Smart move by the ACC to open the season with league play. Lots of eyeballs on the conference playing league games instead of cupcakes. ND @ UNC was interesting (NU recruiting target Carmody looked OK), and Syracuse-UVA is a headline game. ACC has also gone to a 20 game conference schedule so 2 fewer crappy OOC games.
OT: ACC
- Thread starter NJCat
- Start date
I don’t like it, and I know most coaches don’t. Teams are too unprepared to play important conference games so early. There’s a reason teams open with non-con games...get that team cohesion and rotation down before the important games.
I agree the games have been sloppy. Kansas had something like 28 turnovers last night and almost beat Duke. But if I was a coach I'd like a tough early game to get the team focussed. Too easy to sleepwalk against a MVSU or a aTmCC.
FWIW Merrimack lost by 20 tonight at Maine. And Vandy is in a dogfight against SE Missouri State, leading by just 4 with 10 minutes remaining.
Yeah...you don’t want too many cupcakes (unless you won’t many conference games and you just want some wins). I don’t mind team’s testing themselves early in the season, but schedule tough non-con games then. They don’t hurt as bad as losing a conference game.
That’s how Virginia plays. I’m not going to say how the game was last night, since I only saw the last 5 mins, but there is something to be said for games where every possession matters.
Exactly. And it was much more fun watching that game than Green Bay v. Purdue, which was also on.
And anytime whining Jim Boeheim loses is a great time. He was bitching and moaning about how scheduling the game early was all about money. Duh, Jim.......
The whole point of the non-con season is to prepare your team for the conference season. It makes zero sense from a competitive standpoint to put conference games in Nov.
Especially with the player turnover rate at an all-time high, those Nov non-con games are more important than ever.
You're probably right but what kind of "crowd" do they expect on Friday, vs. Merrimack? Radford, Norfolk St, SIU Edwardsville, Hartford ?????
The NU administration are the ones who should be deeply fixated on attendance in both basketball and football.
If it was a major issue for them, they would be. The years have shown that it is not.
I'm aware that is how Virginia plays, but they can't defend the foul line, where Syracuse hit fewer than half its shots. The teams also shot 16 percent (Virginia) and 17 percent (Syracuse) from three-point range, and Sorry-excuse was a whopping 24 percent from the field. I'm prepared to give both sides credit for playing some defense, but that is just lousy basketball. Thirty-four points with a 30-second shot clock in effect? Blah.
Exactly. No business for a league game to be played before the teams have even tested out their rotations.
Didn't we have something like a 40-36 game, or something close to that, at West Lafayette some years ago (thinking mid-'00's), or is my memory playing tricks on me? We may even have won that one, IIRC.
I remember listening to that game on the radio in my dorm room. Probably for the best that no one got to watch it on tv.
In the horrid 2007 season, we beat North Florida 40-39 and Wheaton 41-39.
this was done because of the acc network. they are trying to force cable companies to carry it. All these games on acc network
Makes sense. I get the ACC Network here in NC and have watched the games. Will be watching much more ACC network since there isn't anything on BTN to get me excited.
I haven't often been accused of that, Fitz. Must've stuck in my mind just 'cause it was such an odd score, much like when we were down 30-6 to Illinois at the half at Welsh-Ryan a few years before that.
I like more conf games but doing it to open the season is kind of early. Let teams gel a bit and mix in some conf games starting in December.
I believe Hachad hit a 3 with like 2 minutes left and that was the final basket of the game for either team.