Obviously we're Duke guys, but we have to take issue with Andrew Jones's latest matchup in his ACC fantasy coaches tournament: he has Rick Barnes beating Duke's Bill Foster. With all due respect, while they were perhaps evenly matched as coaches, Foster had the better players. Consider:
The best player Barnes had at Clemson was probably Terrell McIntyre. We're big fans of his, but where do they go after him? Tom Wideman? Iker Iturbe?
Okay, Greg Buckner.
He was a solid ACC player and has made a career in the NBA which wasn't guaranteed, so kudos to him. But he wasn't the ACC player Gene Banks was, and to have them matched up and suggest that they were equals - well, it's hard to make the argument.
And you still have to deal with Mike Gminski (no answer there), Kenny Dennard, Jim Spanarkel, and you still have to deal with John Harrell, a vastly underrated point guard who made no mistakes, and supersub Vince Taylor.
But what's surprising is who Jones left off: only one of Duke's best players ever, an Olympian, a first-round draft pick, and a phenomenal shooter who would have been even better with the three point shot: Tate Armstrong. He could have gone off for 35 points on any night if he had had the three point shot available.
And don't forget, he didn't have much support when he played for Foster. If you had put him on a team with Gminski, Banks, Dennard and Spanarkel, they would have been even more dangerous, because you could not put a zone on Armstrong. Bad move to leave him off.