ACC proves predictably unpredictable
Jan 5, 2009
Go figure.
Two ACC men’s games were played on Triangle home courts on Sunday night. Both marked the conference openers for the teams involved. Astute basketball observers regarded the result of a visit from lowly Boston College to take on the mighty Tar Heels as a foregone conclusion. The evening’s second game, part of a Fox TV doubleheader, was considered the main attraction, a grudge match between Virginia Tech and a Duke squad presumably consigned to life in the sky-blue shadow of its top-ranked neighbor.
But, as is periodically demonstrated in our daily lives, and most especially in a basketball conference that prides itself on being highly competitive and suitably unpredictable, stuff happens. “It’s a much more physical game when you get into conference,” said Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. “Nobody’s afraid of the other team. The intensity, it just goes up a level.”
So it was that North Carolina was decisively handled by BC, picked to finish 11th in the ACC, while Duke broke the Hokies as though they were a spindly stick laid upon a strong knee.
Much attention has been paid to the highly impressive Tar Heels, stimulating large doses of rhetorical excess. Those who could not imagine the 2009 Heels losing a game were revealed as lacking in imagination. This remains a terrific UNC club with a 13-1 record most teams would envy. Whether it can match its defense to its aspirations remains an open question, however.
Losing, like winning, is a team effort, and shooting 29.3 percent in the second half, getting outmuscled and outhustled, falls upon the shoulders of the entire Carolina squad. But the key to the team’s fortunes is the often-breathtaking play of Ty Lawson, whose gaudy statistics went up in smoke when he squared off with Tyrese Rice, the BC senior who is every bit his equal in quickness and skill.
No one would contest that Tyler Hansbrough remains the most valuable Tar Heel. The senior bailed valiantly as the ship went down, contributing 21 points and a game-high 9 rebounds. But Lawson’s is the pivotal, transformative presence and, as he goes, so goes UNC.
The playmaker entered the game with the Eagles averaging a gaudy 5.1 assists for every turnover; against BC he had four assists and four turnovers. Lawson did make three steals, maintaining his league lead in that category, and added 10 points. But the junior, converting a remarkable 56.1 percent of his field goals entering the game, was 3-for-13 from the floor as the Heels failed to impose their preferred tempo.
Of course when top teams suffer defeat at this time of year, the experience is often cast as therapeutic, revealing correctable flaws while relieving a bit of the pressure of high expectations. This view is not popular with coaches, at least not publicly.
Certainly the ACC’s two remaining undefeated squads, Clemson and Wake Forest, are not eager for such lessons.
Clemson, 14-0, faces Alabama at Littlejohn Coliseum on Tuesday night, part of a four-game home stand that next brings visits from hard-luck N.C. State and Wake Forest. Should the Tigers win all three games, they would match the best starts in school history, 17-0 bursts in 1987 and 2007. Then Oliver Purnell’s group journeys to Chapel Hill, of all places, where they have not won since prior to the Great Depression.
Wake, 13-0, is one shy of matching that school’s best start, achieved in 1981. The Demon Deacons’ most recent outing was an impressive win at Brigham Young. They don’t play again until next Sunday, hosting UNC in the season’s only meeting between the longtime rivals.
Duke, meanwhile, suffered its first loss a month ago at Michigan and has been motoring ever since. This is easily Krzyzewski’s best team in at least three years, with a strong, versatile offense and one of his better defenses. Opponents have managed .391 field goal accuracy, including .367 by Virginia Tech. In Krzyzewski's 28 previous seasons at Duke, only his 1999 and 2005 squads held opponents under 40 percent shooting for an entire year.
Games between the Hokies and Blue Devils have been heated, quite physical, and usually close since Virginia Tech joined the ACC in 2005. Sunday’s meeting figured to follow similar lines, particularly with the visitors at full strength for the first time all season. What’s more, with four nonconference losses already -- three by the margin of a single basket -- coach Seth Greenberg’s squad needed to steal a few ACC road wins to stave off exclusion from NCAA play for the second straight year.
The Blue Devils were not about to let that happen at Cameron Indoor Stadium despite quick foul trouble for big men Brian Zoubek and Lance Thomas. “Last time they were here, they beat us,” Jon Scheyer, a junior, said of a two-point Hokie victory in January 2007. “Most of us were there for that…For us, we take that personally and want to protect our home court.”
Duke led throughout, displaying a revamped offense that relies more on attacking the basket on drives, getting the ball to its post players, and earning trips to the foul line than some of Krzyzewski’s recent squads. “We’re more of a complete team,” the coach said.
The game’s obvious turning point came early in the second half. Virginia Tech, wearing burgundy uniforms accessorized by bright orange sneakers with orange laces, scored the first two baskets and cut Duke’s lead to 39-35. With 17:23 left, Krzyzewski called timeout and shared a few animated observations with his players about thinking less, exhibiting more energy, and reducing their tunnel vision on offense. Then he loosed them on Virginia Tech.
From then on, it appeared the Hokies ran headlong into a closed door. They scored nine points the rest of the way and 13 for the half, the fewest points for an ACC squad in any period since N.C. State trailed 43-13 at Chapel Hill almost exactly a year ago.
Krzyzewski called the effort his team’s best defensive half of this season. “Our defense in the last 17 and a half minutes was outstanding,” he said after his team improved to 12-1. “We just played very well on the defensive end of the court, and executed pretty well offensively.”
Oddly, although the BC-UNC game concluded before the first TV timeout at Durham, the result was not mentioned by the public address announcer or on the scoreboard at Cameron. Fans buzzed over the outcome, learned via personal communication devices, and started the obligatory, and in this case celebratory, chant of “Go to hell, Carolina!”
Duke’s coaches and players insisted they did not know of BC’s victory until they finished their 69-44 dismemberment of Virginia Tech. “When you’re a Cubs fan, you don’t scoreboard watch,” Krzyzewski said.
Scheyer, a primary factor in shutting down A.D. Vassallo, the Hokies’ top scorer, was asked if he was surprised by the result at Chapel Hill. “With this league, nothing’s surprising, to be honest,” he said. “Every team’s good in this league.”
