Wednesday, January 16, 2008

2008 ACC Basketball Predictions

As a Georgia Tech grad and living in North Carolina, you can definitely say I'm in ACC Country. I have always followed ACC basketball, even in my youth in Georgia. I think the ACC will be uneventful this year. There's the North Carolina Tar Heels and Duke Blue Devils, then everyone else. There are a lot of bad teams in the ACC this year, including my GT Yellow Jackets. The ACC is not the dominant conference this year. I don't think there is a dominant conference this year. Right now, it looks as if the Pac-10 is the best conference this year top to bottom, but they aren't dominant either. A lot of major conferences are top heavy like the ACC. This could be a year where we see a lot of mid-majors rise during the NCAA tourney.

Now for my ACC Predictions, yes, I know, we are a game or two into conference play, but pre-season predictions are useless in college basketball with teams relying so much on freshman nowadays. Right now, we have a gauge of some of the teams.

1. North Carolina
2. Duke
3. Clemson
4. Boston College
5. Maryland
6. Virginia
7. Miami
8. Wake Forest
9. Florida State
10. NC State
11. Virginia Tech
12. Georgia Tech

I break the ACC into 4 tiers. UNC is Tier 1. Duke is tier 2. 3 thru 8 is Tier 3. 9 thru 12 is Tier 4. By tiers, I mean each team is ranked in their Tier and I expect them to remain and will not move up or down a tier. Teams 3 thru 8 are the toughest to predict. I'm confident in the tier, but the order was tough to predict. I'm not sure if I can trust Clemson basketball. I think Wake Forest is the wild card of the bunch. They can potentially rise to 3 by the end of the season. They have the right tools. Miami is off to a great start, however, like Clemson, it's hard to trust Miami basketball. Virginia made a good run the second half of the season last year and their best player, Sean Singletary, is back. Could see the same this year. I may have BC up a little high. I've seen them play a couple of times and am not impressed. I would not be surprise if they falter the 2nd half of the season. Maryland is an anomaly. You just don't know which Maryland team shows up each night. Yes, I'm putting my boys (GT) last. I think this is a very bad, undisciplined team. I'm not going into detail right now. That's for another blog.

PICKS FOR TONIGHT (1/16):

Virginia Tech +5.5
Georgia Tech +11
Orlando Magic -1

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you are wrong. Clemson can and will beat Duke.

Anonymous said...

Good picks on Va Tech and Ga Tech. I thought you were wrong on both.

Eddie Genius said...

Yes, GT always plays UNC tough no matter how good or bad they are. Also VT-UVA is a rivalry and VT usually plays them tough.