Dave Sez

Thought For The Day

Muggsy Bogues

Ed Geth

Ralph Sampson

Randolph Childress

Yvon Joseph

Charlie Ward

Harold Deane

Ronald Curry

Ilian Evtimov

Sam Perkins

Tiki Barber

Michael Jordan

Antawn Jamison

Steve Francis

... have a Happy New Year! See ya'll in 2006.

Quid Pro Quo

There are only two more shopping days until Christmas and if you are still trying to find just the right thing for a special ACC fan, I have your solution. The 2005 Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook.

I got an email a while back from Chris Dortch, the editor of this tome asking me if I'd like a copy to check out. Never one to pass up a freebie, I took him up and I'm damn glad I did. Like any hoops fan, I was aware of the Blue Ribbon books - they've been out forever - but I guess I didn't know them as well as I thought I did. In my mind, I lumped them in with dreck like the Street and Smith's magazines - stuff in black and white that was written months before the season started and was largely out of date by the time I read it. I was wrong.

The Blue Ribbon book is nothing like those Street and Smith's magazines. Yes, it's black and white, but it's thorough. The thing is huge, nearly an inch thick and with comprehensive reviews of every team in the country. The Duke preview alone is four small-print pages - probably the equivalent of ten Sports Illustrated pages. All of the ACC teams, even the doormats like Virginia, get at least two full pages. I'm telling you, it covers everything.

You may think you can get everything you want on the Internet, and maybe you can, but nothing can beat the convenience and completeness of this book. Do you want the skinny on Ole State U's matchup with Southwestern Utah State A&M? You can read all about SWUAM's zone press and experienced backcourt here, but you would have to use all of your Google-Fu to find that info out on the web.

The closest book I can compare it to, and this is the highest of praise, is Barry Jacob's Fan's Guide To ACC Basketball that is no longer published.

So if you still need to do some last-minute shopping, or if you think you've been good yourself, go get a copy of the Blue Ribbon Basketball Yearbook.

More On Expectations

In my article on Shavlik Randolph the other day, I wrote about why I rarely make absolute predictions. I don't because I understand that humans and athletic competitions are inherently unpredictable. If outcomes could be 100% determined ahead of time, competition would be no fun.

Al Featherston recently wrote a much longer and better article on the same general topic. He focused those same principles on the subject of expectations for very good and great teams. As he points out with plenty of statistics and examples, the great teams rarely win all of their games and the best team rarely wins the national championship.

Think of some classic examples - Duke with Brand, Battier, Langdon, Avery and Carawell in 1999, Illinois last year, North Carolina with Jordan, Dougherty, Doherty, Smith, Perkins in 1984 and Wolf) and UNLV in 1991 with Johnson, Augmon, Hunt, Anthony and Scurry. Were those teams failures because they didn't win the national championship? Were their seasons disappointments? No! The endings of their seasons were disappointings, but the seasons were still great.

Think about that as you watch Duke and Connecticut this year and listen to folks tell you that they should win it all and it'll be a shock if they don't.

Featherston also throws in a bit at the end where he brings up an old memory of mine - of the differences in stats keeping in the ACC in the early 80s. I remember watching great point guards at Virginia - Jeff Jones and Othell Wilson and not understanding why they never ranked near the league lead in assists. It turns out, as Featherston points out, that the UVA stat-keepers just didn't like giving out assists, while the folks at places like Clemson and UNC doled them out freely. Check the league stats from those days to see what I mean.

Twenty-Win Seasons

Barry Jacobs of the Duke Basketball Report has a very interesting chart of twenty-win seasons by ACC teams since 1980. Twenty wins is a good cutoff point for a good year, since it likely means a team either made the NCAA tourney or made a deep run in the NIT.

While the two titans are, as you'd expect, Duke and UNC with 21 and 23 years out of 26, the next tier is very interesting.

The teams at the next level, all with either 13 or 14 years of success, are Maryland, NC State, Virginia and Wake Forest. It's easy to only think about programs in terms of where they are right now, but folks forget that Maryland, NC State and Wake Forest all had extended dry periods in the late 80s or 90s. Virgina sucks now, and has for several years, so it's easy to forget that they were one of the dominant ACC programs for much of the 80s and were consistently good up until Jeff Jones' teams fell apart in 1996.

Georgia Tech is a bit surprising with only nine good years out of 26 and no one should be surprised to see Clemson and Florida State down at the bottom.

The Curious Career Of Shavlik Randolph

If you knew me personally, you'd know that I'm not really a black and white kind of guy. I always see shades of gray. Maybe it's my scientific background, but if a future event has even a slight possibility, I consider that a real possibility and I won't declare any other outcome as absolute. That's why I could never be one of those shouting heads on TV who proclaims that Team A HAS NO WAY to win on Sunday or that IT'S 110% CERTAIN THAT TEAM B will win the championship. I know better than that. Human nature, sports in particular, is not predictable. Stuff happens, and often it's stuff that no one expected.

Another thing you'd know about me is that I like to be funny. And gray areas are rarely funny. So, in order to make a joke, sometimes I have to skip all of the rationalization about why something might happen or not, and just take a stance.

Why am I writing this? It's because of Shavlik Randolph. Or rather it's because of what I wrote about Shav way back when he announced that he would be testing the NBA draft and the reactions to that article. In that article, I was going for a laugh or two. I took the (obvious) stance that Randolph was crazy and that there was no way he would make the NBA. I mean, the guy had a 6 points per game career scoring average! It was an easy mark and I went for it. I'm not Richard Pryor; I have to go for the chippies.

But even as I wrote it, I knew that he had a chance. It was a slight chance, but it existed. The reason? One, he's 6'11". Being nearly seven-feet tall always gives you a chance in the League. Second, he's pretty agile for a big man. Third, Randolph is very skilled, particularly for a guy his height. All those hours working out in a gym alone gave him a very nice offensive game, and one talent the NBA always rewards is big men who can hit jumpers. Even if you can't move (see Arvydas Sabonis), if you can step away from the basket and hit jumpers, you can help your team because that means you can pull the Shaqs, Duncans and Garnetts away from the hoop to defend you.

Shavlik has those tools, so he had a shot.

Another factor that I knew about but forgot to factor in at the time was the change in NBA rules that allow three more players on the bench. That's a huge change, especially for young talents and big white stiffs who often gather dust at the end of NBA benches. Three more players per team is a 25% increase in the number of NBA players! For some reason, you never heard anyone bring that up when discussing why the minimum age limit was racist, but that's a discussion for another time.

So anyway, my point is that I always knew that Randolph had an outside shot, but I didn't really make that clear. Instead I wrote "short of a miracle, he's never going to play a minute in the NBA."

By now, we all now that "a miracle" happened. Shavlik not only made an NBA team, but he's starting to get significant minutes. He's gotten at least fourteen minutes of run in three straight games and in five of seven games. If you read through the long and interesting comments left about my original article, you'll find someone claiming to be 76ers GM Billy King saying that Randolph will be getting more playing time soon.

So what happened? How could this guy go from high school superstar to college bust to quality NBA reserve?

First, let's take a look at his Duke career. I think his failure (OK, relative failure) came about from three separate but related issues: injuries, pressure and loss of confidence. In Shav's freshman year, he played fairly well, but had several foot and ankle problems that limited his minutes late in the year. In his sophomore year, the problems continued and culminated in his having surgery on his hip after the season. It turned out that he'd been playing with the hip injury since high school, and it was that problem and Randolph's attempts to compensate that had caused his foot problems. Finally healthy, his junior year should have been his breakout season, but that didn't happen. He developed mono early on and never really recovered. So Shavlik was never really at 100% for his entire Duke career, and in fact, hadn't been fully healthy since his junior year of high school when he was considered the #1 prospect in the country (he fell into the 30s after his senior season).

As for pressure, consider what Randolph brought with him to Duke: he was the best local player in years, decades maybe. He was the grandson and namesake of NC State great Ronnie Shavlik, one of the ACC's early titans. Everyone expected Shavlik to become the next Christian Laettner and lead Duke to multiple titles. Being so close to home meant that his every move (even his mother cutting up his steak) was chronicled on a nearly daily basis. That's a lot of burden for a young kid. He might have been better off going away to a school in a different conference where the past and his potential wouldn't have weighed on him quite so heavily.

Now consider the combination of those first two points. Randolph was supposed to be the best player in the country, a guy who would honor his family's tradition and lead Duke to greatness. When he shows up at Duke though, he's not at 100%. He's pretty agile for a big man, but not so much that he could afford to lose some quickness. Along with Randolph, Duke welcomes in J.J. Redick, who becomes an immediate hit and Shelden Williams, who outplays Randolph from day one. So he went from being the top guy in the country to not even being the best freshman big man on his college team. That had to hurt. At the same time, Coach K tried to teach Randolph a post game that never really seemed to take. Add it all up and you get what I saw on the court - a player who just wasn't very confident. He was thinking instead of reacting and therefore never got to the right spot at the right time. I don't care how good you are, at the highest level of college ball, you have to be either quick or very strong and Randolph was neither.

When he left Duke and ended up at the Sixers, all of those problems went away. Expectations? Poof. Gone. Folks like me were laughing and saying that he'd never make the league. Instead he could just focus on doing the basic things he knew that he could do, like rebounding and shooting. He didn't need to be a star and no one expected him to be. Most Philly fans probably had no idea who he was. They figured he was another European big man stiff with a funny name.

But this time, Shav was healthy (well, after that broken foot healed). All those years of working on his skills could finally pay off. He got a few minutes here and there, late in games where results really didn't matter much. He was productive in those minutes, which again boosted his confidence and now he's emerging as a legitimate player for the Sixers.

It's been an amazing turn of events. I can't think of another player who's had quite a ride. There have been other guys (not many) who didn't shine in college who made the NBA. Like Shavlik, most of those guys were big men who just couldn't adjust to the college game, but because of their size, got another shot at the highest level and for some reason, things finally clicked. What makes his story so unique though is that he wasn't just a guy who didn't perform in college, he was a guy who bombed in college. He was a high school stud who was supposed to be a star and failed. He's the first riches to rags to riches story I can remember.

I hope he keeps it up.

-----------------------

An interesting side note to the Shavlik story is the popularity of that article I wrote about him, or rather the popularity of the comments. Several different Randolph supporters, some friends from high school, have posted intermittently there as his saga has gone on. You can read the whole thread to see the changes in attitudes over time as he made more and more progress. That my article, one of hundreds on Shavlik, became such a central point for discussion is kind of bizarre. Google has consistently sent traffic there from folks searching on his name. Right now, if you Google on "Shavlik Randolph," it's the #2 result!

The combination of Shav's recent success and that inexplicable Google-love, my article has started to be linked to by several different Sixers message boards and even Business Week. In fact, one poster in the thread identified himself as Sixers GM Billy King. I can't say for certain if it really is him, but the IP address he came from and the way he posted certainly made it appear to be legit. In fact, "B. King" even predicted that Randolph would be getting more minutes from Coach Cheeks and sure enough, that night Shav played a career-high 19 minutes, grabbing 10 boards and scoring 8 points. He earned 22 minutes a few nights later.

Where's The Editor?

This is exactly the reason why all newspapers should drug test their reporters. Words fail me.

Detroit Pissed Fans

Now this is funny. You've probably picked up on the frustration in Detroit with the state of their football team. The team has generally been bad for decades, but ever since Matt Millen took over as GM, things have gotten even worse, despite drafting a wide receiver in the first round every year.

The Lion organization fired coach Steve Mariucci a few weeks ago, but that did little to assuage the angry fans. If anything, it just fed the fire, as most wanted both Mariucci and Millen gone. With only one target to focus on, things are turning ugly.

Fire Millen signs and chants are showing up with increasing regularity and not just at Lions games. The signs and chants have been present at Michigan and Michigan State basketball games and Red Wings games. Even away Red Wings games.

You could say that Detroiters are fed up.

So, as you might imagine things are going to be pretty interesting this wekeend when the Lions host the Cincinnati Bengals. The great thing is that fans aren't just planning on skipping the game or showing up and complaining. No, they are organizing. They have a march planned - the Angy Fans March - for before the game. They will chant together. They will carry signs. But the most interesting plan is being pushed by website TheLionFanatics.com.

TheLionFanatics.com is organizing what they are calling an "orange out." The plan is for Lions fans to wear orange, the color of the Bengals. From what I hear, this plan is taking off. Stores are running out of orange shirts! While I think there's something inherently wrong about wearing the colors of your opponent at a home game, you can't deny that it will be a very powerful image. Can you imagine a home stadium jam-packed with angry fans "supporting" the road team? I can't see how Matt Millen will make it through the week.

The Detroit News has an article about the whole affair and what really cracked me up is that they have a handy sidebar outlining the planned protests. They want to make sure it's really easy for everyone to get involved!

If this "orange out" comes off as planned, and it sounds like it will, look for it to become the hot trend in angry fan behavior. Obviously, the old standard of not going to games just doesn't have the same cachet anymore. People are inured to it. Sure, owners notice, but it just doesn't have much bang these days. Paper bags on the head are so 1980's New Orleans. But a stadium full of angry seemingly-road-team fans? That'll get everyone's attention.

Maybe if NC State loses a few basketball games the Wolfpack faithful will start showing up in baby blue to try to run off Sendek. Naaaaah, probably not.

Title To Terrapins

This past weekend (yeah, it's been a busy week for me), Maryland's men's soccer team defeated New Mexico to win the national championship. All championships are special, but this one was extra nice for the Terps, since it was their fourth straight trip to the College Cup (that's soccer's name for the final four. The NCAA won't let them use the more obvious name of Final Four.) and they had failed to bring home the hardware in their previous three tries.

Maryland becomes the fifth different ACC team to win a soccer title. Clemson and Duke won three between them in the 80's, Virginia won five in a span of six years in the early 90's and UNC won an unexpected title four years ago.

It's somewhat odd that it has taken Maryland so long to win a national championship, as they've been one of the ACC's strongest programs. Maryland has won 18 ACC titles, by far the most of any school (Virginia and Clemson are next with 13 and 12), but most of those came back in the 50's and 60's when the Terrapins won 16 in a row.

Congratulations to the overdue Maryland program. It's always nice to see an ACC school win a national championship in any sport.

NCAA Scandal Tournament

Every wonder who the most corrupt college basketball programs are? Every wonder which one was/is the worst of them all? Well, so did Bob Cook of Flak Magazine, so he picked the top 32 and made a tournament out of it.

The champion? Kentucky barely edged out UCLA largely due to a longstanding tradition of cheating that has bridged several different coaches. Congratulations you crazy Wildcats!

The ACC is well-represented with Maryland, NC State and Clemson in the brackets. If you're like me, you're thinking "Clemson?" According to Cook, coach Tates Locke paid players in the 70s and then wrote a book about it. First I've heard of it. I guess they didn't pay very well.

It's a fun read with a lot of links to information about various scandals.

Sublime

J.J. Redick is easily the most hated player in college basketball. He's the most hated player in years. In fact, you probably have to go back to another pair of Dukies, Christian Laettner and Bobby Hurley, to find someone who generates so much ill will. But for whatever reasons you have for not liking the guy (he's cocky, he's good, he plays for Duke, he's white), if you're a basketball fan at all, you had to love the performance Redick put on Saturday against Texas.

Here was a big game, #1 versus #2, and a game that many people thought Duke would lose. The Blue Devils simply hadn't looked that good so far this year and Texas is very talented. Most people, myself included, thought the Longhorns would be able to lock down on Redick and Shelden Williams, the only two Blue Devils who seem capable of scoring this year, and win the game.

But it didn't happen that way. Redick turned in one of the finest regular season performances I've ever seen in scoring 41 points. He hit all kinds of shots - runners, leaners, quick hitters, shots off of pump fakes. You name it, he did it. But he didn't do it courtesy of a zone defense or some lax man-to-man. No, Texas played him pretty tightly. I can remember only one wide-open look and that was off of a set out-of-bounds play. It wasn't like J.J. was running around curling off of screens like Reggie Miller; most of his points came off the dribble when he'd create space with jab step or utilize a ball screen. And there was always a hand in his face.

I don't think Texas did anything wrong (in regards to guarding J.J.); they just had nothing for him.

As I've watched Redick over the past four years, like a lot of people, I've wondered how his game will translate to the next level. Most people think he'll fail, because college jump shooters don't usually pan out in the League. Ralph Wiley once wrote an article on espn.com about this. He called the shots of those college stars "counterfeit." What he meant was while those jumpers looked great, they wouldn't be legal tender in the NBA, because the open looks just aren't there. Guys are bigger and faster at the next level, and they close in on open shooters frighteningly fast.

When I watched J.J. tear up Texas and their three NBA-caliber players, I had to wonder if maybe he would make it in the NBA. His game had all the look of an NBA shooter on a roll. Watch how Allen Iverson gets his points - he zigs and zags and uses screens and jab steps to create just that tiny little crack that he needs to get his shot off. If he has that little bit of space, he can hit the shot whether his feet are set or not. That's exactly what J.J. did on Saturday.

I may not love the guy, but I loved that game.

Featherston On Being #1

He's done it again. This time, Al Featherston writes about what it means to be not just the #1 team in the country, but the #1 program. He reviews how a team gets there and what it means when they play their schedule.

As always, Featherston uses Duke as his centerpiece, but he's not really writing specifically about Duke. He's writing about the game and using Duke as the example. This article also spends some time comparing Duke to Kentucky and does a great job of explaining why UK fans have such strong Duke-hatred. It's not just for the reason you think.

Oh and bonus points to Al for mentioning the game in 1986 when UVA upset #1 UNC in Charlottesville in front of an incredibly electric crowd. I remember that game well and I was part of that crowd.

A Look At Tar Heel Frosh Past

Barry Jacobs has an interesting piece at the DBR on freshman who've started a bunch of games at UNC. He lists those who played the most and, as you might imagine, it's an impressive list of ballers.

One interesting note:

Minutes played, and starts, were carefully guarded secrets at North Carolina during most of Dean Smith’s tenure. Not until the 1990 season did the ACC have this information. Even now, the UNC basketball media guide deletes minutes played from player profiles.

Dean Smith could be a weird guy.

A Pair Of Devlishly Good Careers

You're going to hear this roughly a zillion times this year, so I'll go ahead and edjumacate you on the facts - yes, J.J. Redick has a very good chance to become Duke's all-time leading scorer and Shelden Williams has a shot at becoming Duke's all-time leading rebounder. An article at the DBR breaks it down.

Shelden will also break the Duke block record and could finish as a top-fifteen scorer.

I think it's pretty amazing any time any player makes a run a school's career scoring record, particularly a program like Duke. But let's not mistake this for what it is - a combination of near-greatness and longevity. While Redick is a great shooter and a very good scorer, he isn't nearly the player that Johnny Dawkins was. And Duke has had several other much better players who just didn't stay for four years.

Golden Streams

Oh happy day! For years, I've longed for those glorious days of college when my Spring Break always coincided with the first week of the NCAA Tournament. I'd park myself on a sofa somewhere (even when I was in Daytona) and just watch hoops all day. Great times.

These days I have a job and family and for some reason they don't see the need for me to burn vacation days just to watch basketball. Weird, huh? So, I'm left with various forms of online score trackers and the occassional streaming radio broadcast. It's not bad, but it's just not the same as watching the games.

Well, this year things will be different (maybe). CBS Sports has announced that they will be streaming the games this year - for free! They won't show the same games that are on the local television broadcast, but it should still cover a lot of games. I wonder if the streams will manage to miss all of the close endings, just like the television broadcast does?

I'm pretty pumped about this, but at the same time I have a hunch that they are going to grossly underestimate the interest in this and their servers will catch fire sometime in the early afternoon of the first Thursday.

Dark Days Ahead For Virginia?

One of the basic elements of any strong football program is quality assistants who stay a long time. Look at Virginia Tech where Frank Beamer has kept guys like Bud Foster and Bryan Stinespring forever. Florida State is another classic example. Mark Richt, Chuck Amato and Mickey Andrews were there forever and the Noles kept winning and winning. It was no coincidence that FSU's reign on top became tenuous almost immediately after Amato and Richt left.

So what happens at a school that hasn't had quite as much success but still loses its coordinators? Virginia's about to find out.

Associate Head Coach Danny Rocco was just hired as Liberty University's new head coach.

Offensive Coordinator Ron Prince was just hired as the new head coach at Kansas State.

And Defensive Coordinator Al Golden is said to be Temple's new head coach.

Wow. Talk about your ouches. On the one hand, I guess it's great for the Cavs that their coaches were so well regarded. On the other hand, Al Groh now has to replace all three of his most critical coaches. And it's not like UVA has been tearing up the world the past two seasons.

Al Groh came in and didn't exactly turn things around immediately at UVA, but he did bring hope and landed several excellent recruiting classes. His teams have reached the level of good and occasionally very good, but haven't been able to hit excellent or even stay at very good.

Will he be able to take that next step up after losing so many coaches? I predict some dark times ahead in Charlottesville.

6-5 and 7-0

It's been nearly a week - time for my belated ACC-Big Ten Challenge wrapup!

Before I get too much into this, let me be clear that I don't think it's that big of a deal. No titles are decided, no careers are validated and it doesn't even end the discussion of who the better conference is. If the Big Ten had won the challenge, I wouldn't have been crushed. What is great about it though is that it provides eleven compelling games early in the season, giving (nearly) every conference team a chance to compare themselves against a relatively equivalent major-conference opponent. There's also the added bonus that the games all count to a final tally, so they are slightly larger than regular games - it's like a mini-tournament preview.

The other thing that's so nice about it is that it adds a lot of connections between the teams, making comparisons easier and more accurate as we move along. Computer ratings get more accurate as teams become connected; well, there's no easier way for two conferences to connect to each other than for them to schedule a bunch of games against each other.

But all that said, they do keep score in this thing and I really wanted the ACC to win. It's just more fun that way. And while one set of matchups doesn't absolutely resolve who the better conference is (to do it right, you need to include head-to-head results, computer ratings and postseason success) when one league wins every challenge for seven straight years, weeeeeelllllll I think that qualifies as a trend. If things were perfectly even or even perfectly random, the odds of one side coming out the victor seven straight times are 128-1. So, I think we can safely say that over the past seven years, the ACC has clearly been the better conference. Actually, I already say that, but this is just one more very public piece of evidence.

Instead of reviewing the games on the final night (especially that brutally ugly NC State-Iowa match that I'd rather not remember at all), I'm going to run down my list of Pleasant Surprises and Disappointments. We'll start with the bad stuff, because honestly, there wasn't that much bad.

Disappointments
NC State's performance against Iowa. Now, nobody is shocked anymore when the Wolfpack turns in a horrid offensive performance, but even for them, this one was brutal. 24 turnovers against a non-pressing zone defense? Are you kidding?

Almost as bad as State's general malaise was was their execution at the end of the game. I know Herb Sendek is a smart guy, but why does it so often seem like he has no strategy at the end of games? State was down three, so everyone in the place knew what they were looking for. So, what does the Pack do? Have Engin Atsur dribble up to the three-point line and just sort of stand there. He seemed stunned that Iowa wasn't just going to give him that shot. After standing still and dribbling most of the clock away, he threw the ball to Ilian Evtimov who wasn't coming off of a screen or anything. Evtimov seemed equally surprised that he too was being guarded. With time running out, he was forced to chuck up a butt-ugly attempt that was lucky to draw iron. It was pathetic.

I still think State will be a good team, and Cedric Simmons' performance made me optimistic about that, but they need to forge an identity and find a player (or two) who can seize the game by the throat when things aren't going well. I thought Evtimov would be that guy, but maybe he can't be.

Virginia Tech's effort. Maybe it was because they were playing on the first night and it was the only game, but the Hokies just didn't seem into it in their game against Ohio State. I said before that I felt they'd drop back a bit this year after a great season in 2004-2005. I have no concrete foundation for this belief; it's just a hunch. After last night's effort against Duke, though I freely admit that I might be wrong. That also greatly diminished my disappointment in their effort against the Buckeyes as well.

Pleasant Surprises
Florida State. Wow. If I had been asked to guess which team might win by 40, I think it would have taken me a while to guess that it would be the Seminoles. Extremely impressive. The thing is, while I was very pleased, I realize that it really doesn't mean that much. When a team like FSU (who isn't exactly Duke) beats a major conference opponent by 40, it says a lot more about the losing team than the winner. Sure FSU was scoring the points, but they did it because Purdue seemed to Vinny Testaverde-like color blindness. It turns out that it does matter which guys you pass the ball to!

Wake Forest. Well, now that was different! I watched Wake struggle in some of their early games with Justin Gray at the point guard and it was almost literally painful. I love watching Gray play - he's such a tough, confident player without ever seeming cocky. But he was anything but confident at the one. It was like watching a train wreck.

Fortunately, Skip Prosser is neither blind nor dumb, so he quickly scrapped that experiment. Gray sucked at the one, so why not bring in a freshman and suffer through his on-the-job learning? Surely he couldn't be worse than Gray, and as a bonus, you get your All-American-calber shooting guard back! Well, lo-and-behold that worked, and not only was Gray back to his outstanding self, but Harvey Hale was pretty solid at the point. That team I saw play Wisconsin (a very good Wisconsin, I might add) was clearly a Sweet Sixteen caliber club. It was good to see.

North Carolina's freshman. OK, maybe this wasn't a huge surprise as I expected them to be good. Carolina's freshman are always good. But I really liked they way they went toe-to-toe with Illinois, who may be the Big Ten's best team. I knew Hansbrough was supposed to be good, but Danny Green and Marcus Ginyard really looked nice as well and I loved the way the played together. You can tell that Green and Ginyard and friends and have already played a bunch together - they each gave other a couple of beautiful passes.

(Note: I was going to write this even before UNC went and beat Kentucky in Rupp Arena. But obviously, that only reinforces my point.)

Marco Killingsworth. Holy crap, was that guy a beast or what? I had read about him, but I had no idea he was that good. No idea. If that game was an accurate indicator of his play this year, that guy is the best player in the country. Easily.

Unfortunately, my excitement was tempered a bit the next day when I read that he is a senior. I figured that since he was a transfer from Auburn that he was either a sophomore or junior. Being a senior doesn't make him any less good, but it does drop his potential a bit to know that he's actually a year older than Shelden Williams. Still, the guy's a straight stud.

Clemson. I didn't get to see their game, but I really liked the way they handled themselves (from watching the score and reading about it afterward). Clemson was expected to win and they went on the road and did it. They got a lead, held on and won. Very professional and let's be honest, very un-Clemsonlike. I really like what Oliver Purnell is doing down there. He may hit a ceiling soon, but we'll see.

Virginia's poise. You could say many things about Pete Gillen's tenure in Charlottesville, and many did, but no one ever pointed out how poised and patient the Cavaliers were. Well, early in this season, Virginia has already played two Princeton offense teams, and they beat them both. Dave Leitao's squad is woefully thin and under-talented, but they are doing the little things well (the little things clearly don't include such basics as "shooting") and they are quietly winning. Virginia took care of a pretty decent (I think) Northwestern squad in the challenge, and as the team unanimously picked to come in dead last in the ACC, they are doing pretty well for themselves.

Maryland's resilience. Maryland was down seventeen points in the first half of their game against Minnesota, a team coming off a loss to Gardner-Webb. Last year's Maryland team would have fallen apart and maybe gotten into a fistfight with each other during a timeout. Not this time. They chipped the lead away so that it was close at the half and then they blew the Gophers out in the second. That's definitely cause for some optimism in College Park.

Georgia Tech's effort. As I wrote in my preview, I fully expected Georgia Tech to get spanked up in East Lansing. The Yellow Jackets are young and inexperienced and they'd be playing on the road against a veteran team that had already played several top squads this year. On top of that, Tom Izzo's teams are always well-coached and they're just tough. It just seemed like a unrealistic challenge for Tech. For a while, it seemed like I was right, but those pesky Jackets hung around and eventually got it to the point where they had a shot to win the thing. Point guard Zam Frederick's three bounced off the rim at the end of that game; had it gone in, the Jackets would have pulled off a huge upset. Considering that they lost by 22 points at home to an Illinois-Chicago team that was coming off a loss to an NAIA team, that close loss to the Spartans was inspiring.

So, all-in-all, the Challenge was a rousing success for the ACC. Most folks, including myself thought that this would be the Big Ten's year. Too many ACC players were gone this season, including nine underclassmen, to expect the league to be as strong. But, many teams are playing better than expected and a few that aren't (including Duke and Wake) look like they will continue to improve.

One question about the Challenge, as successful as it has been, is should it continue? The ACC has dominated this thing! Will the Big Ten want to continue? While it's clearly good for all the teams involved, it clearly brings in money and it clearly shines a bright spotlight on the two leagues early in the year, might the Big Ten be feeling a bit apprehensive about doing this again? That bright spotlight is cool and all, but it can hurt when it amplifies the perception that your league as not as good as another. Maybe it's time to mix things up. I love having the Challenge and I hope that no other leagues decide to have their own, but I would like the ACC to switch opponents. I want to see the ACC-Big East Challenge return. That would be a hell of a show. The Big East is getting a lot of hype as the new best conference. There's the past bad blood from when the old ACC-Big East Challenge was killed by a few Big East coaches. There's the recent bad blood from the switching of three Big East teams to the ACC and the resulting lawsuits. It would make for some great television.

So come on, John Swofford. You've screwed basketball up with your evil plans, so why don't you try to make some amends. Give us a new challenge - the ACC-Big East Challenge.

Another Featherston Masterpiece

Al Featherston has an article up at the Duke Basketball Report today that just might be his best yet.

It's a great look back at Duke's football and basketball history and the paths they took to get where they are today - the two most disparately successful programs in Division 1 today. Featherston points out that in the early 80s, not only was Duke's football team better than their basketball team, but you could argue that the program was better as well.

Featherston contrasts the change in fortunes with Virginia's, which has largely mirrored Duke's - football up and basketball down.

I don't want to hog all of his glory, but he looks at changes at many other programs and discusses the relationships between winning and facilities (a recently popular topic) and winning and coaching hires.

Seriously, if you are a fan of the ACC, you don't have to be a Duke fan, give his one a read.