ACC Basketball Season Review/Tournament Preview

If ACC Commissioner John Swofford were a conductor, he’d want to add a xylophone solo to Beethoven’s 9th. If he were an artist, he’d almost certainly think the Mona Lisa could be improved if she had a mustache. And if John Swofford had directed The Godfather, he probably would have cast David Cassidy as Michael. John Swofford isn’t satisfied with perfection, which is why he tinkered with it and, as a result, ruined the greatest basketball conference in the country.
It used to be so perfect. A conference schedule where every team played a home-and-home series. A membership with geographic proximity. An end-of-year conference tournament that was the crown jewel of the college basketball season. Perfection. And
John Swofford destroyed all of it just to get one lousy football game that couldn’t even sell-out. I guess the basketball gods assumed Swofford had done plenty of that by himself.
Playing with 12-teams for the first time in its illustrious history, the ACC had one of the most forgettable seasons in recent memory. Mediocrity was the new standard in the expanded ACC. Teams ranked highly in the preseason struggled (Maryland, Wake Forest), newcomers with stacked rosters failed to live up to expectations (Boston College) and, for most of the season, the only captivating story line was “how much worse can J.J. Redick’s poetry get?”
Florida State’s loss to Wake Forest (holla!) yesterday could mean only three ACC teams will get an invite to the NCAA Tournament, an embarrassing total in a year where the vaunted Missouri Valley Conference could get as many as five. Sure, I guess technically the ACC will get four teams in when you include Boston College, but that would be capitulating to John Swofford and it will be a cold day in hell before I ever bow down to that fascist pig.

All-ACC First Team

G – Sean Singletary, Virginia
G – J.J. Redick, Duke
F – Craig Smith, Boston College
F – Tyler Hansbrough, North Carolina
F – Shelden Williams, Duke

This is one of the easiest years to pick an All-ACC team in recent memory. Usually there’s two or three great players who are shoo-ins for the team followed by seven or eight guys on the next level who all have a valid argument. This year, only Singletary is a question mark, but he’s easily the top point guard in the conference and belongs on the list.
I’d love to argue that Shelden Williams doesn’t belong on the first-team because of his overrated defense and that fact that in big games he’s as funky in the paint as an old batch of collard greens. But leaving him out would just be petty (besides, I can use that argument next week when I leave him off my All-America team). Not that I’m averse to being petty, mind you, but I choose my spots.
The rest of the team is pretty easy: Redick and Hansbrough are no-brainers while Smith was the best player on the team that finished fourth in the conference. Again, it was tough for me to admit Boston College is actually in the ACC, but when I realized my next best option was Eric Williams, I had to bite the bullet on this one.
(If you go by the numbers alone, Williams actually has a better case for first-team honors than Smith. But if you go by the numbers alone you’d think Eli Manning was a terrible quarterback. And that’s just preposterous!)

All-ACC Second Team

G – Justin Gray, Wake Forest
G – J.R. Reynolds, Virginia
F – Al Thornton, Florida State
F – David Noel, North Carolina
C – Eric Williams, Wake Forest

It says a lot about a coach when two players from a 3-13 team make the all-conference squad. That’s like the four-minute mile of coaching. (The more I watch Wake play good basketball (like they did in the second-half yesterday, the more I become convinced that one day they will write books about Skip Prosser. And not the good kind.)
With Hansbrough becoming a dominant force in Chapel Hill people have sort of forgotten about Noel, but his contributions on both ends of the floor have been crucial to the Heels success. Thornton is the opposite of Shelden Williams; he puts up his best numbers in big games. In four of the Seminoles’ most important games this season - at BC, at Duke, vs. Maryland (a must-win late in the season) and vs. Duke – Thornton averaged 31.8 points and 9.8 rebounds.
J.R. Reynolds got the nod over Guillermo Diaz. who would highlight a theoretical third-team, because his season was a success while Diaz’s has to be looked at as a failure. Some prescient minds picked Diaz to win conference player of the year, but instead he put up garbage-time stats and never seemed to make a big play. I can’t remember a player ever averaging 17 points per game by doing so little. Oh wait, yes I can. His name is Justin Gray.
Diaz would be at the top of my third-team though, but those are so depressing so I’m just going to save myself from talking about Nik Caner-Medley and move on.

ACC Player of the Year
J.J. Redick, Duke

The bouncing basketball echoes through the gym,
But maybe it’s merely my heart.
Fans cheering, coaches yelling, players running,
And me: The Napoleon of the court.
I soar like a condor. Free. Freer.
But my soul is brittle. Like peanuts.
Or an old person’s bones.
Why do they hate me?
Fear of nominal alliteration?
My Caesar haircut?
Or can it be they love me?
My passion, my inspiration, my commitment.
My soul is filled to bursting.
Bursting!
Bursting!
Bursting!
Parting! Which is what I now must do.
Chris Collins is knocking on my door.

ACC Freshman of the Year
Greg Paulus, Duke

Oh wait, this is my ballot, not Dick Vitale’s. Tyler Hansbrough is the run-away winner of this award. It’s merely a precursor to next season when he’ll be the unanimous winner of the conference player of the year. And this will hopefully give us more shots of that blonde sitting next to his dad.

ACC Coach of the Year
Roy Williams, North Carolina

What, you were thinking Skip Prosser maybe? And if Roy doesn’t win National Coach of the Year, that’s a travesty. Just because Bruce Pearl appeared to be a lock to win the award three weeks ago doesn’t mean he should be now. He’s done a great job at Tennessee, but Roy has taken a team full of freshman and bench-warming seniors and turned them into a title contender.

All-ACC Disappointment Team

G – Justin Gray, Wake Forest
G – Guillermo Diaz, Miami
G – DeMarcus Nelson, Duke
F – Ilian Evtimov, North Carolina State
F - Sean Williams, Boston College

Gray and Diaz might have made the all-conference teams, but anybody who thinks their respective seasons were a success probably thought I was serious about Paulus a little ways back.
DeMarcus Nelson is the all-time leading scorer in California high-school basketball history. This season, he averaged the same amount of points per game as Todd Galloway. If Nelson were even half the player Coach K thought he’d be, Duke would be the favorite to win the National Championship. But without a legitimate third scoring threat, the Dukies are one poor Redick shooting performance away from an early exit.
Sean Williams needs to find some better weed apparently, because he’s as overrated as Daniel Vosovic. And Ilian Evtimov didn’t have a terrible season, but for an eight-year veteran, one would think he would have had a bigger role on a solid Wolfpack squad.
Note: Chris McCray would have been on this team but he can’t spell disappointment.

Game of the Year
Florida State 79 – Duke 74

If only because it led to this unbelievably-(even-for-them)-haughty article in the Duke student newspaper. If the ’96 Bulls played the Blue Devils, I’m guessing Alex Fanaroff would think a Chicago win would be due to Michael Jordan’s desire to prove, once and for all, that he is a better player than Lee Melchionni.
Seriously, read the whole thing. It gives a keen insight into how the mind of a loser with an inferiority complex operates.

ACC Tournament Picks

#1 Duke vs. #8 Miami
It’s tough to imagine Duke going into the NCAA Tournament with three straight losses, so all signs point to a big win against the Canes. The x-factor, as always, is how Redick can cope with his emotional fatigue. Normally players need 4-6 weeks to recover from that injury, but Redick tried to expedite the process by watching Fried Green Tomatoes before the game. (Note: As I write this, Redick is 0-4 to start the game. Dammit, he just hit a three, literally at the moment I typed “Note”.)
Pick: Duke

#4 N.C. State vs. #12 Wake Forest
Between Chris Paul’s crotch-shot last year and Tony Bethel’s punch in the season finale, officials might want to search the players for shivs before tip-off.
Pick: Wake Forest (why? why? why do I do it to myself?)

# 2 North Carolina vs. #7 Virginia
Nine days ago, Carolina beat the Hoos by 45 points.
Pick: North Carolina

#3 Boston College vs. #6 Maryland
Gary Williams always complains about the unfair advantage all the Tobacco Road schools have whenever the ACC Tournament is played in Greensboro and repeatedly tells this to his team. Somehow, I think Gary is going to need a new motivational ploy against a team from Massachusetts.
Pick: Maryland

Semi-Finals
#1 Duke over #12 Wake Forest
#2 North Carolina over #6 Maryland

Finals
#1 Duke over #2 North Carolina