ACC Roundup

Pitt and Georgia Tech squared off at Pitt Wednesday night,  and while Pitt appeared to be cruising in the second half, Tech wasn't content to give up.

Adam Smith helped Tech to fight back, scoring 30 including eight threes. Tech cut it to 83-77 with 1:20 left but couldn't finish the comeback.

Big men have had some big games lately in the ACC, notably Brice Johnson's eruption against FSU the other night. You can add Charles Mitchell: Tech's remade star had 20 points and 17 rebounds.

Speaking of big men, Clemson got a break when Elijah Thomas announced he'd be transferring to Tiger town.

Thomas started out at Texas A&M but lasted just one semester before bailing out. He'll be eligible next December. He was a Top 50 recruit coming out of high school.

In Chapel Hill, the attempts to elude the consequences of the scandal continue. Now it's Sylvia Hatchell's turn, as UNC's longtime women's coach says there's nothing to see...just move along. Here are some of her comments, according to the N&O:

"There are no allegations against the women’s basketball program. It’s against the academic counselors that were counseling the players. But there’s no allegations against any of the coaches or any recruiting or anything with the program.

"So if there’s no allegations, how can there be penalties without allegations?

"The academic people handled everything. I just happen to be the coach of the players. But I really don’t know anything else about it. But there were several sports involved.

"But I really don’t know anything else to say about it. But I just coach the team and I just trust that the right thing will be done and happen."

"a total academic situation."

"The academic counselors are under the College of Arts of Sciences … they were advisers for our players. And there’s no coaches involved or mentioned in there. But if you look at the allegations they’re academic. So that’s all I know, because we’ve had no involvement with it at all."

This is a crock on so many levels. First it's ridiculous to assume that coaches are divorced from academics. We know many of them would like to be, but they have to know what's going on. They could lose their jobs in at least two ways: one for a perception that, well, they don't know what's going on in their program and two, it only takes one or two players to flunk out and kill your depth. Hatchell makes a lucrative income. She's not going to blow that because her players aren't going to class.

As a matter of fact, and you probably know this, every D-1 athletic program has some sort of in-house academic coach. This person's main job is to know what's going on academically.

Hatchell also implies here that she had no idea that some of these classes were bogus. We don't buy that for a minute.

These classes were heavily populated by athletes. There are e-mails to suggest that there was a broad level of collusion.  It's (barely) conceivable that the head coach didn't know; it's completely ludicrous to suggest that the staff had no clue. It's just not plausible. She'd have fired them all if they had no idea what was going on in her program.

Finally it's worth remembering that one of the people involved was professor Jan Boxill. You may also recall that earlier Hatchell said that Boxill was a friend and that she wouldn't turn her back on a friend because of this scandal.

She certainly seems to be tossing her under the Carolina blue bus now.