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The almighty competitive roll the ACC has been on continued on Super Bowl Sunday, with Florida State, just 11-10 going in, upset #23 Miami, 55-54.
Miami held Xavier Rathan-Mayes and Devin Bookert to five points, all by Rathan-Mayes.
Montay Bradon had 18 to lead all scorers.
As entertaining a bon bon as that was, as nice a warm-up for an equally competitive Super Bowl, the better game comes Monday.
No, not Pitt, with a reliable competitive dodge in Bryant; of course we mean UNC and Virginia.
Now there's a game with consequences.
Virginia's defense, usually so fearsome, has been a good bit softer these last two games, first against Virginia Tech for much of the game and then Duke. In the first half, Duke simply ran faster than Virginia and got easy buckets; in the last 10 minutes or so of the second half, Duke scored with relative ease.
That's not what we've come to expect from Tony Bennett's team.
On the other hand, UNC, despite the loss to Louisville, has been on a roll.
There are some fundamental problems here that cannot be wished away.
UNC wants to run, like Duke did, and Virginia wants to prevent that at all costs.
Virginia wants to clog the middle and force UNC to shoot from outside, a notable weakness.
And if UNC wins, the Tar Heels claim a bit of first place, along with Virginia and Notre Dame.
Over in USA Today, Scott Gleeson looks at the ACC's hypercompetitiveness and says that the national champ will come from its ranks.
And having had some early fun in the league, Rick Pitino, fresh off of the big comeback against UNC, names the ACC Big East Southern Style, which we're pretty sure he means as high praise, but for many, it will come off as an insult. Who wants to be like the Big East used to be? We got a reminder when St. John's green-eggs-and-hal loving big man, Joey De La Rosa, threw Amile Jeffesron to the floor.