By any stretch the country's premier basketball conference the ACC is off to a rough start. Sorry Big East I know you've won a ton of pre-season tournaments this year, but basketball success is measured in final 4s and National Titles not tournaments in November. Still it was looking kind of grim. Virginia Tech has been a disappointment and have lost three in a row.
Clemson looks uncomfortable playing Brad Brownell's more half-courted oriented offense. Georgia Tech is continuing their annual trend of underachievement. The Jacket's have arguably the worst conference loss of the season, an embarrassing 17 point beatdown at 2-5 Kennesaw St. If Paul Hewitt didn't have that ridiculous buyout deal, he'd have been fired 2 years ago. Hewitt’s contract has totally handcuffed that program.
North Carolina started the year in the top ten but lost 3 games before the end of November. The Heels got a nice win over Kentucky recently, which may kick start their season. I haven't even got to Wake Forest and NC State yet or another loss of the ACC\Big 10 challenge.
The Duke Blue Devils though were the shining star of an otherwise shaky looking ACC. The Blue Devils already had wins this year over Marquette, Kansas St, Michigan St, and Butler. They looked every bit like the number one team in the country. There was a level of athleticism not seen at Duke since the late 90s early 2000s. One of the reasons for Duke's success was the arrival of much-heralded freshman Kyrie Irving. He was averaging 17.4 points and game, was starting to remind people of another great Duke guard Jay (Jason) Williams. Now here's the bad news...
Irving might be out for the season as reported by CNNSI. It's too early to say that Duke was going to win the national championship, but I was confident this was a sure-fire final 4 team with Irving. Without him Duke is still a final 4 threat, and Coach Mike Krzyzewski hasn’t gone anywhere. Duke hardly needs to reassess any season goals like winning the ACC or national title, but the possibility of losing Irving for the year does a leave hole in the Blue Devils backcourt and robs the ACC of one of it's brightest young stars. Here's hoping to speedy recovery to Irving.
