In the final day of the ACC regular season, Florida State dealt a severe blow to Virginia Tech's tournament hopes, winning 63-53 in Tallahassee, and Wake turned back a solid effort by Clemson, 96-88.
Clemson had a good first half and actually was within two with about eight minutes left before Wake took charge. Wake won despite foul trouble limiting Jeff Teague to 27 minutes largely because James Johnson and Al-Farouq Aminu had 21 points each and combined for 19 boards. Clemson is historically a good rebounding team, but Wake had a huge advantage there, winning the boards by 36-22 and 12-7 offensively.
You can't really call Terence Oglesby a secret weapon at this point, but Wake held the sharpshooter to nine points. Clemson thus has no bye for the first round - those go to UNC, Duke, Wake, and Florida State - and opens on Thursday with Georgia Tech, a team they've beaten twice.
In Tallahassee, Toney Douglas picked up a basketball shiv and stuck it between Virginia Tech's shoulderblades. When Virginia Tech was within three, at 45-42, the sensational guard scored a dozen points to push them back again. The only other guy to score in that stretch was Solomon Alabi, who hit a basket. That's pretty imposing, and Seth Greenberg can be forgiven if he feels somewhat tormented.
So the tournament pairings are set, and life doesn't get any easier for Greenberg and his team. They finished 1-6 in their last seven conference games, and while Duke, UNC and Florida State were understandable, losing to Maryland and Virginia, those were pretty bad.  There's no way to spin 1-6. They'll face Miami on Thursday, and the Hurricanes are going to have to play their way in, just like Tech would. And if they win that one, then they'll likely run into UNC in the next round. So they're likely looking at an NIT bid. It must be dispiriting to have finished like this.
Virginia Tech, Miami and Maryland have some hope left, but they'll have to win. Maryland would have to beat State - definitely doable - and then Wake Forest. They almost beat them in College Park, so you'd have to think they could do it.  Odds are they'd face Duke after that, and you know they'd be up for that. We'll take a closer look at that later.
Coming up this week: all the votes for ACC honors.
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