In ACC action Saturday, Wake Forest gets Virginia, State takes on Georgia Tech, Miami heads up to Tallahassee, and Clemson tangles with Virginia Tech.
As of right now, the dominant story this weekend is the weather: Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Maryland (on Sunday) play at home in the face of one of the worst snowstorms in recent Virginia/Maryland history. Congratulations Gary Williams: now you can truly caught yourself an Alaskan.
According to ACC rules, as long as both teams and two officials make it, a game shall be played.
Carolina left early and as long as two officials can get to the arena Sunday that game is on.
In Charlottesville, Whitey Reid of the Daily Progress reports that the game will be played. Here's the relevant part of the press release from UVa:
CHARLOTTESVILLE: The Atlantic Coast Conference men's basketball game between Wake Forest and Virginia will be played as scheduled at John Paul Jones Arena on Saturday (Feb. 6). The game is scheduled to begin at noon and will be televised by Raycom.
ACC protocol indicates games should be played if both teams and two of the three game officials have arrived at the site. The Wake Forest team is in Charlottesville as are the three game officials.
"We are following ACC protocol and Saturday's game will be played,"Â said Virginia Athletics Director Craig Littlepage. "Fans should make certain they can get safely to the game before making the decision to attend in these weather conditions. We encourage fans having to travel by car to stay at home and watch the game on television."
The release goes on to say that the Virginia Tech game will be played as well.
However, in all three cases, the home-court advantage may be significantly diminished.
(As a side note, this is kind of cool: the Crozet hardware store received a last-minute truckload of snow shovels. They were pretty much gone by 10 a.m. -- apparently word got out on Twitter similarly, today we saw a truck with an ad, which simply listed the phone number and said Google it. That was it -- no business name. Nothing else. Just Google it).
This reminds us of Stephon Marbury's one trip to Durham which coincided with a massive winter storm. It was probably the smallest crowd in the Krzyzewski era.
Florida State and Miami may be forgiven for feeling smugly superior as they wear casual clothes to the gym.
Clemson, like Carolina, flew in early. Oliver Purnell decided to go up on Thursday and while most of the season ticket holders may stay home, Virginia Tech has decided to allow all students to enter free as long as they have ID. It's not a fun place to play anyway, and that could make it that much more intense.
He also says this about Demontez Stitt's availability: âIt depends on how he feels,â Purnell told the Independent Mail. âRight now, sitting here, if we got 15-20 minutes out of him weâd be ecstatic. A lot depends today on how he feels and how he feels getting up tomorrow after being out there practicing.â
A secondary but no less important question is how long it will take these teams to get home. Busing is out of the question, so it will depend on how quickly they can a) get to the local airport and b) how quickly the airport is able to get planes flying.
You would think that UNC has the best shot of getting home since both Charlottesville and Blacksburg are more rural than College Park.
Travel, in other words, may have an effect on Wednesday's Duke-UNC matchup. The word in the Capitol is to expect to be snowbound for five days. So we'll see.
As far as the games go on Saturday, we like Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech and Florida State. Picking against Virginia seems foolish at this point, but Wake Forest had little trouble in Winston-Salem, and has a lot of athletic superiority.
We will be very surprised if Miami prevails in Tallahassee. Just don't see it. The most interesting game in some respects will be in Blacksburg, where Virginia Tech is bound to be riding high after the big win over UNC. Neither team is an offensive dynamo, but both are passionate defensive squads. Having Stitt would be huge for Clemson. Recent headlines about the Tigers use words like slumping and fading, but they're missing their motor. When they get Stitt back and healthy, they will be a different team. And regardless, they still have Trevor Booker who is an enormous pain in the butt.
Trivia we never knew: Virginia's Jerome Meyinsse was accepted at Duke, academically, and unrecruited, before deciding on Virginia.
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