In Saturday's ACC action, UNC survived Virginia 62-56, State pounded Wake Forest 90-69, Virginia Tech handled Florida State 71-59, Boston College dumped Georgia Tech 86-75, and Clemson downed Miami, 79-72.
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At some point, when Tony Bennett has the requisite amount of experience and talent on hand, he's going to win a lot of games that he probably shouldn't win.
He's not there, not yet, but there are nights when you can see that he can coach rings around most guys.
Despite foul trouble by big men Will Sherrill and Assane Sene -- and we use the term big men advisedly -- Virginia hung with the Heels until the end. Given their lack of size, relative lack of talent and significant lack of experience and erratic offense, that they still almost pulled it off augurs well for the future.
State is a different team with Tracy Smith. Their big man is savvy, tough and experienced. Without him, State has a doughnut team. With him, there is still a lot of youth, but there's a focus and it makes all the difference.
The young Deacs got handled inside and paid the price. Their frustration continues; State just took a big step forward.
Don't look now, but that's Boston College in first place -- ahead of Duke for now, State and Carolina. Anyone who saw that coming can step to the front of the class.
The contrast here is striking: in just a few months, Steve Donahue has instilled a completely different atmosphere at B.C.
By contrast, Paul Hewitt has been at Georgia Tech for a decade and he peaked in his fourth season. In the last five years, he's had three losing seasons and two winning seasons.
Other than his 2004 run to the title game, Hewitt has not taken Georgia Tech past the second round of the NCAA tournament.
In four seasons, he's missed postseason playoff together.
Georgia Tech will have to decide at some point what to do about Hewitt. Look closer though and there's not much there there there and what was there was ephemeral.
Put plainly, another mediocre season and there's no reason in particular to keep them around other than his outlandish buyout.
We were a little surprised that Virginia Tech prevailed over Florida State. They are a tough team, but they're fundamentally crippled by injuries. We're just talking about season-ending injuries; we didn't realize Jeff Allen was playing with a groin problem. In his condition, a 24/11 game when you're being guarded by Chris Singleton, one of the games great defenders, that's spectacular.
We expect that Brad Brownell, like Donahue, will soon enough help to eclipse the poor coaching currently afflicting the ACC, perhaps best represented by Hewitt.
Nonetheless, we didn't expect Clemson to beat Miami. The Tigers have struggled with Brownell's system and he himself has conceded that there is a big learning curve.
And we were impressed with we saw from Miami in Durham, particularly Reggie Johnson.
He was little trouble for Clemson: the Tigers held him to six points and eight rebounds, although Johnson again got in foul trouble which can't have helped.
So just two games into the conference season, we see that the ACC's old friend, pressure, which exists in this conference in a way it exists in no other, is already hard at work: Wake Forest is likely done, Paul Hewitt is fighting what appears to be a losing battle for his career, Miami has immense pressure already on their postseason hopes, and if Maryland loses at Duke on Sunday night they fall in the basement and their tourney hopes start getting iffy as well.
And it's January 9th!
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