You know, after the barn-building, brick-laying, snoozefest of basketball mediocrity that was last year’s ACC tourney, I thought my bleeding eyes had seen the worst. But Behold! The 2011 Tournament presents itself, looking like Charlie Sheen after a 3 week bender (though, unfortunately, not half as entertaining). Here are the lowlights so far:
Day 1 - God help us all
Miami 69 UVA 62 - This game sucked so badly it went all the way back around to being exciting again as UVA performed a choking maneuver the likes of which few have ever witnessed ( and, based on how many people were actually attending this game, that number didn’t grow by much) and hacked up a 10 point lead with :42 seconds left and lost in overtime. In their final 6 posessions UVA missed 3 of 4 free throws and turned the ball over 4 times. Miami scored 2 field goals in the first 16 minutes of the second half and WON !
BC 81 WFU 67 - Wanna know how bad the ACC is ? BC beat the Deacons and went DOWN in the RPI! The Deacons are SO bad that beating them by only 14 is the equivalent of a loss to another team.
VT 59 GT 43 - The Jackets better be thankful that Wake is around to stink up the conference so no one can hone in on the foul and pestilent vapors coming from their direction. They threw up 19 points in the first half (while I merely threw up) of a pitiable loss in a game that I couldn’t stick around to see the end of because i could feel the precious minutes of my life slipping away, never to be recovered.
Day 2 - Sometimes crappy play leads to exciting games! (other times, it just leads to crappy games)
UNC 61 Miami 59 - For the second time this year Miami blew an 18 + point lead the Heels, this time giving Carolina their only lead of the game on Zeller’s shot with .1 seconds left. It was an epic collapse/comeback.The Heels were god-awful in the first half, scoring 22 points and committing 15 turnovers while Miami countered in the second half by hitting only 1 shot in the last 10 minutes of the game.
Clemson 70 BC 47 - Boston College scored 9 points in the first 12 minutes en route to a 27 point half. Not to be outdone by themselves they then proceeded to score 8 points in the first 13 minutes of the second half.Awful awfulness.
VT 52 FSU 51 - 2 last-second shots here, but FSU’s technically came AFTER the last second, so it didn’t count. VTech managed to recover from a miserable 19 point first half in a game that was (a totally expected) boring grinder until the final 4 minutes.
Duke 87 Maryland 71 - Improbably (and I mean, BIG TIME improbably) Duke won despite an awful showing from 3 (3-15) combined with Nolan Smith’s worst game of the year (7 points, 5 turnovers). Kyle was the “old” Kyle and carried Duke with 29 points and 9 boards but the real story was the play of Duke’s bigs. Miles Plumlee had his second consecutive outstanding game (10 points and 9 boards, including an incredible 8 offensive boards) and Mason and Ryan combined for 18 points and 13 rebounds. Duke was on the verge of putting the game away on a number of occasions but couldn’t seem to get out of their own way until ironically (and potentially tragically for our hopes for the rest of the year), Nolan went down with a toe injury late in the second half. Seth Curry stepped up in a huge way, scoring 9 points over the final six minutes and the Devils’ defense, which allowed the Terps to score on 8 straight posessions earlier in the half, held Maryland scoreless for over 5 minutes late in the game to salt it away. Maryland was a woeful 15-28 from the line while Duke shot 22-27.
