Turtle Head

Like many other people, I have made some cracks about Maryland’s claim to be a rival of Duke’s despite Duke fans saying they aren’t. Well, if the Terps keep beating the Blue Devils, a true rivalry will grow. Nothing gets under the skin of a good team more than beating them consistently. It’s funny how sports works. Sometimes you just get situations where one team, a clearly inferior team, is able to frequently beat a better team. I think most Maryland fans would admit that Duke has a better team this year, but that hasn’t stopped the Terrapins from sweeping the season series. It’s pretty remarkable.
One incredible statistic that came out of that game is that Maryland’s 2-0 record against Duke is the first time that Duke has been swept in the regular season by an ACC foe since the ’96 season. That’s incredible.


Maryland’s big win was not just immensely satisfying for the fans (although not satisfying enough to keep some from rioting again), it put the Terps solidly in the NCAA tournament. It would take a pretty big collapse at this point to miss out. They’ve risen to 21 in the latest RPI ratings and two wins over a top ten team are exactly the kinds of things that the selection committee looks for. I think Maryland can even afford one slip-up and still make it in without any trouble.
In the second biggest game of the weekend, Carolina traveled up to Connecticut and won a tough game against the Huskies. The Tar Heels looked sloppy at times and had 16 (!!) shots blocked, but still pulled out the win. They turned the tide with their defense in the second half, forcing a bunch of turnovers and taking UConn out of their offense. Don’t let their relatively low ranking fool you, UConn is a very good team. Keep them in mind when you are filling out your NCAA brackets next month. They’ll probably be a 4-6 seed, but they have Final Four talent.
Sean May had yet another great game against NBA-level interior opposition, going for 16 and 13 against Charlie Villanueva and Josh Boone. Been a helluva a week for the big fella.
The most surprising result of the weekend was NC State traveling down to Atlanta and beating Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets seemed to be on the rise after getting B.J. Elder and Jeremis Smith back, but that loss really hurts them. You have to think that a loss at home to the reeling Pack hurt the Wreck more than the road win at Clemson helped them. If you check the table at the bottom of this post, you’ll see that the computers agree with me. Tech still looks like a tourney team, but just barely. Their power ratings look OK, but their record (14-8) doesn’t. They need to get to 17 wins to feel safe about their chances.
For NC State, the win kept hope alive. She’s still in the hospital, but she can at least see visitors now. Four of the Pack’s last five games are at home and the one road game is in Charlottesville. They won’t sweep Carolina and Wake, but if they can beat one of them and win the other three (including Maryland at home on Wednesday), they’ll have to be seriously considered. Lose more than two games out of those five and they’ll need to play on Sunday in the ACC tourney to get in.
The weekend’s other contests:

And now on to my weekly ratings update. Despite the big wins and losses, the top three teams really didn’t move much. The big winner of the week was Maryland, shooting off the bubble and into the Dance (for now). Miami and NC State also impressed the transistors, moving up about 15 notches each. Neither is in bid territory yet, but they’ve kept themselves in the conversation.
The only team to really kill themselves statistically was Clemson. They were surprisingly highly rated last week, but two home losses torpedoed their numbers. Now they are down where you’d expect a 2-9 conference team to be.
Ratings as of 02/14/2005:

Team prev/cur Pomeroy Sagarin Greenfield RPI

Avg.

Trend
Carolina prev 71.11 (2) 95.25 (2) 96.339 (2) .6472 (8)

3.5

up
cur 71.18 (2) 95.18 (1) 96.361 (2) .6488 (8)

3.25

Wake Forest prev 68.46 (4) 92.36 (6) 95.246 (4) .6772 (2)

4

up
cur 68.27 (3) 92.80 (6) 94.963 (4) .6684 (2)

3.75

Duke prev 67.63 (6) 93.23 (3) 93.794 (7) .6559 (7)

5.75

down
cur 66.77 (5) 92.94 (5) 92.866 (8) .6541 (6)

6

Maryland prev 60.27 (31) 84.38 (29) 84.607 (38) .5900 (33)

32.75

up
cur 61.11 (25) 85.72 (23) 86.368 (25) .6030 (21)

23.5

Georgia Tech prev 60.43 (30) 85.41 (25) 85.389 (34) .5894 (34)

30.75

down
cur 60.44 (28) 85.51 (25) 85.211 (36) .5806 (39)

32

Miami prev 55.30 (83) 81.45 (57) 81.842 (70) .5665 (60)

67.5

up
cur 56.10 (75) 82.41 (43) 83.285 (51) .5746 (48)

54.25

NC State prev 57.89 (52) 81.26 (59) 81.684 (72) .5274 (118)

75.25

up
cur 58.43 (45) 82.47 (42) 82.818 (55) .5416 (99)

60.25

Virginia prev 54.81 (93) 79.87 (76) 81.743 (71) .5727 (49)

72.25

up
cur 54.94 (94) 80.21 (70) 82.514 (58) .5765 (44)

66.5

Clemson prev 57.94 (51) 81.07 (62) 81.968 (67) .5568 (74)

63.5

down
cur 56.56 (69) 80.14 (71) 80.385 (92) .5365 (103)

83.75

FSU prev 56.64 (67) 79.39 (82) 81.022 (79) .5325 (110)

84.5

down
cur 56.39 (71) 79.14 (86) 80.643 (86) .5301 (115)

89.5

VA Tech prev 54.19 (102) 78.32 (92) 80.330 (88) .5221 (134)

104

down
cur 53.86 (106) 77.88 (100) 79.800 (99) .5189 (135)

110


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