ACC Roundup – A Look Ahead To This Week’s ACC/SEC Challenge

It’s almost time for the ACC/SEC Challenge and hopefully it’ll go better than last year’s disaster.

Let’s put the matchups, times and networks out first and then we’ll take a look at them:

• Texas A&M at Pitt || 7:00 || ESPNU

• Tennessee at Syracuse || 7:00 || ESPN2

• Virginia Tech at South Carolina || 7:00 || SECN

• Oklahoma at Wake Forest || 7:00 || ACCN

• Florida at Duke || 7:30 || ESPN

• Georgia at Florida State || 9:00 || SECN

• Miami at Ole Miss || 9:00 || SECN

• Missouri at Notre Dame || 9:00 || ESPNU

• UNC at Kentucky || 9:30 || ESPN

Wednesday 

• Louisville at Arkansas || 7:15 || ESPN

• Clemson at Alabama || 7:15 || ESPNU

• LSU at Boston College || 7:15 || ACCN

• Georgia Tech at Mississippi State

• NC State at Auburn || 9:15 || ESPN

• SMU at Vandy || 9:15 || SECN

• Virginia at Texas || 9:15 || ESPNU

• Missippi State at Georgia Tech || 9:15 || ACCN

Syracuse had some moments in the Players Era Championship, taking Houston to overtime and giving Kansas a solid game.

They didn’t have Donnie Freeman though and that was a big problem. He has what Syracuse calls a lower body injury and there’s no word on whether he’s back or not. If he’s back, Syracuse has a shot. If not? It’ll be really tough. Not impossible but tough. Coach Adrian Autry criticized his team for a lack of fight in the Players Era Championship, or at least the finale, so we would expect a major effort for this game.

Similar situation for Virginia Tech. They’ve been missing Tobi Lawal for the last two games and Neoklis Avdalas, who is playing hurt. That’s a lot to overcome. We think they should beat South Carolina, but a healthy roster will help. Just FYI, other than Butler (L 79-72) and Northwestern (79-77). Their wins are over NC A&T, Southern Miss, Presbyterian, Radford and Charleston Southern. It’s a winnable game.

Wake has grown up a lot in a hurry and while they still have questions in the post, they could become a really good team.

Porter Moser is a good coach, but Oklahoma has had some issues adjusting to the new era. There are some familiar names on the Oklahoma roster – former Notre Dame forward Tae Davis and former Miami guard Nijel Pack, apparently healthy now – and OU has a significant size advantage. Like Virginia Tech, this is a winnable game for Wake Forest, but they need to deal with OU’s size to win, or if not, shoot really well.

We’d love to see Pitt beat Texas A&M, but is it likely? No.

We never bet against Duke, but Florida is no easy win. That should be a fun one. We’ll have more in our preview.

Georgia is pretty good but this looks like one of those games that should be winnable. Doesn’t mean FSU will, but could they? Yeah. Especially after that ugly loss to A&M. We like what Luke Loucks has done so far with the ‘Noles, but it’s worth noting that Florida State could probably have hired Bucky McMillan last spring.

We like Missouri over Notre Dame.

UNC and Kentucky is really interesting, but it’s at home and Kentucky has had two games to work out some of the issues that Mark Pope was upset about against Michigan State. They’ll have to figure out how to stop Caleb Wilson, but Tom Izzo did a good job on that and we’re sure Pope has watched that video.

One question to consider here: Is Wilson, a freshman, ready to play the villain in front of 20,500 Kentucky fanatics?

We’ll go with Kentucky here.

On Wednesday, while we could see Arkansas pulling off an upset, it seems unlikely. Louisville is rolling. There might even be a little Kentucky juice left for the Cardinals to get hyped up on.

We’d be surprised if Clemson pulled off an upset, but shocked? No, not really. Brad Brownell is a tremendous defensive coach and Alabama eschews the mid-range game for threes and layups. Seems like you could plan a defense for that. But we’ll still go with Alabama here.

LSU should beat BC. Next!

NC State and Auburn is…interesting. If it was in Raleigh, we’d give State an edge. But it’s not and Auburn has played a much tougher schedule. So we’ll take the Tigers here. Even so, it could be a statement game for Will Wade’s program, and for a guy who is as driven as he appears to be, that shouldn’t be overlooked. Certainly if this was a fist fight between Wade and Steve Pearl, we’d put our chips on Wade.

SMU and Vanderbilt is really an interesting game. If we’re not sure about the talent difference, we tend to go with the team with the better coach and while arguably Mark Byington is the better coach here, it’s not by much.

Honestly, we didn’t get it when he took this job – we thought he could do better – but he’s off to a great start. And you can’t overlook the fact that he won 32 games at James Madison.

Two other reasons to go with Vandy here: 1) experienced guards and 2) experience. The Commodores have eight seniors and three juniors. That’s not too common these days.

Virginia and Texas is interesting too. Gone are the days when teams would get totally discombobulated by Tony Bennett’s slow, hand-to-hand style. This is going to be a fast game between two teams that have similar philosophies. And while Sean Miller has the longer track record, we’re really impressed with what Virginia has done so far and with the talent Ryan Odom has put together. We’ll take Virginia here.

We’d like to go with Georgia Tech, but the Yellow Jackets a) have not fully replaced Naithan George, at least not yet, and that’s a problem. Baye Ndongo has been a bit off too and that’s a serious problem as well.

However, Mississippi State isn’t doing that well either. They have a loss to SMU and they also lost to New Mexico by three and Kansas State by 21. They did win over Southeastern Louisiana and New Orleans took them to overtime. They also haven’t had a road game yet and Georgia Tech has been reasonably tough at home. So we’ll go with the Yellow Jackets after all.

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