and how you schedule your non-conference games.
Q: So that will be the case – that each team in each division will have the same number of home and away games?
JS: Well that’s the intention. So that at least starting out, so that one year the Atlantic Division teams would have maybe five home games and four away and then the next year, it would reverse and the Coastal would have the same number. That would make it the most equitable in terms of determining divisional champions.
Q: In regards to the ACC basketball tournament, each of the 14 teams will compete in that but a format has yet to be set there. What’s the timetable to decide the conference tournament format?
JS: Well our focus on this point, our intention at this point is to probably make that determination at our spring meeting in May. We’ve got a subcommittee which is charged with coming up with the best formats for consideration by the athletic directors for the tournament. And they’ve already begun their work and should have something ready for presentation to the full group in May. But the one aspect of it that has been determined is a strong feeling throughout the league that all 14 schools should be a part of the tournament, and that now we’ve just got to try and figure out for the fans and for the players the best possible format for a 14-team tournament and what would work most effectively.
--Andrew Carter
Saturday, February 4, 2012
ACC Commissioner John Swofford discusses new scheduling formats
Friday, February 3, 2012
ACC's new basketball schedule could mean fewer N.C. State-UNC matchups
N.C. State no longer will be guaranteed home-and-away basketball matchups with North Carolina in the new 18-game conference schedule announced this morning by the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The ACC announced a new scheduling format this morning for when Syracuse and Pittsburgh join the league. According to the new schedule, beginning in 2012-13, each school will play every other league team at least once each season, but each school will have only one "primary partner" for guaranteed home-and-away games.
According to the release issued today following the approval of the schedules by the ACC's faculty athletic representatives and athletics directors gathered for the league's winter meetings in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., the primary partners in basketball will be:
Duke and North Carolina
N.C. State and Wake Forest
Boston College and Syracuse
Clemson and Georgia Tech
Florida State and Miami
Maryland and Pitt
Virginia and Virginia Tech
According to the scheduling model's three-year cycle, ACC teams will play every league opponent at least once in basketball, with the primary partners playing home and away annually while the other 12 rotate in groups of four:
One year both home and away
One year at home only
One year away only.
Primary partners will play a total of six times in the schedule's three-year cycle and will play all other conference opponents four times. All 14 teams will compete in the ACC men's and women's basketball tournaments, regardless of the regular-season standings.
"We have been engaged in discussions on the various options for integrating Pitt and Syracuse since early fall," ACC Commissioner John Swofford said in a league statement. "It's a tremendous tribute to the leadership at our schools that we will be able to seamlessly add Pitt and Syracuse at the appropriate time when they become full playing members."
For football, Syracuse will join the Atlantic Division and Pitt will join the Coastal Division. With the two Big East schools switching to the ACC, the league will play a nine-game conference schedule, including six division games, one game against a primary crossover partner from the other division and two rotating opponents from the other division. The nine-game ACC schedule also means that some teams will have the advantage of five home games and four road games, while others will have to play five road games and will get only four at home.
The current primary crossover partners for football will remain consistent with Syracuse and Pitt becoming each other's primary crossover partner.
According to the ACC, the six-year cycle for this schedule will allow each team to play each divisional opponent and its primary crossover partner six times (three home and three away) while also playing each rotating crossover opponent two times (one home and one away).
--Lorenzo Perez
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Harrison Barnes sits out practice
Barnes’ status for the Heels’ practice on Friday, and their game on Saturday at Maryland, remains in doubt. After traveling to Maryland, No. 5 UNC returns home to host No. 7 Duke next Wednesday night.
Barnes suffered the injury during the first half against the Demon Deacons. He said he “rolled” his ankle running down the court. He left the game and proceeded to the Tar Heels’ locker room, where a trainer re-taped his ankle.
He returned late in the first half and played most of the second. He finished with 13 points in 27 minutes but acknowledged that he was in pain after the game ended. He said he hoped that rest and icing his ankle would make it feel better.
UNC didn’t practice on Wednesday, when tests confirmed Barnes’ ankle sprain.
Mental toughness part of Pack's growth
Three Points from Wednesday's 56-51 win at Boston College:
1) Body language counts
When Richard Howell, Lorenzo Brown and C.J. Leslie slumped their shoulders, dropped their heads and sloughed off to the locker room at halftime, they were greeted with a warning from N.C. State coach Mark Gottfried.
"I told them that is not acceptable and we won't do that — and we have not done that any night this year," Gottfried said. "We were allowing things to bother us. Mentally, we were out of synch."
There have been a lot "that didn't happen last year" moments for the Wolfpack this season, which matched its ACC win total (five) for the past two seasons on Wednesday in only eight games, but that was one of the first "that did happen all the time last year" moments of Gottfried's tenure.
Bad body language was a hallmark of recent N.C. State teams but that was usually during a lopsided loss, not a game it was actually winning at the half, albeit by only two points (25-23).
The players responded the right way to Gottfried's hammer-dropping message, which was a departure from his usual positive-reinforcement methods. BC made State earn the win, and that's what the Pack did with an assortment of key plays from Howell (10 points, eight boards), Brown (seven assists) and Leslie (13 points, six boards).
"Rather than quitting, our guys hung in there and got over it," Gottfried said.
Mental toughness was rarely a hallmark of the previous two State teams, and beating BC doesn't qualify as a breakthrough, but it is progress that the coach can identify a glaring problem — one that everyone in the building or with a TV could see — and correct it before the end of the game.
2) Winning without your fastball
Sometimes you have to win without your fastball and N.C. State needed all of its pitches to labor through Wednesday's win over Boston College.
State played hard in the first half but did not shoot well (9 of 27). The Pack shot well in the second half (10 of 18) but was out-rebounded by the worst rebounding team in the ACC (30 to 28) and went stretches where it couldn't execute an entry pass to the post.
"We didn't play particularly great," Gottfried said. "But what I liked, even on a night when we struggled to score, we still found a way to win."
Points, and possessions, were difficult to come by for the entire game because BC slowed the game down, milked the shot clock and ran its halfcourt sets with Sisyphean, yet admirable, diligence.
The Eagles got some timely scoring from wings Matt Humphrey (15 points) and Lonnie Jackson (10) and eight rebounds each from bigs Dennis Clifford and Ryan Anderson.
Jackson had a four-point play on the first possession of the second half, and followed that up 3 minutes later with three throws, after getting fouled by Scott Wood on a 3-point attempt. Humphrey's 3-pointer from the right corner, after an offensive rebound from Clifford gave him a second chance and gave BC a 40-37 lead with 7:24 left.
The game was tied at 44 at 5:17 before Leslie scored four straight points to give the Pack control of the game. Leslie's play was indicative of the team's. He was 2 of 9 in the first half, but made all three of his second-half shots.
"Even when we were missing layups, we were able to mentally hang there because that could have easily went the other way," Gottfried said.
3) General apathy and major boredom
Boston is a pro sports town, even if the Patriots weren't in the Super Bowl. And even in Boston College's finest hour, it's the fifth fiddle behind the Pats, Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics and its own fans prefer watching the hockey team, a national power, to the basketball team.
I get that.
BC is a small private school (undergrad enrollment: 9,200) without the world's largest fan base.
I get that, too.
And this BC team, while extremely well-coached, is nowhere near its salad days of Big East glory under Gary Williams or Jim O'Brien, nor does not qualify as must-see basketball.
Double-check.
Still, Wednesday's turnout was embarrassing for a conference that used to pride itself and be defined by its basketball excellence. The announced crowd was 3,611 but there were probably about 2,000 people in the building.
(The Conte Forum, which looks like a train depot and is perfectly acceptable college facility, has a capacity of 8,606, the second-smallest venue in the ACC. Miami, shocking!, has the smallest, 7,000.)
Maybe, as the Carolina Hurricanes famously told The New York Times during the 2001 Stanley Cup playoffs, Wednesday is a "big church night," I don't know but I do know that almost seven years after joining the ACC, clearly, there's minimal fan interest in Boston for the ACC.
There are valid reasons for that, I'm not disputing that, just pointing out the reality. And please don't confuse this for nostalgia for "the good old days" of the ACC (although I do miss the round robin), it's just a fact.
Fan apathy, especially in the newer ACC markets (Miami's gym was again on Wednesday for Maryland's visit) is one of the factors in the league's declining image and product.
(Rhetorical aside: Which two teams would you rather have watched play last night: A) State-BC B) Maryland-Miami or C) State-Maryland?)
Expansion happened, at some point I'll get over that, probably when someone from the ACC admits they killed their basketball brand in the process.
--J.P. Giglio
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
No. 5 UNC at Wake Forest: 3 things to watch
CHAPEL HILL — No. 5 North Carolina travels tonight to play Wake Forest (9 p.m., ESPNU) in Winston-Salem. Three things to watch while the Tar Heels attempt to improve to 6-1 in the ACC:
North Carolina’s advantage on the inside, particularly when it comes to rebounding. No matter what metric you use, it’s clear that Wake Forest is a bad rebounding team. The Demon Deacons rank 11th in the ACC in average rebounds per game (33) and they’re also 11th in offensive rebounding percentage and defensive rebounding percentage.
So not only does Wake not give itself a lot of second-chance opportunities after misses, but the Deacs also give away plenty of second-chance opportunities to opponents. This is a bad matchup for Wake Forest in part because UNC has been such a good rebounding team. The Tar Heels lead the ACC in offensive rebounding percentage (41 percent) and are second in the league in defensive rebounding percentage.
So, yes, could be a big night, indeed, for UNC big men Tyler Zeller and John Henson, both of whom have averaged nearly 10 rebounds per game.
James Michael McAdoo’s continued progression. McAdoo arrived in college with as much hype, perhaps, as any incoming recruit in the nation. Part of that is because of his family background, but another part of that is because people thought he was just that good.
But the transition from high school star to college contributor has been a difficult one at times for McAdoo. Still, there have been signs lately that he is starting to emerge. For one, UNC coach Roy Williams said on Monday that McAdoo’s best practices have come during the past two weeks. Williams said he and McAdoo shared a conversation last weekend after McAdoo expressed some frustration.
McAdoo responded with perhaps his best overall game of the season on Sunday in the Tar Heels’ 93-81 victory against Georgia Tech. He finished with 9 points and six rebounds and was aggressive offensively as he has been this season. That’s a positive sign.
With the loss of Dexter Strickland and the promotion of Reggie Bullock into the starting lineup, the Heels need their bench to be more productive. If McAdoo can become a reliable contributor – especially on offense – that’d be a bonus for UNC down the stretch.
Evolution of UNC’s rotation and experimentation at point guard. This isn’t likely to be a close game during the second half and if that’s the case, it should allow Williams an opportunity to continue to experiment with his rotation.
Two games after Strickland’s season-ending knee injury, some things are clearer than others. Obviously, Bullock has cemented his role as a starter. But Williams is still tinkering some with how he wants to bring guys off the bench, and how he wants to use Bullock defensively.
Williams said on Monday he hoped Bullock would develop into the kind of defensive player who’s capable of guarding an opposing team’s point guard. He’s not there yet. As for UNC’s point guard situation, freshman Stilman White has provided some valuable minutes here and there during the Heels’ past two victories.
We also saw Justin Watts, the senior guard, in at point guard for a bit near the end of the Georgia Tech game on Sunday. If the margin is wide enough in the second half, we could see that again – or, perhaps, a version of the offense without any kind of point guard.
Of course, UNC would need to be comfortably ahead to see such experimentation.
Final thought: This is a difficult matchup for Wake Forest, which doesn’t rebound effectively and doesn’t shoot at that well from the outside (Deacons’ 33.1 3-point field goal percentage ranks 11th in the ACC). Teams that have performed well against UNC this season have rebounded and shot well. The Tar Heels should win with ease.
-- Andrew Carter
Monday, January 30, 2012
Wolfpack's Howell must avoid silly fouls
N.C. State forward Richard Howell had a career-best 18 rebounds against Virginia on Saturday but fouled out for the third straight game.
Howell, a junior, had fouled out in only two career games before N.C. State's trip to Miami on Jan. 22. He fouled out, after playing only 18 minutes against the Canes, after 16 minutes against UNC last Thursday and 28 minutes on Saturday.
Howell, who lost 20 pounds in the offseason, is more fit this season and has been more aggressive on defense, pressuring the ball on the perimeter, going for and getting more steals (23 in 22 games, compared with 25 in 30 games last season). But he's also picking up more reaching fouls 25-feet from the basket, one area coach Mark Gottfried would like to see Howell eliminate.
"Those are the ones that are going to catch up to him," Gottfried said Monday on the weekly conference call. "He has to stay aggressive but at the same time, eliminate the fouls that are inconsequential."
Howell leads the Wolfpack in rebounding and ranks third in the ACC, with 9.4 per game. His scoring average, 11.7, is also up more four points per game game.
-- J.P. Giglio
Blue Devils bad on defense, or just misunderstood?
Two days after expressing disgust at Duke’s second-half effort against St. John’s, Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski was more sanguine Monday in his assessments about his team.
Krzyzewski was most explicit when discussing Duke’s defense.
“Overall, we’ve had to play pretty (darn) good defense in order to have the record we have against the competition we have,” Krzyzewski said. “I don’t care what stats there are out there.”
The stats that are out there don’t paint a pretty picture.
The Blue Devils’ defense ranks 11th in the ACC in scoring defense and last in field-goal percentage defense. In Ken Pomeroy’s adjusted defense rankings, which take tempo into account, Duke ranks 94th in the NCAA.
“We’re not inherently a defensive team – the mentality of these kids,” Krzyzewski said. “They’re more offensive players. But they’ve shown that they can play really good defense. We just have to get it going for longer periods of time.”
After allowing easy buckets on St. John’s first four possessions Saturday, Duke’s defense was fine for the rest of the first half and the start of the second, allowing the Blue Devils to build a 22-point lead.
Over the final 17 minutes, however, Duke seemed to lose interest, perhaps assuming the game had been won.
“Some of our worst defense has been with the leads,” Krzyzewski said. “But in order to get the leads, you have to play good defense. We’re striving for consistency.”
Part of the issue is that the Blue Devils don’t have a lock-down defender who can play multiple positions, a la Nolan Smith. Tyler Thornton comes closest, as he can match up on point guards and wing players, but there aren’t many players beyond him.
“It’s a different team than we’ve had,” Krzyzewski said. “We’ve know that since China and Dubai. We’re not going to be this juggernaut defensively. We have to keep striving to get better.”
-- Jack Daly
Tar Heels' concentration waned vs. Georgia Tech
CHAPEL HILL — No. 7 North Carolina defeated Georgia Tech 93-81 at the Smith Center on Sunday night. A look back and the highlights and lowlights:
Why the Tar Heels won: North Carolina dominated the first half so much that Tar Heels coach Roy Williams said he was “pleased about everything” his team did during the first 20 minutes. The Heels excelled offensively, making 8 of their 12 3-pointers, and they dominated on the defensive end, too. UNC led 52-32 at halftime, and the game was basically over by then. Williams criticized UNC’s focus in the second half, when Georgia Tech outscored the Heels 49-41. But UNC’s second-half sluggishness didn’t much matter to the final result, which had already been long decided.
The good: The Heels shot a season-high 62.5 percent from 3-point range. UNC made 10 3’s overall – just one short of a season-high of 11, which the Heels made against Kentucky and Tennessee State. A coach would welcome a good shooting night like tonight any time, but it had be especially welcome to Williams given UNC’s recent shooting woes. The Heels had been shooting 24.6 percent from 3-point range in ACC play before Sunday night. Also good: Harrison Barnes, especially in the second half. He finished with a game-high 23 points and made all three of his 3’s. Tyler Zeller had another solid game, with 17 points – but only three rebounds – and John Henson finished with 13 points and three assists.
The bad: UNC’s focus and intensity waned in the second half, which perhaps wasn’t too surprising given how dominant the Heels were in the first half. Georgia Tech is one of the worst offensive teams in the ACC but you wouldn’t have known it based on how the Yellow Jackets played in the second half. Georgia Tech’s 49 second-half points were tied for the second-most it has scored in any half this season. The Jackets, one of the worst 3-point shooting teams in the conference, also made 7 of their 10 3’s in the second half against UNC. Williams gave credit to the Jackets for playing well, but he was frustrated with UNC’s second half performance, too.
Key stat: The Tar Heels made 10 of their 16 3-pointers – a welcome sight for a team that had been struggling with its perimeter shooting.
Key stat II: UNC forced Georgia Tech into 15 turnovers. It wasn’t an overwhelming number, but the Heels took advantage of the Jackets’ miscues and turned those turnovers into 18 points. UNC outscored Georgia Tech 18-4 in points off of turnovers.
UNC player of the game: Barnes. He finished with 23 points and played one of his better halves in the second half on Sunday night. Coincidentally – or perhaps not coincidentally – Barnes switched shoes at halftime. He traded a pair of pink shoes, which UNC wore as part of a cause to raise awareness for breast cancer, for the regular shoes that he wears. He said he felt much more comfortable in his normal shoes.
Quotable: “We’re good shooters. I mean, we really are. We make a bunch of them in practice all the time. So I’ve said the whole time that I thought that, I believe that – when we started making them it would make things even a lot prettier. And again I believe I said when we started making them. I don’t think I said if.” –UNC coach Roy Williams on his team’s perimeter shooting.
-- Andrew Carter
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Young coaches retain UNC pride, but focus on new mission
Driving west down I-40 somewhere between Hillsborough and Mebane on Thursday night, it felt like I was going the wrong way. It felt like all of the college basketball fans in North Carolina were driving toward Chapel Hill to watch the UNC-N.C. State game, while I was driving to the Greensboro Coliseum to watch UNC Greensboro face Appalachian State.
I was going there to write the column that appears in Sunday's paper about two former Tar Heel players, Wes Miller and Jason Capel, who are now two of the three youngest coaches in Division I basketball.
I'm told that a raucous 21,000 fans showed up at the Smith Center that night, while the crowd at the Greensboro Coliseum was mostly friends and family, sort of like the old 8-9 game at the ACC Tournament.
Both games started at 7 p.m., and naturally I was interested in what was going on in Chapel Hill. I followed it intermittently online while watching my game.
When the two games were over, I felt I had made the right decision.
UNCG and Appalachian State went to overtime partly because of a coach's error you'll have to read the story to believe. No mention of the Tar Heels' game was ever made at the Greensboro Coliseum that night. No announcement of out-of-town scores. No score updates on the video board. Nothing.
Afterward, I was curious about how closely the two UNC alums still followed the Tar Heels.
Capel said that since becoming a head coach, he hasn't had time to follow his alma mater as closely as he once did. He waited until he boarded the team bus for the ride home to Boone to turn on his cell phone and check the UNC score because "I was pretty confident they won."
When he saw that UNC had defeated N.C. State 74-55, he teased his assistant coach, Justin Gainey, a former Wolfpack guard.
"I gave Justin a little hard time," Capel says. "He's a State guy, and I wanted to let him know that his Pack got beat."
Miller also admitted that he doesn't follow the Tar Heels as ardently as he once did, even saying that had his team not been playing opposite the UNC game, he probably would have been watching tape of an upcoming opponent instead.
But like Capel, Miller revealed his Carolina pride when I spoke to him about an hour after his Spartans had beaten Appalachian State, and I asked him if he knew the UNC score.
"No," Miller said. "Did they win?" I told him yes. "Yeah," he said, pumping his fist. "How much did they win by?" I told him it was a comfortable 19-point victory. A proud smile creased Miller's face and he said, "That's the way it should be."
- Tim Crothers
Gottfried has the Wolfpack hustling, but there's more work to do
1) Effort vs. execution
Effort was a problem for N.C. State before coach Mark Gottfried was hired. "Was" as in past tense and Saturday's loss to Virginia is the latest proof of how far a State team, made up of essentially the same players as a year ago, has come on the effort front.
Any of Rich Howell's nine offensive rebounds, or the three jump-ball tie-ups on Virginia's end he caused, qualify as proof, but there's also the matter of State's defensive effort as a team in the second half.
Virginia's a low-scoring team, 243rd in the country, by Tony Bennett's design, but the Cavaliers scored 38 points in the first half, on some incredible shooting (15 of 25), but State responded in the second half by holding the Cavaliers to 4 of 18 and 23 points.
"If they play that hard every night, we're going to win a lot of games this year," Gottfried said. "We have won a lot of games, we're going to win a lot more. The effort, that's your takeaway from tonight's game, there's no question."
It was the kind of "phenomenal" effort, as Gottfried put it, you would expect from a team fighting for a spot in the NCAA tournament (see Point 2) and it was the kind of desperate effort most of Sidney Lowe's five teams either severely lacked or did not have the wherewithal to summon at the appropriate moment.
But effort didn't lose the game on Saturday, poor shooting did. And, yes, Virginia, is one of the most disciplined defenses in the country but the Cavaliers are not particularly talented nor do they have one especially dominant defender, like UNC does in John Henson.
Virginia just makes you earn every shot, like the one on State's last possession, which was a contested 3-pointer at the buzzer that didn't hit the rim.
State finished 2 of 15 from the 3-point line, its worst performance in seven ACC games, and second-worst of the season. The Pack was 1 of 8 in a 60-58 win over Princeton, a game which it didn't have its best 3-point shooter, Scott Wood, for 36 minutes because of an ankle injury.
Wood was 2-8 on Saturday, which means the rest of the team was 0-7. It wasn't a matchup problem for Wood, either, he was mostly being defended by Sammy Zeglinski, a shorter player. UVa, with its team principles, gets some credit for Wood's poor shooting, but not all of it.
"I just didn't make shots," Wood said. "Personally, a lot of its on me. That's why I'm there. I'm not there to be Ben Wallace in the paint and block every shot. I'm there to knock down shots and I didn't do that tonight."
State's real shooting woes were where UVa couldn't defend — the foul line. In a one-point loss, that can't happen. In the first six ACC games, State hit 72.1 percent (80 of 111) of its free throws. Against UVa, it made 57.1 percent (12 of 21), compared to 69.6 percent (16 of 23) by the Hoos.
"We had a night where we had some great looks and we couldn't make a shot," Gottfried said. "We're a terrific foul-shooting team and we couldn't make a foul shot."
2) On the outside looking in
The UNC loss on Thursday was a two-by-four to the skull, but the Virginia loss was a straight shot to the solar plexus.
No one should have expected State to beat the best team in the ACC on the road on Thursday, but Saturday's game — against a team in both its conference and RPI peer group (both teams started the week in the 50s in the RPI) — was a must-win.
Now, State needs to put on its work boots to end a five-year NCAA tournament drought, a position that could have been avoided by winning some/any/all of the winnable games (Indiana, Stanford, Virginia, Vanderbilt), nevermind the the pie-in-the-sky variety wouldas and couldas against UNC or Syracuse.
Despite UVa's national ranking (No. 19 in the AP top 25), it was in the same bubble as State. The Hoos started the week at No. 53 in the RPI, compared to No. 55 for State. Bennett's team picked up a nice nonconference win over Michigan (28 in the RPI) and a decent win at Oregon (62), but it needs more meaningful ACC wins. And now it has one over State and the two teams won't play again in the regular season.
Bennett's third team is in better position to make the NCAA tournament after last night's win than it has been at any point during the season. The opposite is true for State.
Realistically, State could be 18-4, with wins over Indiana, Stanford and Virginia. Instead, the Pack is 15-7 with its best wins out of the league over Texas (70), St. Bonaventure (85) and Princeton (108) and wins in side the league over Miami (67) and Maryland (96). That's not going to get it done on Selection Sunday.
At 4-3 in the ACC, State has nine league games left but really only three that will matter to the selection committee — at Duke, No. 2 in the RPI, on Feb. 16, and at home against No. 23 Florida State (Feb. 18) and No. 13 UNC (Feb. 21).
State also has a pair of land-mine games on the road at Clemson (Feb. 25) and at Virginia Tech (March 4), but neither of those games will qualify as quality wins. Both Clemson and Virginia Tech are hard-working but extremely limited offensive teams. Their seasons will end in the NIT, State has to find one or two wins against Duke-FSU-UNC to avoid the same fate.
3) Big players play big ...
UNC is the only ACC roster with more talented players than State's Lorenzo Brown and C.J. Leslie. Brown and Leslie are All-ACC caliber players with NBA potential. They've each had shining moments in the first 21 games and have played well with State's complementary parts (Scott Wood, C.J. Williams and Rich Howell) but in order for State to beat good teams — and Virginia qualifies as one — those two guys have to be on.
Leslie, with Henson nowhere in a 20-mile radius, was on his game against UVa. He produced a team-best 17 points, with three really good assists, in 33 minutes. It was a nice bounceback effort from Leslie, after predictably struggling with the bigger Henson and UNC on Thursday, and the latest sign of Leslie's progress and maturity as a sophomore.
But Brown, who has been fantastic for most of the season, finished with eight points, four assists and four turnovers in 37 minutes. State needs more from him, and not just on the last possession. (You have to tip your hat to UVa on that play, they just defended Brown well on it).
Brown was being defended by Jontel Evans for most of the game. Evans is a strong point guard, a football player really moonlighting in basketball, but he's only 5-11. Brown, who's a legit 6-4, needed to be more aggressive in shooting over Evans and/or posting him up on the low block. I only counted one possession where Brown posted him up, and he immediately passed it back out to the 3-point line, to Leslie of all people.
Brown finished Saturday's game without a trip to the free-throw line. Gottfried questioned the contact on the last play by Evans but officiating is not the reason Brown didn't attempt a free-throw in the entire game. His unwillingness to take the ball to the basket with a purpose is why.
Bottom line, Brown and Leslie have to be great for State to be great and only half of the equation was there on Saturday.
-- J.P. Giglio
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