ACC Roundup

In Sunday's ACC action, UNC and BC played a couple of third-tier Florida schools, with UNC beating Florida Atlantice by 24 and BC taking Florida International by 14.

Arguably, BC's performance is, if not more impressive, more important: remember they started last season with a very narrow win over New Hampshire and embarrassing losses to Holy Cross and UMass and a closer game with St. Louis. After that, they managed to beat UC Riverside before losing to New Mexico, Penn State, BC and Providence.

So a reasonable win in their first game has to be a positive sign.

And remember they did improve enough last year to beat Florida State. But they only won nine games all year.

BC got a tremendous game from sophomore Ryan Anderson, who finished with 29 points. He shot 9-16 and was 11-14 from the foul line. But check this: he also grabbed 17 rebounds, including eight offensive. Even if it turns out that he put up huge numbers against an inferior team, he should at the least gain a lot of confidence from this performance.

Big man Dennis Clifford finished with 12 and had five boards. Patrick Heckmann, who was pegged for big minutes last year, came off the bench for 12 points in 20 minutes.

Steve Donahue is well-known for his love of three pointers; BC was just 2-17 in this game.

Just 2,811 people showed up, hardly a home crowd at all. That's positively Sendekian.

In Chapel Hill, where basketball is king, 15,403 showed up, but that still left 6,347 empty seats. But realistically, it's Florida Atlantic out of the Sun Belt. It's not much to get excited about.

James Michael McAdoo had a fairly easy time of it, hitting for 19 with 11 boards, though he shot less than 50%. We're guessing he was the primary defensive focus for FAU, however.

Reggie Bullock, encouraged by Roy Williams to shoot more, was 6-7 and finished with 16.

Desmond Hubert started again and had a minimal offensive presence, with three rebounds and no points.

Dexter Strickland finished with just four, but his primary value is not his scoring.

Rookie Marcus Paige finished just 1-8 but handed out six assists to three turnovers.

Freshmen Joel James and Brice Johnson came in and played well. James finished with 11 points and eight boards (it occurs to us that he could be a bigger Reggie Johnson if UNC gets lucky) while Johnson finished with 12 points and four boards.

PJ Hairston, who struggled mightily last year after coming in with a rep as a hot shooter, is off to a poor start in his sophomore year: so far he's 3-14 overall and 1-7 from three point range. At this point, it may be fair to ask if he's just pressing himself too hard.

On Monday, there's a good slate of games although mostly against mediocre opponents. Clemson gets things started with a game against Presybterian, while Florida State's traditional slow start gets tested with Buffalo. UVa gets Fairfield, but the most interesting games to us are Rhode Island's visit to Blacksburg and Maryland's tussle with Morehead State.

In case you had forgotten or possibly not heard, Danny and Bobby Hurley moved to Rhode Island in the off-season, where they'll put a lifetime of hard core knowledge to good use.

We don't know a whole lot about Rhode Island at this point, but we know a lot about Hurleys. Rhode Island's kids will compete very hard (or sit) and they'll be in superb condition. We don't know enough about either team at this point to make a serious prediction, but we'll venture a guess that the Rams are better conditioned and deeper, and that may be the key.

As far as Maryland goes, we're not sure they can match their second half against Maryland, but they probably won't need to against Morehead State. What they will do is to concentrate on sorting out roles. Alex Len is pretty clearly going to play - he instantly moved himself into the early lottery conversation against Kentucky - but it's not clear just who else will come through. It's still a very young team, although one which showed dazzling potential against the Wildcats.  We're very eager to see what the next step is - although it could be a step backwards.

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