The Daily Triangle

By Harold

This wouldn’t be a Triangle-based web site without a discussion of the ACC tournament, which starts Thursday.

This is always the most difficult week of the year as a Duke fan. On the one hand, you want them to win every game, especially against the bigger rivals. On the other hand, you don’t really remember much about the ACC tournament in the grand scheme of things (trivia question: who did Duke play in the final last year?). Really you just want them to be healthy and rested for the NCAA tournament (answer: Florida State).

That’s an even bigger factor this year, with Jon Scheyer, Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith each averaging 38-39 minutes a game. Coach K can say that’s not an issue because there’s so many TV timeouts, and his practices are harder than games anyway. But you can’t tell me that three straight days of playing 38 minutes is good — otherwise why do teams only schedule two games every week?

There’s more on the line this year because the fourth NCAA No. 1 seed is up for grabs, and presumably Duke would claim it with an ACC tournament title. Now, is there a significant difference between the No. 1 seed and the No. 2 seed? Well, we’ve been both over the past five years and it hasn’t helped us. I say it’s not a big enough deal to risk fatigue and injury to our star players.

Ideally, Coach K will use this time to play the freshmen (Andre Dawkins, Ryan Kelly) and the Plumlees and strengthen our bench for a deep run. We know that’s not going to happen, so the next best thing would be a blowout in the quarterfinals and hopefully the starters only play 25-30 minutes.

Now in the semis do you root for a Duke win, knowing it means three games in three days? Or a close loss? UNC lost in the ACC semis last year en route to the national championship. It’s up to every Duke fan to decide for themselves during Saturday semifinals, but we can all thank the ACC tournament for putting us in a crazy situation where you can have an actual debate over whether you want your team to win or not.

Anyway, here’s some notes on the first-round games, and the other top seeds:

No. 8 Boston College-No. 9 Virginia: The winner plays Duke in the quarterfinals. Virginia has lost nine in a row and its leading scorer (Sylven Landesburg) is suspended, while BC lost by just three to Duke last month, so if the Cavs can somehow win that would be better for Duke.

Wake Forest-Miami, Georgia Tech-North Carolina, Clemson-NC State: I’d like to see as many ACC teams as possible in the NCAA tournament. All current projections have seven ACC teams in the field, but it wouldn’t hurt for WF, Clemson and GT to win just in case. Of course, the GT game has the added benefit of further humiliating UNC.

No. 2 Maryland: Probably the most anticipated matchup of the weekend would be a rubber match between Duke and Maryland in the final, although for the sake of my parents property in Maryland, I hope it doesn’t happen. I think Greivis Vasquez deserved ACC player of the year, not because he outplayed Scheyer last week (Scheyer outplayed Vasquez in Cameron, so shouldn’t those games cancel each other out?), but because Scheyer had two other all-ACC players to work with, while no one else on Maryland even made the third team.

No. 3 Florida State: It’s weird to think of the Seminoles as the third-best team in the ACC, and really they finished in a three-way tie for third. But they’re going to make the NCAAs in back-to-back years for the first time since the early 90′s, so it’s not a fluke thing. They’ve held every opponent to under 50 percent shooting this season, so it can be hard to watch but the Seminoles defense is really effective. A Duke-FSU ACC final is a worst-case scenario for Duke’s NCAA tournament success (see: last year). The game will be ugly and Duke will be beat up.

No. 4 Virginia Tech: It’s weird to think of the Hokies as an ACC power, but this is the fourth time in five years they’ve gotten a top-four seed and first-round bye. Malcolm Delaney may be the second-most exciting player in the conference after Vasquez. They led Duke at Cameron with 10 minutes left a few weeks ago, so this could be an interesting game if they meet in the semifinals.