Holliday: No NCAA run repeat for the ACC
Posted March 21, 2023 10:27 a.m. EDT
A year ago pundits proclaimed a down season for the Atlantic Coast Conference. All the league did in postseason was to send Miami to the Elite Eight plus Duke and UNC to the Final Four.
2023 produced the same critique – that the league has slipped a notch. And maybe it has this time around. But Miami is still playing and the Hurricanes are one win away from a second straight trip to the Elite Eight. And Miami lost five ACC games so how much more behind can the rest of the conference be?
Canes Coach Jim Larranaga implored his players to “represent the ACC well” in their game against Indiana. That they did, whipping the Hoosiers 85-69 and extending the ACC’s incredible 43-year streak of sending at least one team to the Sweet Sixteen.
Other leagues have fared better in this NCAA Tournament to be sure. The SEC, Big East and the Big XII all have three teams moving on. But the ACC is 5-4 in NCAA play, ahead of the 6-7 Big Ten.
And the ACC should have had one more win. But Virginia veteran Kihei Clark inexplicably handed Furman a chance at victory when he flung the ball toward midcourt against a Paladin double team instead of simply calling time out.
Pittsburgh’s performance this past week cannot be discounted. The Panthers beat Mississippi State of the SEC and then pounded Iowa State of the Big Twelve before losing to Xavier of the Big East on Sunday.
Which brings us to Duke and NC State.
Duke bullied to defeat by Tennessee
The young Duke Blue Devils had not seen a defense with the physicality of Rick Barnes’ Tennessee Volunteers; Bully Ball, they call it. But for long time observers of ACC Basketball, Barnes’ style of play is nothing new.
In 1998, one year after coaching Clemson to a Sweet Sixteen run, Barnes brought Bully Ball to Chapel Hill. I don’t think that’s what they called it back then, but it was the same kind of stuff. Barnes brought ten Tigers to the Dean Smith Center, and those 10 players committed 41 of a possible 50 fouls in an attempt to slow a UNC team what would make a run to the Final Four. Seemingly every UNC jump shooter that night got hammered. The Tar Heels shot 59 free throws and Clemson finished the game with just four players on the court.
UNC Coach Bill Guthridge said, somewhat charitably of the contest, “It was a different type of game. It was just a different type of game.”
Fast forward 25 years to 2023. Duke quickly found out how Barnes likes to play.
In the game’s opening minute Kyle Filipowski got knocked down by an elbow from Uros Plavsic, a Barnes big in the mold of Tom Wideman or Iker Iturbe in the coach’s Clemson days. A few minutes later, Filipowski got nailed in the face again, this time by James Aidoo. Duke’s medical staff worked feverishly to close the wound. I mean who needs a cut man in their corner during a college basketball game?
Filipowski managed to play 38 minutes even though he looked like he had been in a fight. And maybe he had.
The Blue Devils did their best to match UT’s aggression but the Vols were older and stronger. And at times, Duke was not strong with the basketball.
Turnovers have plagued the Blue Devils much of this season. However, during Duke’s ten game winning streak care of the ball improved noticeably. For example, Duke committed just eight turnovers in the Devils’ easy first round win over Oral Roberts.
Against tough Tennessee, Duke exceeded that number well before halftime. The Blue Devils turned it over 11 times in the first 20 minutes and that led to 12 Tennessee points off turnovers. The Vols finished the first half on a 14-2 run and never trailed thereafter.
Duke took better care of the ball in the second half and remained in contention thanks to double figure scoring from Filipowski, Jeremy Roach, and especially Tyrese Proctor, all of whom made closely contested shots. But the Blue Devils could get no closer than four points.
One of the biggest problems was that Roach got into foul trouble. With Jon Scheyer missing his most versatile defender, 6’8 Mark Mitchell due to injury, the Blue Devils’ coach put his team in a zone.
This change of defense slowed Tennessee briefly. The Vols missed a three and then committed a shot clock violation. But the change in defense soon backfired as Duke missed a box out (easy to do in a zone) and Julian Phillips slammed home an errant jumper.
And as the game rolled along, Tennessee’s zone offense began finding open space, especially for Olivier Nkamhoua and Santiago Vescovi.
UT shoots just 32% from beyond the arc for the season, but in the second half against Duke the Vols made 6-11, almost double their normal percentage.
Throw in a substantial rebound advantage—Tennessee rebounded one-third of its missed shots while Duke could collect only 1 in 5 of its misses—along with all the turnovers, and you’ve got a double digit win for the veteran Vols; also another NCAA Tournament win for Barnes who has reached the Sweet Sixteen with Clemson, Texas, and Tennessee.
And so Duke, riding a ten game winning streak and picked by many to play in the Final Four, has seen its season come to a sudden end.
It will be an interesting off season for Duke, which has a long history of recruiting one and done players. And the program has NBA type talent now for sure. Dereck Lively II was rated the top prospect in his high school class. And Dariq Whitehead has come on. TV analyst Jeff Van Gundy raved about Whitehead’s NBA readiness. Filipowski looks like another attractive target for the NBA.
But given the opportunities for college players to make NIL money, as well as the stature and visibility of the Duke program, one has to figure that Scheyer will have a more stable roster this spring than the one a year ago that required a complete overhaul. If even half of Duke’s key players return next year, Scheyer has a firm foundation to work with.
NC State loses duel in Denver
This was the game Jarkel Joiner and Terquavion Smith dreamed about; part of the reason Smith returned to NC State for a second season instead of moving on to the NBA in 2022.
Joiner did not have a great shooting day. But he still scored 13 points to go along with six rebounds and two assists.
Smith, meanwhile, played the game of his career, scoring 32 points on 12-27 shooting, including an electric left handed dunk over Creighton’s 7 foot center Ryan Kalkbrenner.
Casey Morsell added nine points and Jack Clark three, so State’s starting perimeter players scored 57 of the team’s 63 points. However State got nothing inside as Kalkbrenner blocked three shots and altered many others.
Going the other way, Kalkbrenner scored 31 points on 11-14 from the floor. Neither D.J. Burns nor Ebenezer Dowuona could stop him and both NC State bigs nearly fouled out trying.
This was a game where stylistically NC State had a solid shot at pulling off an upset. NC State forces turnovers and Creighton commits turnovers. NC State shoots the three and defends the three. Both teams like to run.
For the first 25 minutes, the Kevin Keatts formula worked well. The Wolfpack scored eight points off Creighton turnovers and held the Blue Jays to 1-13 from beyond the arc. State limited Creighton to just one field goal in the last five minutes of the first half.
Combining the end of the first half in Denver with the first four minutes of the second half, NC State outscored this team from nearby Nebraska 19-6 over a nine minute span to take a 37-30 lead. But given the Wolfpack’s issues, the lead proved unsustainable.
NC State did not have good ball movement-zero assists in the first half. The Pack went 0-5 from three in the first half, and just 3-14 for the game. And State shot just 37% overall. Without scoring, it became harder to set up the press. Result: Creighton committed just two turnovers after intermission.
But mostly Creighton had too much Ryan Kalkbrenner. The big guy scored 18 second half points, including 7 straight as the Blue Jays overcame the Wolfpack’s 7 point lead.
Now Smith put together his own run of 8 straight points to pull the Wolfpack within 62-59 just inside the three minute mark. But CU’s Baylor Scheirman hit a three moments later, just his team’s third three out of 20 attempts!
Alas, State played three minutes without connecting from the floor. In the final analysis the sixth seed team pushed past #11 seed 71-63.
Creighton is a terrific team, as evidenced by its nine point win over third seed Baylor Sunday and ensuing trip to the Sweet Sixteen. Still, the Wolfpack’s season ending loss underscores the need for consistent production inside. NC State was dominated by Ryan Kalkbrenner at both ends.
One has to believe Smith will now enter the NBA draft. What else could Terquavion do to top that performance in Denver? Also, Joiner is out of eligibility.
As for the other seven who played for NC State Friday, it is quite possible in these days of player mobility that one or two may choose to play somewhere else next season. But Kevin Keatts has been accustomed to re-stocking his roster since his days coaching at Hargrave Military Academy. His next team likely won’t have Terquavion Smith but it will be competitive. His coaching track record speaks to that ability to find new players-transfers as well as recruits.
And the Atlantic Coast Conference should also again be competitive. The key question is whether the league can escape the early season judgments that accompany November and December losses. With all the roster changes, there will be some early season losses as each team learns to play with transfers and new recruits.
Changes in the evaluating system of the NCAA Selection Committee may be in order. As things stand now, leagues that start poorly get labeled. They can’t change perception later because the January-February schedule contains no non-conference games.
As we’ve seen in this and other NCAA Tournaments, the ACC can’t adequately be measured by the early season alone.
