ACC Tournament Roundup - The First Upset
As Boston College sends Clemson home early
In Wednesday’s ACC Tournament action, Florida State sent Virginia Tech home 86-76, Notre Dame fell to Wake Forest 72-59, NC State squeezed Syracuse out 83-65 and Boston College had a tremendous game against Clemson, winning 76-55.
As you probably have noticed, we’re big fans of what Earl Grant is doing at BC. He’s not able to recruit against Duke or UNC or Miami or the rest of the conference yet, so he’s found guys who play with heart and character. As he told his team before the game: gritty, not pretty.
And so it was.
It didn't surprise us necessarily that the Eagles won, but by 21? Who had that?
BC dominated in several ways, not least of all rebounding: Boston College held PJ Hall to just one rebound - one! - in 31 minutes. And Ian Schieffelin, who has been such a reliable rebounder for the Tigers, was held to six.
BC owned the boards 43-27.
And in another telling stat, their backcourt of Jaeden Zackery and Claudell Harris, combined for 49 points, nearly outscoring Clemson by themselves.
It may not become a breakthrough game for the Eagles, but it’s something for them to build on. And when Zackery and Harris were interviewed after the game, both of them talked about the culture they are helping to build and their pride really showed.
Grant is really building something interesting.
As we mentioned in our preview for tomorrow’s Duke-NC State game, State may be having some issues: Dennis Parker has fallen out of the rotation, DJ Horne is getting over an injury and DJ Burns generally only plays about 24 minutes a night because he’s hauling around 275 and it’s not easy.
They did well against Syracuse though, breaking the game open in the second half and holding the ‘Cuse to just 65 points. Judah Mintz scored 21 but he had to take 21 shots to do it and hit just nine of those. JJ Starling was 4-10 for nine of his own.
Mohamed Diarra had 14 rebounds for State, which is a nice night’s work.
When Kevin Keatts’ system is working at its best, State forces turnovers, and they harassed the Orange into 19.
Horne did play after sitting out the Louisville game. He came off the bench to score 16.
It was a solid win for State as the Pack tries to salvage an NCAA bid.
This is a funny tweet from the News & Observer’s Luke DeCock:
NC State players, yelling after advancing themselves on the big bracket in the hallway: “Two more!”
I happened to be standing with Kevin Keatts. “You want to tell them they need three more?”
“They’ll figure it out,” he said. “One more is all they need to worry about right now.”
FSU against Virginia Tech - you can’t really call it meaningless, but both teams have had disappointing seasons and it’s hard to see either making a deep run this weekend.
But at least Florida State is still alive. The ‘Noles were led by Jamir Watkins, who has been playing really well for about a month or so. He had a career high 34 against Virginia Tech. He also had 11 rebounds and four assists.
Sean Pedulla had 24 for the Hokies and while he hasn’t always shot well this season, he hit 8-17 here. However, he was just 1-6 from deep. Hunter Cattoor was just 1-5 and all five attempts were threes.
We’d suggest you keep an eye on Watkins against UNC. He’s the kind of guy who could really go off. And we’d remind you that, for all of the struggles of this season, Florida State actually gave UNC two pretty solid games this season, losing by eight in Chapel Hill and seven in Tallahassee.
It’s not worth a deep dive right now but think about this: when was the last time a Leonard Hamilton player scored 34 points? Hamilton’s constant substitutions make it really difficult for one player to really score like that. It’s kind of remarkable actually.
Finally, Notre Dame’s late-season surge is over as the Irish lost to Wake Forest by 13.
Wake led from wire to wire and the outcome was never really in doubt. Notre Dame shot just 28.6 from the floor and 26.1 from behind the line. They hit 25-28 free throws and imagine how badly they would have been beaten if they hadn't.
Wake moves on to play Pitt Thursday and that game should be pretty good: these two may be competing for one of the last spots in the field and they split in the regular season. Pitt has Blake Hinson, who has had some tremendous games this season while the Deacs have Hunter Sallis, who has been a huge addition. If we had to pick one game to watch, other than Duke-State, it would probably be this one if only because of the stakes. Should be fun.
In a move that surprised no one, Louisville went ahead and made it official, firing Kenny Payne after two disastrous seasons. Now the attention turns to the candidates and according to CBS’s Kyle Boone, that list includes FAU’s Dusty May, South Florida’s Amir Abdur-Rahim, Baylor’s Scott Drew, Indiana State’s Josh Schertz, UCLA’s Mick Cronin, Alabama’s Nate Oats, K-State’s Jerome Tang, Charleston’s Pat Kelsey and Colorado State’s Niko Medved.
From what we’ve read, Cronin says he’s happy in L.A., Oats has a massive buyout and Tang is apparently not entirely happy with his boss.
We’ve always been impressed with Kelsey and we were also impressed with Medved when he brought his Furman Paladins to Cameron in 2017. Duke won with relative ease but we admired how his team competed and made a mental note: keep an eye on this guy. He’s good.
As impressed with them as we are, it would be very tempting to roll the dice on Abdur-Rahim. He built Kennesaw State from a 1-28 record in his first season to 26-9 in his last. He turned around South Florida in a big hurry, going from 13-18 to 23-6 so far in his first season.
He’s shown great potential. Given the Payne disaster, Louisville is going to try for a sure thing and a splashy hire but they could do worse. Abdur-Rahim is going to be good.
As Duke fans know, former Duke star and assistant coach Nolan Smith left Durham to take a job with Louisville, largely because he viewed Payne as family. We don’t know how much of this story about Smith is accurate, but at the least it’s not a good look.