ACC Roundup - A New LeDay In Blacksburg

In Saturday's action, Pitt beat Kent State 85-76, Virginia Tech knocked off UAB 82-77 and Louisville prevailed over St. Louis, 77-57.

It's hard to know much about Pitt honestly. Jamie Dixon always plays a weak schedule and this year is no exception: so far it's St. Joseph's of Indiana, Detroit, Cornell and Kent State.

Pitt gets Purdue in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge and we'll know more after that.

We think it's reasonable now to think that Zach LeDay will be a force this season for Virginia Tech. The transfer had another double-double against UAB, with 15 points and 10 rebounds. He's averaging nearly 20/11 so far. We didn't see anyone anywhere who thought he would play at this level. Remember he's stepping up a notch from his first school, South Florida, where he averaged 3.5 ppg and 2.6 rpg.

His toughest game was against Iowa State and he was just about on top of his averages with 19 points and eight boards.

Yes, he sat out a year, but even so: that's a stunning improvement.

We've been casually following Louisville's Chinanu Onuaku's move to underhanded free throws.

Last year he managed just .467 from the line; this year he's improved considerably and is now up to .600.

Rick Barry must be happy. Miami's greatest basketball player of all time has advocated for the underhand free throw for years:

"I control the flight of the ball with two hands, not one. The technique itself is a soft shot, and it's feel, so much feel, and control.

"The way I teach it is you open up the basket -- the ball has a chance to go in the entire circumference of the basket ... almost two balls can fit in the basket. When you shoot flat, the first-third of the basket is taken out of play, and in essence, you're shooting at a smaller target. And, it's not as soft a shot. [It's] not necessarily a higher arc, but the way that the ball comes, it's coming from such an angle that as it goes up there, the arc is pretty good on it, so you still have a good portion of it that it can go in, but it's a much softer shot. If I shoot a free throw and I missed it a little bit and it hits the rim, the ball hits very softly. If you take a shot and shoot it from up high and go to the basket, it's going to hit much harder than it would going underhand, much, much softer."

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It's hard to argue. Barry is still one of the three best free throw shooters of all time, and his argument makes sense. It's just not....cool. People laugh at it. But pretty clearly it can work.

Unfortunately against St. Louis, Onuaku made some pretty ridiculous fouls himself.

Rick Pitino thinks Louisville isn't ranked because of the school's sex scandal, but that seems fatuous.  Lots of schools have had issues; the voters always seem to vote for the players on the floor.

In a more realistic note, Pitino says that freshman forward Dang Adel will be out for the Michigan State game in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. We'll take a closer look at that next.