ACC Roundup

The question of the day was simple: could Wake Forest finally win on the road?

The answer was equally simple: no. They weren't up to beating FSU in Tallahassee.

And since their final road game will be at State for Scott Wood's senior day, it seems unlikely to happen this year.

Not a great surprise: other than close games at Virginia Tech (66-65) and BC (66-63), they didn't have many close conference games away from Joel.

In their first meeting at home, they just hammered Florida State on the boards, 44-24, and limited FSU to just four offensive rebounds.

That was worse than reversed this time as FSU grabbed 41 to Wake's 24 and 12 offensive to Wake's six.

Two pretty interesting stats in this one: Wake hit 78.3% from the line and still fell well short of FSU, as the Seminoles hit 86.7%. And Michael Ojo got four fouls in five minutes.

We were pretty sure at the beginning of the season that State was not the best team in the ACC, though for a while they looked like they might be. We figured that they'd have a tough time replacing DeShawn Painter and depth might be a concern. We'd like to say we weren't entirely sold on CJ Leslie, but that was more of a hunch than anything else.

Regardless, the public pillorying of Leslie continues. The worst of it is on boards and sports radio, but even WRAL's Jeff Gravley takes a poke.

We actually feel a little bad for him with the pressure he has to deal with. Who needs it?

The truth is that Leslie, like a lot of ACC players before him (Geoff Crompton, Albert King, Ralph Sampson, among others) is a guy who came to college as a teenage boy and grew into manhood under a harsh spotlight. Not everyone can be a Christian Laettner or Buck Williams, guys who thrive on pressure and challenges.

We wish Leslie had a better grasp on his talent, but he's a young man with time to grow. If it turns out that his desire to play basketball is outweighed by other things (like King, who dreamed of running restaurants), well, so be it. We were told once by a guy who played at Cal-State Bakersfield that we'd be amazed how many guys who play at a high level don't really care much for the game.

And there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. Leslie is under no obligation to live up to anyone's expectations but his own.

That said, we'd love to see what he could do at his very best for a sustained period. As fans, we love to see exceptional talents take off. It has to be their commitment though.

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It's like that great scene in Hoosiers where Norman Dale tells Jimmy Chitwood that he really believes in his talent, that it's his gift, but because he believes that, he doesn't care whether he plays ball or not.

Maybe the Pack should watch Hoosiers together. Scott Woods has probably seen it 100 times already.

It's been a tough season for Georgia Tech, as they're betwixt and between, moving from the listless end of the Paul Hewitt era to whatever the Brian Gregory era holds.

In the short term it holds this: Hewitt's remaining recruits have no particular offensive skills and Gregory's are still young.

Tech's overall talent is upgraded, but there's not really a player on the team who you can look at as a serious offensive threat night in and night out.Kammeon Holsey shoots 55.2% and Daniel Miller 51.2%, but they only average 9.3 and 7.8 ppg.

Freshman Marcus Georges-Hunt is the only guy who is even in double figures and he's shooting 43%.

Eventually Robert Carter should become a really good big man, but he'll need to get in better shape and shoot better than 44.4%.

Their best free throw shooter is Chris Bolden and he's just clocking in at 66.7%.

So far they have hometown star Quinton Stephens and point guard Travis Jorgenson on board for next year. If they can shoot a bit (or in Jorgenson's case find a cutter), they'll help a lot.