Friday, March 14, 2008
ACC Tournament sees rise of non-traditionals
Underclassmen-to-NBA speculation begins
Doug Doughty
Doug Doughty's College Notebook Plus is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Fridays.
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Say what you want about ACC expansion , but look who won first-round games Thursday at the men’s basketball tournament:
Winners at Charlotte Bobcats Arena were Boston College, which began ACC play in 2005-2006; Miami, whose first season was 2004-2005; Florida State, whose first tournament was in 1991-92, and Georgia Tech, which began play in 1979-1980.
I’ll grant, it’s a stretch to refer to Georgia Tech as an expansion team in its 29th ACC season, but those four will be joined in the semifinals today by Virginia Tech, which joined Miami in the 2004-2005 class.
Gone after first-round losses are charter members Wake Forest, North Carolina State and Maryland, as well as Virginia, which joined the loop in its second season.
If you subscribe to the theory that ACC men’s basketball is in decline, don’t blame it on the new members.
And, don’t expect the old guard to make a major resurgence in the near future.
Of course, North Carolina and Duke are always going to be good, but Virginia, Maryland and N.C. State don’t look to be vastly improved in 2008-2009.
The Cavaliers loses three-time, first-team All-ACC selection Sean Singletary, Maryland loses No. 8 ACC scorer and No. 3 rebounder James Gist and those are just the seniors.
N.C. State freshman J.J. Hickson might not have come to college if players were allowed to go directly from high school to the NBA, and his 27-point, 14-rebound performance Thursday against Miami might support any notion that he’s ready to make the move next year.
If you think Virginia fans are unhappy with a 15-15 record in Dave Leitao’s third season, you should have checked out the N.C. State and Maryland message boards Thursday night (I didn’t, but I heard about them).
State’s season-ending nine-game losing streak matched the longest in school history and now Hickson could leave? How bad could the Wolfpack be next year? For its part, Maryland has won 18 games, but the Terrapins lost four of their last five games and five of the last seven.
There has been a little bit of speculation about the possibility of 6-foot-5 sophomore point guard Greivis Vasquez turning pro, but he came unraveled like all the other Terrapins during a late two-minute, 52-second stretch when they had five turnovers. Maryland had led 20-5 at one point.
The real enigma, though, is N.C. State. Here’s a team that won three ACC Tournament games last year and was picked for third in the preseason, with a preseason first-team All-ACC pick in Brandon Costner. Costner went scoreless and had four turnovers Thursday night in 17 minutes.
It was the second time in three games that Costner had gone scoreless and the third time since Jan. 31. Over that span, there also were games in which he scored one, two and three points.
It’s reasonable to think that Costner might have been a first-round draft pick following the 2006-2007 season, particularly after he scored 28 points against North Carolina in the championship game. He also scored 30 points against Duke in the first round.
(Duke was a seventh seed? I had forgotten that).
Surely, Costner couldn’t leave now, but stranger things have happened. Then-sophomore Josh McRoberts didn’t have a good case for leaving Duke after the 2006-2007 season, but he did and ended up in the National Basketball Development League.
You look at the underclassmen among the ACC’s statistical leaders and who could leave? Certainly, player of the year Tyler Hansbrough could leave and would be a very high draft choice, but the same thing could have been said after his sophomore year.
Hansbrough has made it clear that he will return to North Carolina for his senior year unless the Tar Heels were to win the national championship, at which point he would have a decision to make, which doesn’t mean an early exit would be automatic.
Who else? Boston College junior Tyrese Rice, a first-team All-ACC selection and the conference’s No. 2 scorer, probably would rely heavily on Eagles’ coach Al Skinner. I could see Rice placing his name in consideration for the draft, a la Singletary in 2007, and removing it before the deadline.
Then you’ve got Vasquez, the ACC assist leader and No. 4 scorer, whose height probably would make him more attractive than Rice. Besides, Vasquez, a native Venezuelan, already has turned 21 and is old for his year in school.
The fifth vote-getter on the All-ACC first team is Miami junior Jack McClinton, who stands fifth in the ACC in scoring and leads the league in 3-pointers made and 3-point percentage.
McClinton’s ascension to the ACC stage is relatively recent and I wonder how much attention he would command from the NBA, but consider this: McClinton, who sat out a year after transferring from Siena and was in prep school before that, turned 23 in January.
Florida State’s Tony Douglas, another fourth-year junior who spent his freshman year at Auburn, is 22. He had one late-season stretch in which he scored 20 or more points in six of seven games and he leads the ACC by a wide margin in steals.
If North Carolina sophomore point guard Tywon Lawson had not suffered a high ankle sprain that caused him to miss seven games, maybe he would be the topic of more NBA speculation. Of course, if the Tar Heels were to win the NCAA title, it might be 2004-2005 all over again, when Carolina lost underclassmen Raymond Felton, Sean May and Marvin Williams to the draft.
Things could get interesting in the month leading up to the NBA declaration date in late April and for six weeks after that as the underclassmen attempt to gauge scouts’ interest.
