Saturday, March 14, 2009
Who would take Georgia Tech’s talent?
Not a big fan of ACC officiating?
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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Overheard at the ACC Tournament:
A former ACC basketball coach with NBA ties says that half the coaches in the ACC would trade talent with Georgia Tech.
That would definitely be the case next year.
To say that rival coaches would have traded for Paul Hewitt’s talent this year is to suggest that the Yellow Jackets underachieved or that Hewitt didn’t do a good job. And, certainly you could make a case for that.
Georgia Tech looked pretty good Thursday in an 83-81 victory over Clemson, some of which Hewitt attributed to a doctor’s agreement to let point guard Maurice Miller remove a mask he had been wearing since breaking his nose in December.
Then, there’s the case of senior guard Lewis Clinch, who had a total of 12 points in a three-game span before posting a pair of 30-point games in his final week. Injuries and academic transgressions have caused Clinch to miss more than 30 games in his career.
Clinch, at his best, will be a loss. But, Clinch has seldom been at his best.
Of the promising ACC players with remaining eligibility, one of the best who is likely to return is conference rebounding leader Gani Lawal.
Georgia Tech won’t lack for power players next year with Lawal, Zach Peacock and the nation’s No. 1 recruit Derrick Favors.
The Yellow Jackets had ample power this year with Lawal, Peacock and senior Alade Aminu. Tech would have loved to have signed Aminu’s younger brother, Al-Farouq, who ended up at Wake Forest. But the younger Aminu will be one and done, and the Yellow have had enough of those.
Indeed, Favors should join a list of one-year Georgia Tech players that includes Stephon Marbury, Dion Glover, Chris Bosh, Javaris Crittenden and Thaddeus Young. Alade Aminu has a modest 700-plus points for his Georgia Tech career, but he’ll likely finish with more career points than his brother.
Wake, which spent one week as the No. 1 team in the country this season, could have three underclassmen go in the first round. Sophomore guard Jeff Teague and Aminu could go in the top 10 picks, and sophomore forward James Johnson could go between No. 10 and 20.
That could be enough to knock the Deacons out of the ACC’s first division in preseason polls.
ONE NAME that I didn’t notice in a look at various mock drafts was 6-foot-6 Maryland junior guard Greivis Vasquez.
Vasquez reportedly has said that he will place his name in consideration for the NBA Draft but has held open the possibility that he will return to College Park, Md.
Vasquez said he will be affected by Maryland’s success in landing an impact recruit this spring, most notably 6-5 shooting guard Lance Stephenson from Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Two other ACC underclassmen listed as first-round picks in most mock drafts are Duke junior guard Gerald Henderson and North Carolina junior guard Ty Lawson.
The lists do not include Duke sophomore forward Kyle Singler, although he could be a possibility. If I’m not mistaken, North Carolina junior guard Wayne Ellington inquired about his draft possibilities last year, but the perception is that he hasn’t had an NBA-worthy season.
When Ellington came out of Wynnewood, Pa., in 2005, nobody would have predicted that in his third season he would not make first-, second- or third-team All-ACC. (I voted for Ellington but his UNC teammate, Danny Green, got the only spot at which my ballot did not match the actual team).
FOUR OF THE TOP five scorers in the ACC are seniors and the fifth, Teague, is expected to turn pro. That would leave Virginia Tech guard Malcolm Delaney as the ACC’s top returning scorer. If Vasquez, Delaney and Virginia’s Sylven Landesberg would be the Nos. 1 and 2 returning scorers.
Delaney was a third-round All-ACC pick this season and probably performed at a higher level but who do you move down? Former Wake Forest and South Carolina coach Dave Odom told me Thursday that he thought Clemson post man Trevor Booker belonged on the first team. OK, I told him, who do take off?
Slumping Miami guard Jack McClinton might have dropped if the balloting had taken place a week later, but Odom was right about Booker. He could end up on a preseason All-ACC team with Delaney, Singler, Ellington and Lawal or Landesberg.
VIRGINIA TECH FANS complaining about the officiating in Friday’s ACC quarterfinal game against North Carolina won’t get any complaint from me.
I’ve been skeptical about ACC officiating ever since John Clougherty took over from Fred Barakat as ACC supervisor of officials and phased out a pair of veteran officials, Duke Edsall and Larry Rose, who some may have viewed as Barakat “guys.”
Edsall, who has called ACC championship games and the Final Four, took his whistle to the Big 12 and Conference USA when he saw the caliber of his ACC assignments was on the decline. Rose became the coordinator of men’s basketball officials for the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.
Clougherty and Barakat had not seen eye-to-eye when Clougherty was an active official who worked outside the ACC. While Clougherty was entitled to his own opinion about Edsall and Rose, my personal view of their officiating has always made me suspect an agenda.
Call me a “homer” because Edsall is from the Roanoke Valley, but the above-mentioned Odom told me that another Roanoke-based official, Roger Ayers, is “terrific.” Ayers did not have the Tech-North Carolina game, which was called by Karl Hess, Ray Natili and Brian Dorsey.
