ACC Roundup - Carl Tacy Slips Away

Some ACC news of note.

First, UNC A.D. Bubba Cunningham will join the NCAA selection committee

Amazingly enough, UNC has never had anyone on the committee. Duke has had Tom Butters and Kevin White and possibly Joe Alleva though we’re not sure about that.

Former Wake Forest coach Carl Tacy passed away at 87 which apparently is a dilemma for sportswriters, since no one appears to have known him at all. Look at how much Ed Hardin struggles here to get a grip on his subject. There are no former players quoted, no funny stories, as Mary Garbin once pointed out and basically no one knows what to say other than they’re sorry he’s gone and that he was a very good coach.

He was an introvert though, or at least felt little need to talk much and as we’ve said before, Wake has a history of hiring quiet coaches: Tacy, Bob Staack, Jeff Bzdelik and most recently Danny Manning.

They’ve periodically hired great extroverts too like Bones McKinney, Dave Odom and Skip Prosser.

Those guys have generally done better than the other set. In fact, the only one in the quiet camp who had much success is Tacy. And the truth about him is probably that yes he was quiet but he knew that he knew what he was doing so he felt no need to talk much about it. In fact when he walked away, he didn't talk to anyone other than perhaps his boss and possibly his team. He just left.

There was a little bit of cowboy in the man. We saw some similar traits in Larry Bird, who wanted to be judged by what he did between the lines, and that seems fair for Tacy, too.

With no tournament this spring, the ACC has been running one of the dozens if not hundreds of bracket substitutes.

Impressively, Syracuse fans have emerged as the ACC’s answer to Big Blue Nation: they took over the poll and hilariously put four guys who never played a game in the ACC in the Final Four: it’s down to Pearl Washington, Carmelo Anthony, Derrick Coleman and Billy Owens. Unlike Kentucky, it’s not like Syracuse is winning on the court so maybe you take what you can get.

Jeff Capel’s not done recruiting: he’s after at least two other guys, Trey Murphy from Rice and JaDun Michael from Burlington, who committed to Wichita State but changed his mind.

• ‘Gentleman Carl’ recruited Muggsy Bogues, Danny Young for Wake Forest. The former Wake Forest coach dies at 87.
• Carl Tacy, a former Wake Forest basketball coach who is in the school’s Hall of Fame, has died