ACC Update

Maryland beat Florida State last night, and moved over 0.500 in the ACC for the first time. This is also their 21st win on the season, and Jeremy Gold has gone round the bend:

MD could rise as high as #2 seen in the NCAAs should they finish 10-6 in the ACC and win the ACC Tournament. Granted that is extremely unlikely. What is more likely, is a 9-7 conference record and a run to the semis of the ACC Tournament (if the draw works in our favor). If that is the case, we are 25-9 and I think that warrants #5 seed in the NCAAs. From that position, I think we make the Sweet 16 and depending on the matchup, an elite 8 is possible.

Let's not get carried away, here. They got an important win last night (I listened to it on Internet radio), and they've been on a nice run lately, but this still isn't that good a team. They went scoreless for something like six minutes late in the first half, and if Florida State had been able to hit free throws worth a damn (16-27 on the game), the Terps might've been in real trouble. As it was, they managed to be tied at half, and the Seminoles pretty much collapsed after a quick Maryland blitz to start the second half, but against a stronger team, that sort of thing won't fly.

Anyway, the win moves Maryland into a tie with Duke for fifth place in the ACC, at 7-6, and it's sort of entertaining to look at the standings:

The ordering more or less reflects reality, in terms of the demonstrated quality of play. You expect that at this time of the year, given that the teams have played 13-14 conference games already. But the rankings are just insane-- Duke is ranked ahead of four of the five teams whose conference records are at least as good as theirs, and they've lost to three of those four. Keep that in mind the next time somebody tries to tell you that college football's ranking-based "national championship" system isn't completely idiotic.

You might ask, at this point, how I did at predicting the conference results back in my pre-season ACC preview. It's a mixed bag. I correctly thought that Carolina was the class of the league, but a blind idiot could've called that one. Duke and Boston College have been shakier than I thought, and Virginia and Virginia Tech have been a little better than I really expected. Clemson started off well, but they appear to be in free fall at the moment.

Maryland is really about where I would've expected. Their collapse and resurgance has partly been an illusion due to the schedule-- the only bad loss in their poor start was to Miami at home (and really, that's almost unforgivable), while four of their other five losses were to good teams on the road. Their recent run of four straight wins has featured two home games against good teams, and two road games against teams that are struggling. If you shuffled the order around, they'd look like, well, a .500 team in the ACC, and nobody would be talking about them as a real contender, but the order of the schedule they played makes it look like a major story.

I'm not really convinced that they're playing all that much better than they were a few weeks ago-- there are still some major lapses, and long scoreless stretches. Sunday's game against North Carolina will be the real test-- if they can at least keep it close against an elite team like the Heels, I'll believe that it's a transformation. Until then, it's nice to see them back in the middle of the standings, but with games remaining against North Carolina and NC State, and at Duke, I expect them to end up right at .500.