Basketball fans from every nook and cranny of the Atlantic Coast Conference are psyched about the league’s 50th anniversary tournament, which kicks off tonight in the storied Greensboro Coliseum. This could be the year when a team emerges from out of the pack to crash the party. How much fun would that be in a parity-filled season for a lower-tiered team to walk away with all the marbles and the automatic NCAA bid that comes with it? Hey, it happens in other conferences, so why not this one? In fact, it might be a little refreshing to watch a Cinderella kick off the glass slippers, arrive with hair all a mess and no makeup and turn this tournament upside down. “We used to love the old days, the real old days,” said former Georgia Tech coach Bobby Cremins, who both coached and played (for South Carolina) in the ACC Tournament. “Rarely did the regular season champion win. One of the greatest traditions of the ACC Tournament was the first day upsets and we’ve kind of lost that.” The greatest part of the tournament experience for the fans is the upset when everything is thrown into turmoil. It’s been a long time, baby. But this tournament is ripe for Upset City. Dissecting an upset Just what would it take for an underdog to pull the trick? What strange brew has to occur to send the favorites packin’ early? We asked participants of three of the ACC’s greatest upset runs in its history what to look for. “I think the way it’s going to happen is that you have to have enough talent that you’re capable of pulling it off,” said Cremins, who engineered Georgia Tech’s run to the title in 1993 as the event’s sixth seed. “We started to peak at the right time, going into the tournament. We were good enough that we could beat anybody but we were also erratic, a little consistent and we were young.” Remind you of, say, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia Tech, Florida State? “And you get on a roll ... you can just sense it,” said Cremins. “One player always steps up in something like that. For us it was James Forrest’s coming out party.” UVa’s ‘Wonderful’ run Virginia fans can remember a similar scenario in 1976 when Terry Holland’s Wahoos rode “Wally Wonderful” Walker’s hot hand to the crown. The sixth-seeded Cavs became the first lower seed team in league history to romp to the championship, leaving three nationally ranked teams in their wake. “The one thing that happens more than anything else is how your team feels,” said Holland. “Every little bit of luck adds to your confidence and a lot of people jump on your bandwagon. With each win in that tournament, we were picking up all those uncommitted fans.” Those positive vibes can mean a lot to an underdog searching for any thread of confidence it can cling to. “I think that helps you jump a little higher, push a little harder. They’re incremental and not huge advantages, but in a game like that, any little thing can help,” said Holland. “One loose ball may inspire you to get another or make you just a little more alert. You don’t have to play to the crowd but you can feed of it.” Derek Whittenburg can close his eyes and still feel the emotions of N.C. State’s unbelievable march to the title in 1983. Who could forget when the fourth-seeded Wolfpack had to knock off two of the nation’s premiere teams, the Ralph Sampson-led Virginia squad and Michael Jordan’s North Carolina team even before it could escape to score upset after upset to win the NCAA championship. “We solidified in our era that not only can you play your way off the bubble in the ACC Tournament, but you can get hot and win that thing, then the other bigger thing,”chuckled Whittenburg, now head coach at Wagner, who made the Big Dance on Wednesday. “I think it has inspired other underdogs to say, ‘Hey, you get in the ACC Tournament and anything can happen.’” State was led by the late Jim Valvano, who lived for the postseason. If any coach ever thrived on tournament play, it was the effervescent Jimmy V. “I think Jimmy was a dreamer,” said Whittenburg, whose outside shooting along with Sidney Lowe and Terry Gannon, allowed the Pack to ride the magic wave. “Jimmy was a man who believed he was going to win. A lot of coaches want to win and talk about upsets but don’t have the same passion and vision for it. Jimmy willed us. He never talked about anything but success.” Whittenburg remembered how Valvano played to the players’ psyches to get ready for the ACC. “He always talked about the first game. The first game is tight for everybody. It’s a one-game season. He told us we HAD TO WIN. He never talked about winning the tournament but winning one game at a time,” said the former State guard. “Immediately after we beat Wake Forest, he said, ‘Now, if we win the next game, you’re probably in the NCAAs. He gave us that ray of hope. “Then after we beat North Carolina in overtime, he said, ‘Fellas, you win this next game and you’re definitely in.’ That was his exact quote. I’ll never forget it.” Valvano was always holding the carrot out for his team to reach for. Maybe that’s what Pete Gillen, Paul Hewitt, Matt Doherty and Leonard Hamilton, Larry Shyatt and even Herb Sendek must do to get their guys in that upset mode. “The worst thing that can happen is to run into a hot underdog,” said Holland, who has been on both ends of the stick. “The pressure is on the favorite and if the game can turn on one or two plays, remember what I said about the underdog doing the little things?” That’s what Wake, Duke and Maryland must contend with in this 50th celebration of basketball on Tobacco Road. A rash of upsets could be forthcoming. We should be so lucky.
Home teams in the ACC this season were 53-19. Of course, none of the league’s nine teams will be playing on its homecourt when the 50th ACC tournament begins today at the Greensboro Coliseum. That fact alone should provide for an intriguing weekend. “It’s just a balanced league this year. Even some of the games the home team didn’t win were very close. I think it will be a little bit more of a wide-open tournament,” said Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser, whose team enters at the top seed after winning the school’s first regular-season title since 1962. Prosser’s Deacons finished 13-3 in the league this season to earn that No. 1 seed and are led by first-team All-ACC selection Josh Howard. The Deacons, however, have six freshmen and sophomores among their top eight players and thus have a dearth of postseason experience. That’s another factor in making this tournament so compelling. “We have a very big game on Friday and we’re going to try to win that game. The No. 1 seed I guess that makes you the favorite but that’s never been a concern of ours,” said Prosser, whose team will face either Florida State or Clemson in Friday’s first quarterfinal. Despite any concerns with experience, Wake has been the most consitent team in the league this season. Accordingly, second-seeded Maryland and third-seeded Duke are next in that line though neither has proved as dominant in the not-so-distant past. The remaining teams are a collection of squads that have shown flashes of brillance mixed with flawed and inconsistent play. The fourth through seventh seeds — N.C. State, Georgia Tech, Virginia and North Carolina — boast a combined six wins against the top three seeds. All four teams’ talent level are not necessarily below those top three teams, but consistency has been the problem. Of the four, the Wolfpack is the only one that still has a shot at an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. The Wolfpack are 16-11 and finished with a 9-7 mark in the league. Yet, a less-than-stellar out-of-conference mark leaves them needing at least a quarterfinal win over Georgia Tech in order to feel at all confident about a NCAA selection. While the ACC has three definite NCAA bids and possibly a fourth, given the topsy-turvy nature of the league this season, it is not absurd to think another team could put together a consistent enough stretch to win the title and earn that automatic bid. “For the fans, it should be exciting. For the coaches it could be gut wrenching. The way the season unfolded, it could make for a great ACC tournament and could be stories to come out of this for years go come,” said North Carolina coach Matt Doherty. “I think we realized that certain teams are going to be better and some of the top teams lost a lot and wouldn’t be as dominant. The league’s very compressed this year.” Perhaps it’s Doherty’s UNC team, Georgia Tech and Virginia that are the prime examples of teams that could use momentum to make a little noise this weekend. North Carolina is coming off a win over Duke while Virginia defeated Maryland in its regular-season finale and Georgia Tech won their last two contests. At their best, these teams are certainly capable of winning at least their quarterfinal contests, but who knows? Certainly not Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt. “I think last weekend gave you the feeling that anyone could win. Duke was playing very well but Carolina played well and beat them. Virginia bounced back to win the last game. That shows people about this weekend coming up,” Hewitt said.
Surprise party in store for fans
Event expected to be wide-open
BY JEFF WHITE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Mar 13, 2003
The No. 8 seed swept the No. 6 seed during the regular season. The No. 6 seed
swept the No. 2 seed. The No. 2 seed swept the No. 7 seed - by an average margin
of 27.5 points.
The No. 7 seed beat the No. 3 seed, as did the No. 9 seed. The No. 5 seed beat
the No. 2 seed.
Welcome to the 50th annual ACC men's basketball tournament. The four-day affair
promises to hold a surprise or two for those who tune in or watch in person at
the sold-out Greensboro Coliseum.
"For the fans it's exciting," said Matt Doherty, coach of seventh-seeded North
Carolina. "For the coaches, it could be gut-wrenching at times, but I think it's
going to just make for an exciting ACC tournament. I think you're going to see
some great games, and there might be some stories to come out of this for years
to come."
The tournament opens tonight with the play-in game between No. 8 seed Clemson
and No. 9 Florida State. The winner isn't expected to survive its quarterfinal
matchup tomorrow with regular-season champion Wake Forest, but who knows? On the
regular season's final weekend, Virginia snapped a seven-game losing streak by
beating Maryland, and UNC stunned Duke.
"I think the whole weekend gave the look and the feel that anybody can win [the
ACC tourney]," Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt said.
Duke has dominated this tournament in recent years, and no one will be shocked
if Mike Krzyzewski's club, which has won a record four straight ACC titles, adds
a fifth crown Sunday afternoon. But the third-seeded Blue Devils lost two of
their last three regular-season games, and they enter as anything but
prohibitive favorites.
"I think it's pretty accurate this year that on a given night, there's a lot of
teams that can beat anybody in this league," said Gary Williams, coach of
second-seeded Maryland.
Wake Forest lost at Duke by 19, at Virginia by 10 and at Maryland by 23. So the
Demon Dea- cons aren't invincible. They are, however, seeded No. 1, and "I guess
that makes us the favorite," second-year coach Skip Prosser said.
Wake was the No. 1 seed in 1995, too, and went on to beat North Carolina for the
ACC title. But the Deacons shared the regular-season championship with UNC,
Maryland and Virginia that season. This time they won the regular-season title
outright for the first time since 1962.
"We're very proud of that, but we also know that won't mean a whole lot come
[tomorrow]," Prosser said. "It's just a balanced league this year."
Every conference team but one won at least one game in either the 2001 or 2002
tournament. The exception? Virginia, which hasn't won an ACC tourney game since
March 10, 1995, when it beat Georgia Tech in the quarterfinals.
There's pressure, then, on the sixth-seeded Cavaliers and their fifth-year
coach, Pete Gillen, the target of intense criticism this season. But no team has
more at stake than fourth-seeded N.C. State (16-11), which hopes to join Wake,
Maryland and Duke in the NCAA tournament.
The Wolfpack went 9-7 in ACC play, a record that historically has merited an
invitation to the NCAAs. But State went 1-5 against the conference's top three
teams and struggled outside the ACC, losing to Gonzaga, Massachusetts, Boston
College and Temple. A win or two in Greensboro would bolster the Pack's case
considerably.
"We're in a bad position," junior forward Marcus Melvin said. "We've got to win
big [in the ACC tourney]."
The NCAA champion has come out of the ACC each of the past two seasons, Duke
winning in 2001 and Maryland in'02. Only once since 1990 has the conference
failed to produce at least one No. 1 seed, but the ACC figures to get nothing
better than a No. 2 when the 65-team field is announced Sunday night.
That shouldn't diminish the fun in Greensboro on a weekend when the ACC
celebrates its storied history.
"I think it'll be a little more of a wide-open tournament, and that's not bad,"
Prosser said.
I am right about this.
Mike Krzyzewski should've suspended the Peacekeeper this week, and since he didn't, the ACC certainly should have. That Andre Buckner will be on the bench, or even in the bench area, when Duke plays Virginia on Friday night, flies in the face of decorum and the ACC's sportsmanship policy.
He shoved a coach. He admitted it. He was not trying to keep the peace, and he was not trying to break up a situation on the verge of becoming something more serious.
Krzyzewski's take on the incident was bizarre, to say the least.
Videotapes of the skirmish in front of the Duke bench during Sunday's game between the Blue Devils and UNC show Buckner coming out of a group of Duke players and personnel and shoving Carolina coach Matt Doherty away from Duke assistant Chris Collins. Asked afterward if that was his intent, Buckner didn't hesitate.
"Yeah," he said. "I saw something that looked like it made my coach uncomfortable. I just reacted."
His reaction was to push Doherty, who later said he wasn't sure if anybody had shoved him or not. He said he would have to look at the tapes.
Here's what the tapes show: Seemingly inadvertent contact between Duke's Dahntay Jones and UNC's Raymond Felton left Felton writhing on the court, blood pouring from his lower lip as players from both teams began to gather in front of the Duke bench.
Doherty walked slowly into the scene, talking casually with an official and UNC players, one of whom suggested to Doherty that an elbow had been thrown. Doherty turned toward one of his players, forward Rashad McCants, who appeared to be talking to Collins.
Doherty turned his head toward Collins and said, "You shut the (expletive) up!" then moved toward the Duke assistant. Collins and Doherty met chest-to-chest, Doherty apparently initiating some contact as Collins unleashed a barrage of expletives.
At that moment, Buckner, a substitute guard who has played 14 minutes all season, stepped forward -- several steps onto the court -- and pushed Doherty. It was not inadvertent; it left no room for interpretation. He shoved Doherty then quickly backed away.
"I can't explain it," he said after the game. "It was the heat of the moment, spur of the moment, heat of the battle."
That sparked the next wave of reaction as Collins continued to scream curse words at Doherty and UNC's Jawad Williams went after Buckner, now standing in a crowd of Blue Devils. Buckner's actions, if anything, took a bad situation and made it much, much worse.
Krzyzewski didn't see it that way.
"I really thought that Andre Buckner was a peacekeeper," he said Tuesday. "If he doesn't step forward in that particular situation, a lot of things could have happened."
That suggests that either Krzyzewski didn't look at the videotape or he believes that Buckner's reaction was so brazen, so stunning, that it defused the situation. Of course, it didn't. Krzyzewski did. He began pushing his players back, away from Williams and Felton and McCants and Melvin Scott and David Noel and Doherty, who reached and pulled his players back from the Duke players.
All this happened after Buckner pushed Doherty.
On Tuesday, when it became apparent that Krzyzewski was going to take no action toward Buckner, the ACC made its ruling. Buckner, Collins and Doherty were officially reprimanded. No one was suspended, and no further action is expected.
The athletics directors of the two schools issued joint statements of regret, admitting the incident "fell short" of ACC standards of sportsmanship.
The standards of sportsmanship are pretty clear. You don't hit other players in the back of the head. You don't start brawls at the end of the game. Precedents were set when those very things happened -- N.C. State's Julius Hodge was suspended for one game last year after hitting Maryland's Steve Blake in the back of the head, and in 1961, North Carolina's Larry Brown and Donnie Walsh were suspended for the rest of the ACC season along with Duke's Art Heyman after an ugly fight broke out at the end of the Duke-UNC game that year.
Sunday's incident was nothing compared to those, but not from some gallant intervention by Andre the Peacekeeper. He made it worse. Krzyzewski stopped the situation from escalating, and then he and Doherty calmed everyone down, including the officials, so the game could continue.
Still, the precedent of a player coming off the bench and shoving an opposing coach, whether the coach should have been there or not, has not been addressed. This is where Krzyzewski should've stepped in. This is where he should've suspended Buckner himself, for one game or the ACC Tournament, or whatever.
Since Krzyzewski chose to view the incident differently, the league should've taken action against Buckner. The decision to reprimand Doherty and Collins was correct. The decision to allow Andre Buckner to return to the Duke bench this weekend was unfortunate.
Andre the Peacekeeper will go down in Duke history as the guy who pushed Matt Doherty and in ACC history as the guy who got away with it.
Virginia to face Duke in tournament
If Virginia is to keep alive NCAA aspirations, taking conference championship
outright is essential
Jonny Schwab
Cavalier Daily Senior Writer
If the past month has been any indication, the Virginia men's basketball team
would love to have Maryland as its first-round opponent tomorrow. However, the
result of Virginia's losing seven in a row before last Sunday's besting of the
Terrapins is a bittersweet reward: they don't have to play Maryland.
"Maryland is a tremendous team, and to beat them twice in one year is special,"
Virginia coach Pete Gillen said.
Sunday's victory was clearly special for Virginia, conjuring memories of the
past two seasons' home victories over 2001 NCAA Champion Duke (21-6,11-5), the
No. 12 opponent whom the Cavaliers (15-14,6-10 ACC) will face in the first round
of the ACC Tournament.
Both victories in previous years share a common characteristic: they occurred
during seasons in which the Cavaliers' inconsistencies cost them dearly. Both
years, it was Virginia's habit of playing to match the opposition that caused a
stir. They impressed at times during the regular season, but failed to advance
in the postseason.
This year may be different, but only if the Cavaliers can reign in the
often-elusive chemistry that has proven effective in securing Virginia
victories.
It is never too late for lineup changes, and there is warranted speculation that
little-used senior center Jason Rogers will see more time on the court. Rogers
contributed the most explosive effort of his career in his final contest at
U-Hall on Sunday. While his performance stirred Virginia fans, it also put his
name on the tip of tongues throughout the ACC.
Another key to Virginia victory will be consistency across the floor. From the
dominant inside presence of senior center Travis Watson, the Cavaliers' leading
scorer and rebounder, to the perimeter accuracy of junior guard Todd Billet and
sophomore guard Devin Smith, there will need to be stability throughout. The
Cavaliers have had nights where the offense and defense have flowed from all
cylinders, but those nights have been few and far between.
What may be more complex is solving the puzzle of Duke. In both contests between
the conference foes, the Cavaliers have been unable to find an answer for
freshman guard J.J. Redick. Redick poses a three-point threat, having dropped a
total of 59 points on the Cavaliers in the Blue Devils' sweep of Virginia,
including a career-high 34 on January 15.
The Cavaliers have also had difficulty containing forward Dahntay Jones and
guard Daniel Ewing, a player who has sparked the Duke bench in both contests.
Thanks to Sunday's victory, whether or not the Cavaliers need this win to secure
a spot in the NIT Tournament is still uncertain. But the players and Gillen know
that Virginia cannot go into Friday's challenge with an attitude of contentment.
"We're trying to win the game," Billet said. "We're not going to be satisfied
with a moral victory to play Duke. We want to win the first round, in the semis,
and go to the finals and that's the goal of this team."
To achieve these goals Cavaliers must take advantage of their fresh start and be
hungry to move beyond past inconsistencies. They have found ways to uncover the
Achilles heels of ACC opponents before, and tomorrow they will look for ways to
mimic those sweeter performances.