ACC Roundup – Everyone Wins Except Florida State

Mostly a solid Saturday but a couple of teams frankly got lucky.

Summarized by AI ⓘ

What is the story about?

In Saturday’s ACC Action, Louisville took care of Indiana 87-78, Florida State lost to Houston 82-67, Georgia Tech beat Monmouth 79-67, BC slipped by New Haven 67-63, Virginia popped Dayton 86-73, Miami smacked Southern Miss 88-64, NC State dismissed Asheville 75-63, Cal waved goodbye to Pacific 67-61 and Wake Forest said goodbye to West Virginia, 75-66.

Louisville was bound to be angry after losing at Arkansas and they took it out on Indiana. As they have all season, the Hoosiers jacked up threes

like they were going out of style but only hit 11 of 34. Louisville likes the three too, hitting 13-31 but they also can go inside more and they defended better as well. Upshot: the Cardinals had a reasonably easy win. Ryan Conwell had a big game in his hometown, leading the Cards with 21. Mikel Brown did not have a good game, scoring just 9 on 2-8/0-4 from the floor.

Actually, it’s been a while since he had a good shooting game. He did hit 50% against Kentucky. In his last six games, Brown has shot 25-76 (32.8%). It’s a bit surprising.

Let’s be clear about something: Houston led the entire way against Florida State and was going to win. There was never much question about that. However, they cut the lead to 57-52 with 10:22 to play. This is so much better than we saw in the ACC/SEC Challenge against Georgia, where they lost 107-73.

We can’t really get a grip on this team yet, but our suspicion is that Luke Loucks was a smart hire. Let’s see where he is in a year or two.

Georgia Tech got by King Rices’s Monmouth, but not by much: the Yellow Jackets were up just 60-59 with 6:39 to play. They did pull away from there but it wasn’t an easy win or anything. Baye Ndongo sat this one out but we’re not sure why.

BC didn’t take the lead against New Haven until there was just 8:46 left to play but from there, the Eagles never trailed again. They were actually down 17-7 early.

Donald Hand led BC with 13.

This was New Haven’s first year in D-1.

Jacari White had a big night for Virginia, hitting 7-7 on threes and racking up 25 points. Dayton is a solid basketball school so we give this win a lot of credibility.

Interestingly, Thijs De Ridder and Johann Grunloh had middling outings. De Ridder had 7 points and 9 rebounds while Grunloh had 8 points and 6 rebounds and just one block. Virginia controlled this game without their dominant bigs. That’s, well…that’s big.

The bloom may be off of Will Wade’s rose a bit now. After falling to Auburn in the ACC/SEC Challenge, NC State followed up with a meh outing against Asheville: the Bulldogs were down just 49-46 with 11:36 to play.

It’s not where everyone thought State would be, but conference play starts soon and then we’ll see more. Ven-Allen Lubin had a big game with 23 points and 12 rebounds.

Jaden Schutt came off the bench for Virginia Tech and lit George Mason up for 18. He hit 6-12 on his threes for the Hokies. Amani Hansberry continues to come on and had 15 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists here.

Cal struggled a bit more with Pacific than we expected but still won its fifth straight. Justin Pippen had 16, Dai Dai Ames had 15 and Chris Bell had 11.

Cal did have a bigger lead, up to 13, but couldn’t hold or extend it. In fact, Pacific had a real shot to tie it up with :09 left but couldn’t get a clean three off.

Still, five in a row is five in a row.

Finally, Wake Forest got a credible win over West Virginia. Like Virginia’s White, Wake’s Juke Harris shot 7-7 on his threes. The emerging star finished with 28.

Wake was up 12 in the first half and then had a 13-0 run to get separation. West Virginia had 17 turnovers, which obviously didn’t help.

This was an important win for the Deacs. Next up they get two buy games they should win (Queens and Longwood) before getting #17 Vandy on December 21st and a chance to move to 10-3.

Four games on Sunday as John Pastner leads UNLV against Stanford, Hofstra visits Pitt, Georgetown and UNC get a bit of nostalgia and SMU takes on Texas A&M.

Sunday’s ACC Action