ACC Roundup - Miami, Notre Dame and Pitt Advance. Pitt?

In Tuesday’s opening round ACC action, Miami beat Wake Forest 79-71, Notre Dame knocked off Georgia Tech 78-71 and Pitt sent BC home 80-70.

For Wake Forest, it was just more of the same and a suitable end to an unhappy season. They were good for about a half and, as we’ve seen so often, collapsed late. Jaylen Hoard said this at the end of the game: “It’s happened like multiple times this year, and it’s frustrating because we fight hard out there on the court but can’t seem to put like 40 minutes together. So it was frustrating.”

For his part, coach Danny Manning immediately began to subtly campaign for his job, saying that “I feel I’ll be back. I look at the score sheet and everyone that scored is an underclassman. We had some guys that grew a significant amount this year in terms of their growth from the start to the finish, and that’s how we want to build it. We build it with our young guys, and we had a really good freshman class come in and got a lot of key contributions from a lot of guys throughout the course of the season.”

What he doesn't say here is that the reason his team is so young is because so many players either left early, transferred, or were dismissed. The problems he’s had this year were exasperated by youth but not entirely caused by them.

We’ll come back to Wake in a minute.

Notre Dame was up by 20 at halftime only to see Georgia Tech cut their lead to three at 72-69 with just 1:12 left.

The Irish hung on though and after John Mooney hit a jump shot with :42 left, it was just a question of closing the game out well. Prentiss Hubb made a pair of free throws but missed the front end on his second chance, Juwan Durham got a block and Dane Goodwin hit two more free throws with :17 left to close out the scoring for both teams.

During that stretch, Tech only scored one basket, with Michael DeVoe hitting a layup with :28 left.

The difference between Notre Dame and Tech, not to mention Wake Forest, is that despite many adversities, Notre Dame improved during the season. Next season John Mooney is going to be ready to erupt. and everyone who returns will be a year older. Keep an eye on the Irish next season.

In the nightcap, Boston College had not been playing well, but who saw Pitt building a 27 point lead?

Basically Jeff Capel turned his guards loose and told them to drive. Boston College couldn’t stop them and that was the story of the game.

Trey McGowens had 26 and Xavier Johnson had 23. Jared Wilson-Frame added 16.

On Wednesday, all three will have tough draws. Miami and Notre Dame, both very thin, will get Virginia Tech and Louisville respectively: one loves to run and one runs the Pack Line. And Pitt will have much more trouble scoring against Syracuse’s zone than the Panthers did against BC’s erratic defense.

In the first game Thursday, NC State and Clemson will finally get a rematch after Braxton Beverly’s thrilling buzzer beater in Raleigh.

But back to Wake Forest. The Demon Deacons have a lot going on right now, starting with Danny Manning.

A.D. Ron Wellman says he’ll evaluate but he’s a short timer now. Will he decide to fire Manning - and replace him - before he retires? And who would take the job under those circumstances?

It’s all very awkward.

Even more awkward is Wake’s sudden involvement in a strange new scandal, one where wealthy parents, determined to seat their children at the best university, have taken to bribery and fraud to accomplish it.

At Wake, volleyball coach Bill Ferguson is accused of taking $100,000 to get a kid into Wake Forest.

Also accused are actresses Felicity Huffman (Desperate House Wives) and Lori Loughlin (Full House).

In some cases, test scores were allegedly rigged. In others, students were misrepresented as athletes and in still others, bribes were apparently the preferred technique.

Loughlin reportedly spent $500,000 to get her daughter, a YouTube influencer, into USC (her daughter has gone on YouTube more than once to say she’d much rather just make videos 24/7.

So needless to say it’s been a fun day on Reynolda.

In a bit of good news, the ACC has reached terms with DirectTV to carry the ACC Network. Some local media figure said that was the last pot of money but that’s just foolish. Technology is changing too fast to say that.

Wednesday afternoon we picked up our phone and thought “better put the computer in the pocket” and that sparked some interesting thoughts.

Obviously it’s a computer; we just choose to call them phones and doing so tends to restrict our understanding of what it is.

Look at it this way: smart phones were the first devices to really take computing mobile. 5-G is on the way and that means essentially zero latency. Watches have already moved computing from your pocket to your wrist. Glasses are coming soon.

There are already devices that can project a 100” screen on to your eyeball.

Now pull it all together: you have data that doesn't buffer or lag at all and movie theater space to play with.

We will also soon have self-driving cars and, apparently, quad-coptor taxis are on the way too.

Do you seriously think that where we are today is the end of this particular revolution?

Not even close.

There is one missing piece though and for those of you looking for the next Apple or Microsoft, this could be an enormous opportunity: plastics.

Just kidding Graduate fans!

The missing piece here is batteries. When you have batteries that can last for days or charge in seconds, then you have the groundwork for revolution.

It’ll go well beyond ACC Sports, but it would behoove you to think of just how it will change them and everything else.

Certainly it’s not going to stop at phones.

Late update: CBS is reporting that Texas A&M is going to part ways with coach Billy Kennedy and is going to make a hard run at Virginia Tech’s Buzz Williams. Stay tuned.