Can the Yellow Jackets pull off a massive upset?
In Tuesday night’s ACC Action, UNC visits Georgia Tech, Syracuse travels over to Boston College, Louisville takes that 1-8 ACC record to Clemson and Miami flies up to Raleigh to take on the Wolfpack.
Could Georgia Tech possibly pull off an upset? Probably not, but here’s the best-case scenario.
First, Baye Ndongo proves to be a really tough matchup for UNC’s Armando Bacot. Secondly, freshman point guard Naithan George has another out-of-body experience like he did at Clemson. And third, the Yellow Jackets minimize turnovers and shoot lights-out on three pointers.
And UNC would probably have to cooperate too. So yes, it’s possible. But not very likely.
At this point, Syracuse is a better team than BC but we like the the heart the Eagles have shown. Earl Grant has gone after lower-rated players because he can’t (yet) get top-rated players. So he’s just gotten on with things with the tools at hand, if you will. He has good enough athletes to challenge most teams but not that many great basketball players. He’s making an argument to recruits that the program is sound and rising so we expect the players he can get will improve too.
But Syracuse has more basketball players and rookie coach Adrian Autry has done a nice job taking over for his old boss, Jim Boeheim. The transition has gone about as well as you could hope if you’re a Syracuse fan. Autry has some tough issues to solve. He could use a legitimate big man which would let him move Maliq Brown to forward, where he would probably thrive.
No regular is shooting over 38.5 percent from behind the line and other than Brown, who is shooting a highly impressive 71.8 percent, no healthy regular other than Naheem McLeod, who has missed several games, shoots better than Quadir Copeland’s 46.3 percent.
And while we like Judah Mintz, he’s averaging 4.5 apg and 3.1 turnovers, which kind of negates most of the positive.
Yet Syracuse is tied for fifth place in the ACC in a transitional year and is not playing like a Boeheim team. So we’d have to say the season, to date, is a real success and we’d probably go with the ‘Cuse here.
Louisville basically got obliterated by Virginia on Saturday. What’s going to happen at Clemson?
Well, odds are the Tigers are still pissed about losing in Durham and who better to smack around than the impotent Cardinals? Louisville is slightly better than last year, but the record doesn’t show much improvement. The best hope the Cards have is that Clemson is apathetic and overconfident.
The most interesting game is probably the last one as NC State and Miami tangle. Watching Norchad Omier and DJ Burns pushing each other around would be worth the price of admission but the guard play will probably decide the game. Both teams have solid perimeters. Miami brings Nijel Pack, Matthew Cleveland, Wooga Poplar and Bensley Joseph. NC State answers with DJ Horne, Casey Morsell, Jayden Taylor, Michael O’Conell and Dennis Parker.
State has a definite advantage when it comes to depth and they have lost three straight and four out of the last six and are absolutely ready for a win. They’re probably desperate for one in fact.
That’s important, but so is this: Jim Larranaga is a masterful coach. Miami is not playing to expectations, but there is no question that the ‘Canes are dangerous.
Tuesday’s ACC Action
