ACC Roundup - Chris Jones Booted By Rick Pitino

As great as this year has been for the ACC, it's been odd in some ways as well.

For starters, it's the first year Duke's Coach K has ever kicked a player off his team, telling Rasheed Sulaimon that he could no longer play for Duke.

Georgia Tech eventually followed suit, effectively kicking Chris Bolden off by suspending him for six games.

On Sunday, Virginia's London Perrantes and Malcolm Brogdon had a high-impact head-on collision which forced both to leave the court.

But the Ringling bros. Award for weirdness goes to ACC debutante Louisville.

In the Cardinal's first trip around the league, we've seen: A captain stepping down (Montrezl Harrell) for being too harsh to his younger teammates

• Harrell hitting Miami center Tonyi Jeriki in the face with a ball.
• Rick Pitino getting into a press conference tet-a-tet with Miami's Jim Larranaga over the incident
• And finally, senior Chris Jones suspended, reinstated for one game then permanently dismissed, all within a week.

As Mike DeCourcy points out, this follows last year's dismissal (following a very up and down career) of Chase Benahan.

What the heck just happened?

There are rumors about a fight at a bar, but the Louisville paper seems to have looked into that and can find no reports about Jones from the Louisville PD or the university cops.

Courier-Journal columnist Tim Sullivan elaborates on this and seems to have his suspicions:

"Reinstated from a one-game suspension in time to rally Louisville to a 55-53 victory over Miami on Saturday afternoon, Jones was dismissed from the U of L program Sunday, presumably on a permanent basis. That the terse announcement did not include a vague reference to some violation of 'team rules' would suggest the cause was likely something more sinister. That the statement said no further comment will be forthcoming would be consistent with student privacy law and with U of L's abiding interest in keeping certain cans of worms closed. Accounts of the circumstances that caused Jones' sudden dismissal following his abrupt reinstatement are already circulating in cyberspace. In time, the facts of the matter may become better known and carefully corroborated."

So as we said, he seems to have his suspicions.

For the other Sunday weirdness, during the game against  Florida State, Virginia's Malcolm Brogdon and London Perrantes were coming from opposite sides of the court to defend against a driving FSU player.

Unfortunately, the way the play developed, they ended up in a head-on collision that cost Brogdon three stitches and Perrantes a likely broken nose.

Ultimately both teams were offensively challenged with long dry spells, but FSU's came late and the Seminoles could not recover.

Florida State hit just 32.6% for the game, but this may be a problem for Virginia the rest of the way: the Cavs hit just 1-11 from three point range. That's Justin Anderson's job normally, and he does it well.

Five players attempted threes for UVA; only Perrantes connected.

In Chapel Hill, meanwhile, the long goodbye for Dean Smith is drawing to a close.  A public memorial was held in the Dean Dome Sunday, with all the people you'd expect: Woody Durham MC'd, Roy Williams, Rev. Robert Seymour, Smith's pastor, Billy Cunningham, Phil Ford, Antawn Jamison and Eric Montross, among others.

The entire memorial is posted at WRAL.com if you want to watch it.

We'll close with two small stories, with the first about Smith and Rick Fox.

After he left UNC, Fox was diagnosed with A.D.D. When he told Smith, Smith said, "so that's what it was!"

He was aware of it even though he didn't know exactly what it was.

Secondly, a reporter and not someone who was unfriendly to UNC, wrote a story where he said that Smith "quaffed a beer."

When Smith caught up to him, he pointed out that quaff is defined as drinking something quickly.

Smith said that he hadn't done that.

They're both small things but insightful.  He didn't miss very much.