When a coach begins to lose the support of his team’s fans, it’s like coming down with a serious illness. The coach can fight back due to his personal strength, or maybe he’ll get a critical shot in the arm from a game-winning shot or maybe a supportive AD. In many cases, the illness spreads until it’s terminal, with only one possible outcome.
Last year, Pete Gillen got several necessary life-saving elixirs in the form of Todd Billet’s three game-winning needles. Gillen lived to coach another year, but his life signs never really returned to normal. This year, the illness has consumed him to where he’s just picking out the funeral arrangements.

On Saturday night, we learned that Gillen’s illness isn’t just terminal, it’s contagious. He’s the ACC’s Typhoid Mary. Herb Sendek, a long sufferer of symptoms of fan unhappiness was already showing some weakness. Gillen came into the RBC Center and coughed all over Sendek, giving him on life support. It’s hard to say if recovery is possible now.
Last week, I made several jokes about how bad Virginia was and about how State was going to crush them in Raleigh. After all, State always beats Virginia and this was the weakest Cav club in years. But way back in the back of my brain, I had a little thought. Years of watching sports has helped me recognize patterns and one that I saw frequently is the underachieving team. They have talent, but they struggle and struggle until eventually people stop acknowledging that they have potential and declare that the team will lose every game. And then, without fail, that team wins a game thought unwinnable. Think Carolina football beating Miami. I saw this pattern in Virginia, a team that was ranked just a couple of months ago, but I repressed the thought. I mean, who could predict a road win from a team that lost by 19 to Providence and 50 to Carolina in their last two games?
It’s a bizarre season. And a terrible one for NC State fans. Their NCAA chances are all but shot now. The only way they make the tourney now is a string of upsets over the league’s (and country’s) top teams. I don’t see that happening. Instead, they’ll fail to get a bid and settle for the NIT. The discussions of what to do about Sendek will be nasty.
The other critical loss of the weekend was Maryland’s at Miami. It wasn’t a shocking loss – Miami’s a tough team – but the game was one that Maryland needed after getting spanked by Clemson. The Terrapins have just about undone all the good of their win at Duke. They still are a likely NCAA tournament team, but it’s no longer a knock, especially considering that Gary’s boys have shown an ability to lose to anyone, anywhere.
On the flip side, Miami kept their bubble hopes alive. They are not yet a tournament team, but they still have a good shot and that’s impressive. Their 5-5 record in the ACC qualifies as shocking. If they get to 8-8, and they can, they’ll get some serious discussion on Selection Sunday. I’d guess that they’d probably still need one ACC Tournament win to lock up a bid at that point.
In the other three games of the weekend, the Big Three each took care of business with fairly easy wins over Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech and Florida State. No surprises, except maybe for Coach Krzyzewski’s fainting during the game. For some reason, that incident doesn’t seem to be getting much play as if coaches collapsing on the court during a game were the most normal thing ever. Can you imagine the turmoil if health problems were to force K to retire?
For the week, the Big Three further distanced themselves from the pack (and the Pack) in the league. It’s looking more and more like there are only three NCAA tournament locks in this league. Last week, there were arguably four bubble teams, Georgia Tech, Maryland, Miami and NC State. All lost ground during the week. NC State is off the bubble at this point and Miami is hanging on by a thread. Tech and Maryland are probably both still bid-worthy, but they need to stop the bleeding and win some games.
I added one column to my table this week, an average of the four rankings. That’s a quick way to see how much a team is rising or falling relative to its peers. As you might expect, the team with the biggest change was NC State with it’s two bad losses. The Pack dropped an average of 16.5 spots in the power ratings. As a whole, the league is dropping. A few teams moved up slightly, but several dropped significant amounts. It’s clear that the conference is underperforming right now and that’s troubling.

Team	prev/cur	Pomeroy	Sagarin	Greenfield	RPI	Avg.	Trend
Carolina	prev	70.64 (2)	94.46 (2)	96.025 (2)	.6516 (8)	3.5
	cur	71.11 (2)	95.25 (2)	96.339 (2)	.6472 (8)	3.5
Wake Forest	prev	68.47 (3)	91.93 (6)	94.638 (4)	.6692 (3)	4
	cur	68.46 (4)	92.36 (6)	95.246 (4)	.6772 (2)	4
Duke	prev	67.44 (5)	94.00 (3)	94.515 (5)	.6658 (5)	4.5
	cur	67.63 (6)	93.23 (3)	93.794 (7)	.6559 (7)	5.75
Georgia Tech	prev	61.61 (25)	85.65 (27)	85.909 (31)	.5948 (28)	27.5
	cur	60.43 (30)	85.41 (25)	85.389 (34)	.5894 (34)	30.75
Maryland	prev	61.86 (21)	86.29 (21)	86.919 (26)	.6098 (22)	22.5
	cur	60.27 (31)	84.38 (29)	84.607 (38)	.5900 (33)	32.75
Clemson	prev	56.72 (64)	80.70 (63)	80.899 (77)	.5549 (74)	69.5
	cur	57.94 (51)	81.07 (62)	81.968 (67)	.5568 (74)	63.5
Miami	prev	56.20 (72)	82.11 (46)	82.946 (52)	.5691 (58)	57
	cur	55.30 (83)	81.45 (57)	81.842 (70)	.5665 (60)	67.5
Virginia	prev	54.91 (93)	80.28 (69)	81.036 (75)	.5670 (59)	74
	cur	54.81 (93)	79.87 (76)	81.743 (71)	.5727 (49)	72.25
NC State	prev	58.97 (42)	82.35 (43)	82.872 (53)	.5388 (97)	58.75
	cur	57.89 (52)	81.26 (59)	81.684 (72)	.5274 (118)	75.25
FSU	prev	56.51 (68)	79.55 (79)	81.003 (76)	.5372 (108)	82.75
	cur	56.64 (67)	79.39 (82)	81.022 (79)	.5325 (110)	84.5
VA Tech	prev	53.27 (112)	77.83 (102)	79.242 (105)	.5189 (142)	115.25
	cur	54.19 (102)	78.32 (92)	80.330 (88)	.5221 (134)	104