ACC Week 4

Miami (8-0): beat Florida International. The Canes kept rolling, but the offense that has put up a point per possession just three times in eight games needs to get better for their winning ways to continue. An interesting game at Mississippi State looms.

Duke (9-0): beat Michigan. Duke showed no rust after taking a week off, destroying the Wolverines. Jon Scheyer has helped key the Blue Devils offense so far with a and eFG% of 60.0. Duke might want him to take more than one in six shots during his time on the floor.

North Carolina (8-0): beat Pennsylvania. North Carolina rolled Penn to win for the third time in three consecutive road games. Up next is another road test against Rutgers. Tyler Hansbrough has improved his rebounding early in the season as he leads the ACC in OR% and finds himself in the top 25 in the nation in that category.

Clemson (8-0): beat East Carolina. Clemson's offense needs to get going. Only a top ten rank in OR% keeps them as high as 86th in the adjusted Defensive Efficiency rankings. The Tigers have shot just 46.4% on two point shots. James Mays, the team's top inside scorer, has missed the past three games. When he returns he will go a long way in helping the Tigers score inside the three point line. Trevor Booker, despite shooting poorly, pulled down 17 boards against East Carolina and has been great on the offensive glass this season.

Boston College (7-1): beat Saint Louis and Maryland. The Eagles won the first ACC game of the season by beating Maryland on the road. 6-5 FR Corey Raji has been a monster in relatively limited action by hitting both the offensive glass (4th in the ACC) and his field goals (30-44, 6-10 3PT FG).

Florida State (9-2): beat Samford and Maine. The schedule gets tougher starting with a game against Butler on Saturday. The Seminoles play an extremely small lineup, but it has paid dividends as the team can shoot. Their four most used players have all hit at least 10 three pointers while the team as a whole shoots over 79% from the charity stripe. Despite this, turnovers have caused the offense to lag behind the defense against a soft early schedule.

Georgia Tech (4-4): beat Georgia State. Fans in Hotlanta are in for a long season. Thy got back to .500 with a 5 point win over 2-6 Georgia State. It's one thing not to play defense, but when Georgia State has its third best game of the season offensively against your team, it may be time for some radical changes. One of the problems is that the team has played just one of its eight games at home so far. That's not easy for a team that has gone 4-22 away from home in the past two seasons. Things don't get much easier at home as Kansas is the first opponent of the homestand.

North Carolina State (4-3): lost to East Carolina. It isn't easy to win when you have one facet of your team's game that is worse than almost every other team in Division I. For the Wolfpack, the bane of the team so far has been the inability to force turnovers. They force TO less frequently than 338 of the 340 other DI teams. The Wolfpack were similarly situated last year, ranking 329th, so there would seem to be little hope for marked improvement other than regression towards the mean. Sidney Lowe's team does, for the second straight season, go to the line a ton while never sending their opponents there. Such is the fate for a team with a post oriented offense and a defense that isn't aggressive at all in taking the ball from the opposition.

Virginia (7-2): beat Longwood, lost to Syracuse. Free throws were the difference against the Orange as Sean Singletary uncharacteristically hit just two of eight. The Virginia offense was dormant against what has been a terrible Syracus defense. Jeff Jones, the freshman shooting guard, looked to have a breakout game with five threes against Arizona, but since then he has shot just 7-28 from the field while failing to make a shot from deep.

Virginia Tech (5-3): beat North Carolina-Greensboro and George Washington. Even against terrible opposition, back-to-back games giving up less than 40 points is impressive. Jeff Allen, only a frosh, might be the best player on the team as he racks up blocks, steals and rebounds on both ends of the court, ranking in the top 300 nationally in each of those areas.

Wake Forest (5-3): lost to Vanderbilt, Georgia. If Wake Forest could put the ball in the basket at all, they would have a shot to get to at least .500 in the ACC given the way their defense has played. But they don't - witness the games against Iowa, Charlotte and Georgia, all of which hav seen Wake get less than 0.8 points per possession.