Let’s take a look at the scoring distribution of the ACC schools so far this season (through Monday’s action except for unc - I didn’t want to count their game against chaminade who is Division II).  Obviously, it is very early in the season, and teams have played opponents of varying talent, but what the heck, let’s see how the numbers fall out.

The columns show the following:

• Team
• The number of players on that team that are averaging 10 points per game (ppg) or more*
• The number of players on that team that are averaging 7.5 ppg or more*
• The number of players on that team that are averaging 5 ppg or more*
• Combine the top three scorers’ ppg and divide by the team’s ppg average to get the % of total points the top three scorers are scoring*

*Note: Player must have played in more than half of his team’s games

This demonstrates that Virginia Tech has the worst scoring distribution by a healthy 10% margin, and 17% higher than third.  Only one other school, nc state, has less than six players averaging at least 5.0 ppg, and they have five while VT only has three.

The Hokies truly are a three trick pony right now on the offensive end with Jeff Allen (17.8), A.D. Vassallo (16.8), and Malcolm Delaney (16.6).  Cheick Diakite is next with just 4.8 ppg.  VT is 11th in the ACC in Scoring Offense at 67.2 ppg, just 0.2 ppg ahead of last place nc state.  Nine of the ACC teams average 77 or more ppg.

Tech was supposed to have an improved offense this season, featuring more up-tempo play, but so far the results are not bearing fruit.  Tech needs to push the ball more and use their athleticism.  Hopefully the Hokies can find some balance soon and find a fourth and fifth threat on the offensive end. 

Virginia Tech basketball is just a little over a month away from tipping off.  Before we start breaking down the Hokies prospects (thumbs up!) for this season, let’s look at the ACC as a whole.  It’s prediction time, baby!

Over the next month every media gadfly in the college hoops business will hit you with their ”expert opinion”.  What do they really know?  Nothing.  A mountaineer could make these picks. 

Here’s how the powers-that-be make their cookie cutter ACC predictions:

• Pick unc or duke to win the conference (this year unc).
• Pick the one you didn’t pick to win to finish 2nd.
• Hype up one other team as a “serious contender” to win the conference, but don’t actually pick them ahead of unc or duke.  [Note: this year, the buzz seems to be around miami but wake is my darkhorse... whoops, I'm violating my own rule]
• Draw the other teams out of a hat and place them 4th through 12th.
• Tell everyone how smart you are, which isn’t tough to claim since duke or unc has won the regular season title 10 of the last 12 years and has won the ACC Tournament 11 of the last 12 years.
• Lather, rinse, repeat formula next year.

Well, I’m taking their precious formula and shoving it where the ecu girls like it.  I’ve come up with my own, super-scientific, mega-smart, hyper-perfect mathmatical formula.  Numbers never lie!  That’s right, number nerds, we are going technical on you. 

In the Super-Terrific-ACC-Predictornator, the higher the number the better.  It is based on four parts:

• Returning Players - points calculated on past playing time
• Experience/Win Factor - multiply ACC wins last season by Returning Players Total - this rewards teams that have experience AND won a lot, since crappy but experienced players likely will still stink worse than that leftover fish someone microwaved at work the other day
• Awards - Points are given for players that finished on the various All-ACC teams (overall, freshman, defense) last year
• Recruiting Total - points calculated based on each recruit’s Scout.com and Rivals.com star rating (1-5 stars) then taking the average of the two totals

So that’s the parts, let’s see the results [drum roll]…
ACC Regular Season Standings for 2008-09:

1. unc - 22.2 points
2. wake - 16.4
3. duke - 15.8
4. VT - 14.0
5. miami - 13.9
6. clemson - 13.3
7. fsu - 12.1
8. nc state - 10.8
9. ga tech - 10.6
10. bc - 10.5
11. md - 10.5
12. uva - 9.6

Pow!  Right in the kisser.  unc gets a woodshed beat-down victory but wake jumps all the way up to #2.  If VT can pull off that fourth place finish, that would be a fourth first round bye in the ACC Tournament in five seasons for the burnt orange and Chicago maroon according to the Super-Terrific-Never-Wrong-ACC-Predictornator. 

You also have to love maryland and virginia at the bottom.  Looks like the hoos are going to get used to pulling up the rear this year.  When does lacrosse season start?

Now, for those of you wondering how I came up with those numbers, here’s the parts broken down in more detail.  Click ‘Read more’ below to see the ingredients…

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I found the ACC’s three year conference game model on their web site: ACC Conference Schedule

Virginia Tech’s primary partners are boston college and uva.  In other words, VT will play them twice (home and away) every season.  Each season, the Hokies will have three rotating partners that they also play twice.  Tech will play the remaining six teams once.

Here’s how it breaks down in terms of who Virginia Tech will play each season in conference and where.  Dates have not been set.

2008-09:

• Play Twice: bc, clemson, duke, fsu, and uva
• Play at the Cassell: ga tech, nc state, and unc (they will be the ACC’s preseason #1 and likely #1 overall)
• Play Away: maryland, miami, and wake

2009-10:

• Play Twice: bc, miami, nc state, unc, and uva
• Play at the Cassell: clemson, maryland, and wake
• Play Away: duke, fsu, and ga tech

2010-11:

• Play Twice: bc, ga tech, maryland, uva, and wake
• Play at the Cassell: duke, fsu, and miami
• Play Away: clemson, nc state, and unc

Found this 2008-09 ACC preview on a random blog tonight. Hokies are picked 5th.

IN CASE YOU DIDN’T CHECK THE LINK AT THE BOTTOM, OR FIGURE IT OUT ON YOUR OWN, THIS WAS AN APRIL FOOL’S DAY GAG…

In a shocking decision, the NCAA has ruled that the famous “Henson Heave” should not have counted because Les Henson stepped on the baseline before firing his famous 89′3″ world record shot to win the game at florida state on 1/21/80 by a 79-77 score. There was no three-point line back then so the score is being put back at 77-77, erasing the buzzer-beater. The game will now be recorded as a tie.

Take a look at the second replay towards the end of this YouTube clip. If you look closely, it does appear that Les Henson clearly steps on the line before firing the miracle shot.

As many of you know, the NCAA instituted instant replay years ago to help with buzzer-beaters and questionable three-point shots. Referees can use video monitors to review controversial plays to ensure the correct call was made. Replay was used to validate that Deron Washington’s layup at the end of the uva game was out of his hand in time.

Well, now the NCAA has even started reviewing shots after games. For example, a dunk at the end of the ucla vs. texas a&m game in the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament was overturned hours later because it was after the buzzer.

For more on the NCAA’s decision, visit this link: Read more

The All-ACC teams were announced today. A.D. Vassallo was named Second Team All-ACC. He ranked 9th in total votes.

Deron Washington made the Honorable Mention All-ACC team and Honorable Mention ACC All-Defensive Team. Freshman Jeff Allen also made the Honorable Mention ACC All-Defensive Team and the ACC All-Freshman Team.

Congrats to A.D., Deron, and Jeff!

Check out the entire teams on the ACC official website.

Originally posted on February 27th.  I have now updated it with the completion of ACC regular season play in basketball.  And we’re still #1! 

While 99% of Hokie fans were happy to be moving from the Big East to the ACC four years ago, no one could have predicted the success Tech would have in the two major college sports: football and basketball.  In fact, Virginia Tech has the best combined winning percentage of the 12 members of the ACC in football and men’s basketball over the last four years in ACC play.  Yeah, that’s right, we’re #1!

Here’s the breakdown:

This table shows each ACC team’s winning percentage in ACC regular season games for football and basketball over the last four seasons.  The Combined Win % column ranks football and basketball evenly to compensate for the fact you play twice the number of basketball games each season as football.  And as you can see, Virginia Tech comes in at 66.4%, over 5% higher than the next closest team, unc.

Since joining the ACC, the Hokies are 27-5 in football and 31-33 in basketball in ACC regular season action.  Not too shabby, especially when you consider VT was just 17-11 (60.7%) in football and 17-47 (26.6%) in basketball in their final four years in the Big East in conference games.  Sure, ricky stokes didn’t help that any, but you can even see the improvement Virginia Tech has had in football, going up almost 24% in these two comparisons.  Throw out 2000 (VT went 6-1 in Big East contests), and VT was just 11-10 in their last three Big East football campaigns.

In basketball, the Hokies have progressed by leaps and bounds also.  They finished below .500 in each of their four Big East seasons, but have finished .500 or better in three of their four ACC seasons, including earning three first round byes in the ACC tourney. 

Another interesting thing about this study is bc, another Big East defector, is #3.  They were an average football team in the Big East, finishing no better than 4-3 in conference play between 1994 and 2003 (the last year miami and VT were in the Big East).  But the eagles are 16-8 in ACC games in three seasons, finishing 5-3, 5-3, and 6-2.   

Sure, miami has struggled in the ACC, winning just 50% of the time in football and 40% of the time in basketball.  But between VT and bc, you can see that the Big East wasn’t too shabby, especially in football.  The former Big East schools have pushed around the soft, wine & cheese ACC folks in football, while also making strides in basketball. 

In summary, in just four years in the ACC, the Hokies have two football championships, another football division championship, and three first round byes in the ACC Basketball Tournament.  hoo’s #1 in the ACC’s major sports?  The Hokies are!

Note: As mentioned above, this table looks solely at the win percentages in the two sports, not the number of games.  So if you were 2-0 in football but 0-4 in basketball, your Combined Win % would be 50%: (100% + 0%)/2, not 33% (2-4 combined).  This compensates for the fact teams play 16 ACC basketball games per season and just 8 football ACC games.

With Black History Month upon us, let’s look at coaching opportunities for minorities in the ACC. 

The schools that make-up the ACC cannot be accused of prejudiced hiring practices, at least when it comes to men’s basketball.  Despite being known as the best basketball conference historically, the league’s schools have shown modern, integrated hiring practices.  A total of seven ACC men’s basketball programs are led by non-white coaches (miami, nc state, bc, georgia tech, clemson, fsu, and uva).  Throw in the fact Seth Greenberg is Jewish, and you have two-thirds of the teams being led by coaches that are not white Christians. 

This is quite refreshing for a conference with deep Southern roots.  By comparison, the ACC is much more well integrated than the other major Southern conference - the SEC.  The SEC currently has just two non-white head coaches in men’s basketball and one of them, Butch Pierre at lsu, is only an interim head coach and he is replacing a white coach.  Georgia is the other school with a non-white head coach.

When you shift the focus to football, the picture is no where near as positive.  The ACC has just one non-white head coach, Randy Shannon at miami.  And the SEC has just one also, Sylvester Croom at mississippi state, the first and only black head coach in SEC football history.  This isn’t a condemnation on just these two conferences though considering the number of black and hispanic head coaches in all of Division I-A is in single digits.  In fact, there’s as many African-American head coaches in ACC basketball as there are in all of Division I-A football, I believe.

While the numbers are great in the ACC, it is interesting to look at where those minority coaches are at.  If you broke up the ACC into football schools and basketball schools, I would shake the institutions out as such:

Clear-Cut Football School

• Virginia Tech
• miami
• florida state
• clemson

Clear-Cut Basketball School

• unc
• duke
• nc state
• wake forest
• maryland

That leaves bc, georgia tech, and uva.  boston college I certainly don’t see as a football school.  I would throw them on the basketball side of things although they only had about 200 students at their home game against uva on Sunday.  georgia tech is in a college football mad city, but it is a SEC city.  I would lean towards calling georgia tech a bball school despite their history in football.  And uva I would call a lacrosse school, though if I had to pick between these two sports, I’d say they support football more.  They just aren’t any good at it.  [Click below to read on...]

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The greatest streak in college sports survived for another year or two as unc beat clemson 103 to 93 in two overtimes at chapel hill thanks to one of the biggest choke jobs ever seen.  The tigers blew a 14 point lead with less than 8 minutes play and so clemson still has NEVER won at unc.  NEVER.  0-53 now.  0-for-82 years.  That’s right, a 53 game losing streak despite having a “level playing field”, being in the same conference.

clemson had a great chance with Ty Lawson, unc’s star point guard, out with a high ankle sprain.  There really seems to be a higher power involved with this streak.  Streaks were falling right and left, such as Navy snapping their 43 game losing streak against notre dame last Fall and the Patriots 18-0 season snapped in the Super Bowl.  With unc all but done for late in the second half, another streak looked to be ending.  But the tigers became tentative and let the game get away.  They hit just one free throw the whole game on seven attempts.  Hansbrough hit 17 free throws by himself.

The series started in 1926 and has continued off and on since then.  Both teams played in the Southern Conference, and then as ACC members for the last 50+ years.  The two teams played every year at unc from 1974-2004, yet the tigers were never able to stratch out a win.  Now that the ACC expanded and doesn’t have round robin play anymore, the tigers may not play at unc every year.  FYI: VT has 5 wins at unc.

The heels face the Hokies next Saturday at 1 PM in chapel hill on CBS.  The heels have a game before then, while VT has a much needed bye this week.

ACC Nation Special Feature
Column by Patrick Hite

The next game has nothing to do with this game. Those were the words of Virginia Tech’s Seth Greenberg following his team’s yo-yo, not-always-pretty, overtime win against Virginia Wednesday night.

The next game for the Hokies is Georgia Tech. This game was Virginia. The previous game was Maryland. Three games and, so far, two wins with the Yellow Jackets coming up Saturday.

“In this league you’ve got 16 separate entities,� Greenberg said. “And one really has nothing to do with the others, except if you get too high or too low, the league will suffocate you.�

Read more of this column at ACC Nation.

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