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The big news Wednesday was Syracuse self-imposing a one-year ban on post-season play for undisclosed violations which happened a few years ago.
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| Wednesday's Results | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Orange are 15-7 and borderline at best for NCAA play this year. NIT play was possible, but that's out as well as the ACC Tournament.
The league had to adjust the brackets for a 14-team tournament, so now there will be two games on Tuesday rather than the original three. The #10 seed gets a bye to the second round.
The top four teams still receive byes into Friday's round.
Syracuse has offered refunds to fans who bought ACC Tournament ticket which presumably will be redistributed.
There's no official word on Syracuse's misdeeds, which is unfortunate. Previous articles in the Syracuse paper suggested at least some academic improprieties and that some odd stuff emanated from a local YMCA which might involve tutoring and cash for some reason.
There's no way to know.
It's a drag for the ACC, given the various other programs in trouble recently, and may raise some issues for Jim Boeheim, depending on what comes out.
Because while it is all "in the past," he was the guy running things, so he's still responsible.
Stay tuned.
On the court, Clemson improved to 14-8 with an ugly 62-56 win over Florida State.
Ugly? Big deal.
Clemson has won four straight ACC games. That's a big improvement over where they were earlier in the year.
Still, lots of turnovers, bad shooting and Clemson missed eight free throws in the last 1:58.
Brad Brownell said afterwards that his team is gaining confidence, and why not? The Tigers are much improved.
Miami and Notre Dame will be tough, but we think the Tigers could win 18 games, possibly 20 if things break well.
The losses to Winthrop, Gardner-Webb and Rutgers are too bad in retrospect.
We've been really impressed with the ACC's new coaches - Danny Manning, Buzz Williams and Jim Christian.
Look at the Notre Dame game Wednesday.
The Irish went up 25 just 15 minutes in. Yet BC hung around, cut the lead to 16 by halftime and then to 67-61 with 1:47 left on the clock.
Just to underscore this, the #15 team in the conference gave Duke a great game in Cameron Wednesday while the #13 team almost pulled off a 25 point comeback on the #10 team in the country.
The distance between teams in this league is not nearly what the standings would suggest.