02/28/06 Boston College 80, Wake Forest 65 – Chestnut Hill, Mass.
Clinical. Predictable.
03/01/06 Clemson 86, Virginia Tech 81 – Blacksburg, Va.
Don’t look now, but the Tigers seem to be finishing quite strongly. Road ACC wins are always something to be proud of, particularly for a team that had a pretty recent five game skid.
03/01/06 Florida State 79, Duke 74 – Tallahassee, Fla.
How about those Seminoles? Everyone has been pointing to this game as a possible upset. Usually when that happens, it ends up being a blowout for the favorite. Not this time. What struck me about this game was how FSU came out absolutely fired up and almost cocky and Duke seemed to let them set the tempo. It was like Duke was in a fight and instead of coming out swinging, they just braced themselves to take the punches. Not what I’m used to seeing.

03/01/06 Maryland 65, Miami 61 – College Park, Md.
Break out the paddles, I think there’s some life in this one yet! Clear!
03/01/06 North Carolina 99, Virginia 54 – Chapel Hill, N.C.
I pretty much covered this one already. Ugly. It was over about 10 minutes in. Virginia just didn’t have the toughness that they’ve shown all year and without that they are a bad team. On the flip side, Carolina is morphing into a juggernaut.
03/04/06 Boston College 59, Virginia Tech 57 – Chestnut Hill, Mass.
Not a very impressive effort from the Eagles on Senior Day. Not at all. Something tells me this team is gonna get bounced in the second round of the NCAA’s. Or maybe the first.
03/04/06 Clemson 95, Georgia Tech 82 – Clemson, SC
Did I mention that the Tiggers had it going on? Nice win by Oliver Purnell’s boys. Don’t look now, but at 18-11, if they can get by Miami on Thursday, Clemson might just have an NCAA play-in game against Duke on Friday. Remember what Al Featherston taught us about 20-win teams?
03/04/06 Wake Forest 76, NC State 63 – Winston-Salem, N.C.
Speaking of non-impressive performances. State is now on a three-game losing streak at what would generally be considered “the wrong time.” Remember just a few weeks ago when this was a mentally strong, versatile team? What happened? They looked positively lethargic against Wake Forest. Yeah, Cam Bennerman missed the game, but he’s a good player, not a superstar.
03/04/06 North Carolina 83, Duke 76 – Durham, N.C.
Impressive performance by Roy’s squad. Extremely impressive. He continues to use his deep bench, seemingly without fear of how the “lesser” players will perform in the cauldron. On the flip side, Coach K appears to have no faith in his bench and so his team is looking tired at the end of the year. That’s now four consecutive sub-par games for the Blue Devils. I agree with Dick Vitale (forgive me) – this team needs to just take a couple of days off, clear their heads and recharge their batteries. I hope to have a longer piece on my thoughts on Duke later today or tonight.
03/05/06 Florida State 67, Miami 64 – Coral Gables, Fla.
Who is this team? First FSU actually gets the upset win that many predicted and then they take care of business against Miami. I’m not so sure that I’m not more impressed by the latter win. Getting the wins they should get hasn’t exactly been the Seminoles M.O. in recent years. Or ever, actually. I have to think that they are 95% in the tourney at this point. Just don’t crap the laundry hamper against Wake Forest on Thursday!
03/05/06 Maryland 71, Virginia 70 – Charlottesville, Va.
Tough loss for Virginia. They fought back from 18 down, with Sean Singletary on the bench with foul trouble, no less, and were up two with the ball with under two minutes left. Poor execution cost them the game. What is it with ACC teams and failing to get any sort of decent shot at the end of games/halves? I swear that in about half of the cases this year, teams either failed to get a shot off or were forced to jack a deep, contested shot off the dribble. Don’t teams practice this situation anymore?
For Maryland, this week went exactly as it needed to. I wrote them off as completely off the bubble last week, but I guess I was too hasty. Now they have 18 wins and a sub-50 RPI. They are back in the conversation. I’ll discuss their case a bit more later today with my expanded standings.