It’s been an uneven early start for ACC Basketball. It certainly hasn’t been a vintage stuff, and not what we expect from the conference. With s much player turnover it wasn’t that unexpected though. The conference is still a respectable 4th in terms of conference RPI.
Saturday brought much needed clarity of who are the the ACC’s best teams, and are NCAA caliber, and who likely isn’t.
Let’s start at the top.
Forget the Stephen F Austin loss, Duke is on a roll and will be in the mix for a Number 1 NCAA seed the rest of the season. The destroyed a a pretty good Miami team on the road by 33 points tonight. As opposed to years past, Duke didn’t play their best basketball in November and December and is trending upward.
Florida State should be ranked in the top 10 after a strong win at Louisville.
Louisville is a good basketball team, but they better find additional scoring to help Jordan Nwora.
Virginia dominated Virginia Tech. The loss to South Carolina was a semi-fluke. The Hoos are a team that can get into the 2nd weekend of the NCAA tournament.
These are your 4 NCAA teams in the ACC. After that it is a total mess.
NC State, UNC and Pitt were the ACC teams hovering around the bubble, and hoping to get on the right side. All lost today.
NC State playing without CJ Bryce lost at previously winless in the ACC Clemson. Add that loss to a home Georgia Tech loss, and the Wolfpack have a lot of work to get back on the NCAA bubble.
UNC has their own injuries to deal with, and lost to Georgia Tech at home. The Heels basically no showed for the first 12 minutes of the game,fell behind by 24 and never could recover.
Pittsburgh looked like sneaky good ACC, team but loses to Wake Forest at home. Should we keep an eye on Wake Forest?
Ask me again if they beat Florida State at home next week.
Clemson and Georgia Tech are starting to healthy. Clemson has gotten Clyde Trapp back at guard and Georgia Tech has got Jose Alvarado back. Both players make those teams better, and that’s a problem for the rest of the ACC. Clemson and Georgia Tech were two the worst ACC teams during the pre-conference schedule, but now healthy they are capable of knocking off the ACC teams not in the top 4.
Syracuse and Notre Dame are building profiles that look more like NIT than NCAA.
Saturday’s results clarified what the ACC is looking at the rest of the season
I don’t see more than 6 NCAA bids max, and 4 are basically locked up already.
Virginia Tech has been a definite surprise, and has a great looking win over Michigan State. The resume is thin after that though, but they are the only other ACC team that can be considered for a 5th NCAA bid on January 4. There isn’t a 6th team at the moment.
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