ACCendance
A few weeks back in Di-Phi, I was the secondary negative speaker for the resolution topic "RESOLVED: The ACC should continue to expand." My speech went over fairly well: I talked about the great academic tradition of the Atlantic Coast Conference, and how bringing in Miami shot that to heck and Virginia Tech, at best, stayed the course. (Boston College is a great school, of course, but they're so far away from every other ACC institution that we might as well have let in Oxford.) It made some good points, and from the way that people voted it went over pretty well.
The more important reason that we shouldn't expand, though, has become quite clear in the last few days: the new ACC teams suck vacuum in basketball.
As of 6 PM on November 22, ACC teams are 42-4 in the 06-07 basketball season. VT, BC and Miami are a combined 5-3. The other loss is courtesy of Duke, who pulled a choke job supreme to Marquette last night at the hostile arena of Kansas City. And just how good are those three teams doing in football now, anyway? (Hint: One of them is 5-6.)
Personal beefs aside, I think it's about time to recognize that the Atlantic Coast Conference is out of its early-00s funk and ready to lay the smackdown on any peach-basket squads that come its way. It's barely, what? two weeks into the season? and ACC teams have already served up wins against Arizona, Memphis, Michigan State, Air Force, and Winthrop (twice). It's not as if we're sitting back and playing home games against Samford until Christmas. Frankly, right now I see no reason we can't pull a Big East and grab eight bids in next year's Tournament. Except we won't have the advantage of having twenty-five teams so UConn et al. can just beat up on the bottom half.
Naturally, Georgia Tech and UNC are going to go out tonight and lose, respectively, to UCLA and Gonzaga. Why do you think I'm posting this now?
Also: I made a 15-minute presentation for my sociolinguistics class that, due to time constraints, I had to go through in about 6. Since I want somebody to actually enjoy watching that thing, dangit, I encourage anybody with a vested interest in the history of Japanese writing systems to check it out here. It's Thanksgiving break; what else are you doing?
posted by Brice R. @ 6:07 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Dangit, UNC, I wasn't serious...
the reasons why the ACC shouldn't expand anymore is much simpler: 12 is a magic number in college football. 12 teams allows you to have an end-of-the-season conference championship game. and there's lots of money to be had in that. now that we have 12 teams, there's no reason at all to add more. lest we have some secret desire to throw away even more of our basketball tradition. (i'm still pissed, and will forever be pissed, that the double round robin is dead).
ps: i knew carolina was going to lose to the zags too. we dont play defense; we dont have an instant catalyst on offense for when we hit a lull (and when you're as young as we are, you're going to hit lulls); we don't have an on-the-court leader (of our seniors: reyshawn=a hot-dogging idiot; wes=spirited, but not talented enough to instill the level of respect required); and to top it all off, we don't have a definitive point guard around which the offense can flow (quentin is experienced but inept, lawson is talented but inexperienced, and frazor is an awkward combination of the two).
That's a good point. Though it's clear we shouldn't be expanding any further, as much as I hate to admit it, right now it's equally important not to shrink any. If we get rid of the current BCS system, however, I have to wonder just how lucrative that conference championship would remain. (Answer: still more so than bringing the double-round-robin back. And how the heck would we go about kicking out teams anyway?)
Now, as someone nowhere near versed in the finer points of basketball, I have a question. When we were down 10, 15 points with 8 minutes or so left in the second half, with Wes Miller on the court, why the heck did we keep trying to drive the ball when we had had absolutely no success with that whatsoever the entire game? I could understand that when there were only 2, 3 minutes left--the entire Gonzaga lineup had four fouls by that point--but up until that point it didn't make much sense to me.
On a completely unrelated note, I'm sort of surprised that Roy hasn't pulled one of his sit-the-entire-lineup-two-minutes- into-the-second half bits yet. It would probably have been justified, honestly, in any of our last three games, and heaven knows we have the depth for it.
we didn't have to kick south carolina out in 1971. they just left on their own (i think bc they were a football school and we sucked so much balls at football then--this was pre-flordia state--but i could be wrong). i dont think double round robin makes any money, it just allows you to crown a true conference champion at the end pre-conf. tournament, a point of pride long held in the ACC.
i think they were trying to drive because zaga's zone kept collapsing around the basket, preventing wright or hansbrough from having good games. the idea would be drive, have them collapse, then kick outside for a three. you have to shoot your way through a zone. but unfortunately, as all the pundits like to point out, we don't have a deadly outside game. so when the threes aren't falling, the zone is going to crush our big men.
i think if roy pulled all the starters, everyone would just think it's another substitution. there really are about 11 guys on the team who get significant minutes. the announcers joke about "too much talent," but unless some roles start to emerge, i'm going to agree. the chemistry of an 11-man rotation is so hard, but if anyone can blend it, it's going to be roy. we'll just have to wait and see what he does tihs year.
I liked your powerpoint presentation! I see you are a fan of the "fly in" feature--hehehehehe.
I think you made a good background choice and I thought that that "arbeit" one was quite the comic relief after all those "easy" ones, you trickster, you!
:-D
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