ACC Roundup

Duke's win over Pitt Monday shook up the ACC race and moved Duke into third place (currently with a tiebreaker over Pitt). On Tuesday, Notre Dame, desperate for a win, has a chance to do the same.

The Irish welcome Virginia to South Bend for the first ACC matchup between the two bands of scholars.

Okay, well more scholarly than some anyway.

Virginia has been on fire lately: other than Duke, the Cavs haven't even been challenged in ACC play. Mike Brey's pretty good at finding ways to compete with different sorts of teams.

And you could argue that with Jerian Grant, the Irish might be undefeated in conference play: Notre Dame lost to State by seven, Georgia Tech by five, Maryland by eight, FSU by two and Wake Forest by seven.

A lot of that Notre Dame played without Tom Knight, who had a bum ankle and pneumonia to boot.

It's still a long shot, but Notre Dame has a history of magical games. Who knows?

Wake Forest hosts Syracuse Wednesday night, and as it happens, Demon Deacon Tyler Cavanaugh is from DeWitt, just a few minutes from the Carrier Dome. He'll have a good grip on most of the Orange players.

When Robert Carter was lost to Tech with a knee injury, it was believed to be for the season.  Perhaps not: Tech may get him back for the end of the season.

It's pretty funny that a university which had an outlaw academic department would send a guy named James Dean to Bloomberg to discuss UNC's response to the scandal, but that's who went.

Dean, executive vice chancellor and provost said a number of things.

First, that he was "ashamed," and second that "[t]he integrity of our university was badly damaged."

And also, Bloomberg's Paul Barrett tells us, that it didn't happen on his watch.

So in other words, Dean and Chancellor Carol Folt are the janitors here, forced to clean up an ugly mess (too fast to live, to young to die?) not of their making.

More interestingly, Dean - was he ever a dean? Dean Dean, meet Major Major, who would have been right at home in the Chapel Hill of today - says he's initiated an "internal study" of the entire history of the African and African-American studies Department.

On the down side, he essentially called Mary Willingham a liar before restating his point. That's really unnecessary and also just beneath the university. Even if her research is wrong, as Barrett points out, her warnings about athletes who are not capable (at this point anyway) of being students at UNC need to be understood and dealt with.

Anyway, the change in tone is an improvement, but a willingness - finally - to pursue the truth even if it hurts is more important. That has yet to be borne out.

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