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ACC Roundup

By DBR Archives

For former Xavier coaches now in the ACC, it's the best of times and the worst of
times, as Skip Prosser has led Wake to a share of the ACC regular season title, at least,
while his former boss, Pete Gillen, has seen a pretty thorough collapse at UVa that
threatens to make even the NIT a longshot.

Wake Forest 12-3 22-4
Maryland 11-4 19-7
Duke 10-4 20-5
NC State 9-6 16-10
Georgia Tech 6-9 13-13
Clemson 5-10 15-11
North Carolina 5-10 15-14
Virginia 5-10 14-14
Florida State 4-11 13-13

Wake beat UNC, 75-60, to
win a share of the conference regular season title, their first since 1995, and it's a
masterful coaching job. Wake Forest, in a single swoop, has overcome their view of
themselves as being too small to succeed, and pushed past Duke, Maryland, and UNC, the
recent masters of the conference in other words, to secure at least a share of first.
The title for the ACC is decided in the post-season, a fact which seems to have
eluded Maryland fans a lot lately, but Wake's accomplishment is significant.

Incidentally, with their experience and playing very well as of late, it's hard to not
favor Maryland in the three-day slugfest this time around. If so, we hope the Terp fans
will be consistent and recognize Wake as the conference champions.

For Virginia, you just have to wonder what the heck has happened, because the wheels
have basically fallen off. Gillen has found a lot of excuses, blaming the slide
either on the point guard situation or on a lack of character, but it's all at his
doorstep. This team has some serious problems, with several players having attitude
problems. Start with the suspended Keith Jenifer, who has now asked for his release,
and continue through Travis Watson, whose unhappiness has probably cost him dearly in the
NBA draft, and go on through the rest. It's a big mess is what it is. It's so
bad that road-phobic Georgia Tech
just completely dominated the 'Hoos in Charlottesville, and this year, that's
ridiculous. It's so bad in fact that UVa has now fallen all the way to having to
worry about the play-in game: going in to the Tech game, UNC, UVa and Tech
were at 5-9. Now UNC and UVa are at 5-10. Virginia gets Maryland this weekend,
and UNC gets Duke.

Finally, some serious props should go out to State. The Wolfpack went to Clemson
with a thin bench, two serious injuries, a sick Julius Hodge, and a bad road record, and gutted out a tough win.
They have a huge game against Wake Forest this weekend, which will likely decide their
tournament fate, but we say at 9-6, they should be in. If they manage to beat Wake,
and Duke and Maryland both finish with four losses, then there would be a three-way tie
for first. What fun!

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