In Thursday night ACC action, State lost at home to FSU, 72-62, and and Clemson beat Miami, 79-69.
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| ACC Standings | |||||||||||||
| North Carolina | 11-2 | .846 | 26-2 | .929 | |||||||||
| Duke | 11-2 | .846 | 24-3 | .889 | |||||||||
| Clemson | 8-5 | .615 | 20-7 | .741 | |||||||||
| Virginia Tech | 8-6 | .571 | 17-11 | .607 | |||||||||
| Maryland | 7-6 | .538 | 17-11 | .607 | |||||||||
| Wake Forest | 6-6 | .500 | 16-9 | .640 | |||||||||
| Miami | 6-7 | .462 | 19-8 | .704 | |||||||||
| Florida State | 6-8 | .429 | 17-12 | .586 | |||||||||
| Georgia Tech | 4-8 | .333 | 11-15 | .423 | |||||||||
| Boston College | 4-9 | .308 | 13-13 | .500 | |||||||||
| NC State | 4-10 | .286 | 15-13 | .536 | |||||||||
| Virginia | 3-9 | .250 | 13-12 | .520 | |||||||||
Here's how bad it was for State: Sidney Lowe was disgusted with his starters and said they were "just awful." Marques Johnson felt compelled to apologize to the fans.
It's hard to understand what happened to this team. State got - this is remarkable - only three offensive rebounds for the game. All three were by reserves, too: Trevor Ferguson got one and Tracy Smith got two.
Nobody took more than seven shots; nobody hit more than four. There's not much of a bright side, but here it is: Ferguson, a kid we told you last year had some potential, scored 17 points and had his second good game in a row. Tracy Smith had 11 points and four boards off the bench. Ben McCauley by contrast, had no points and no boards.
If the starters aren't interested, perhaps young Sidney should start the bench. Not much to lose at this point.
Still, you can expect them to suck it up for Duke on Saturday.
Speaking of El Sid, we understand his mother had a heart attack. The easy joke would be to say that watching his team did it but we'll skip that. It's not easy knowing your mom is ailing and worse when you can't just leave work to go be with her. Let's all send best wishes and prayers to the Lowe family.
Miami got down to Clemson but came back in the second half to take the lead. At that point, Clemson swatted them aside and took control. Clemson blew a 21 point lead, but that they didn't collapse says a lot about the Tigers.
The only game Thursday is Maryland at Wake Forest. It's critical for both. Neither has any guarantees at this point, but Wake could move ahead of Maryland in the standings, and Maryland could guarantee themselves a .500 finish. So it's a big deal.