Here's an article on the love
fest which seems to have broken out between C-well and Ed Cota. You'll
remember last season, Chris was all over Ed when Ed woofed about how good UNC
was, and C-well said he might call Ed and give him a hard time about playing in
the Western Regional.Â
Anyway, these guys are two of the elder statesman in the ACC now, so maybe
it's appropriate that they are more diplomatic. As Cota says, he's grown
up since last year. As C-well says, he does not own a Weber State cap
(contrary to popular opinion).
On the other hand, it's not even November.
This
all came up in Greensboro, at Operation
Basketball this weekend. Among other things, the coaches are upset
(still) over only getting three bids last season, and some feel there's a bit of
animosity towards the
ACC, but it may just be because the ACC is the only major conference left
where each team plays each other twice (an idea first brought up by Barry
Jacobs). If that's the case, the rising talent and coaching at virtually
every school will kill that soon enough. Not even the selection committtee can
deny reality indefinitely. Among other interesting comments, Guthridge says he hopes
Ford's role remains the same. Maybe in practice, but how could it in
recruiting when he won't even be able to rent a car?
Here's Gregg
Doyel's take on Operation Basketball, with lots of different angles
than the other NC papers. Here's an
article from Charlotte on Terrence Morris also, who is universally regarded
as a good guy, and rightly so.
Two overlooked themes of the weekend: 1) Duke is on the one hand being pitied
for losing so much talent - yet still being picked for second! 2) We haven't
seen anyone comment on this at all, but one of the absolute key developments of
the recent past is that Maryland is again the dominant team in the DC/Baltimore
area. This means that the ACC in general is in a much better situation to
recruit one of the truly elite talent beds in all of American high school
hoops. We don't like Gary Williams too much, but he's done the conference
a big favor.
Here's
a Clemson-centric article on the weekend and the NCAA controversy. Cliff
Ellis was the prophet of how to get in the NCAAs - who knew? Here's a more
hopeful view from Roanoke. And finally, here's an
FSU article - and they aren't very happy about where they are being picked.
They might have a point. We picked them in the bottom third, but we have a huge
respect for Steve Robinson, and the talent might be better than expected.