GREENSBORO, N.C. | North Carolina lost a bunch of pros from its national title team. Duke does not possess an excess supply of guards. Elsewhere, plenty of teams could make significant jumps from a year ago.
Suddenly, ACC basketball is a less predictable neighborhood than most recent years.
“You look around the room, and the teams that are here, I see 10 teams that would expect to make the NCAA tournament, and only six at the most are probably going to make it,” Maryland coach Gary Williams said Sunday at the conference’s media day. “It’s going to be a very competitive, very tough league.”
In keeping with the no-runaway-favorite theme, Duke and North Carolina tied for the top spot in the league’s preseason media vote. Maryland was fifth, while Virginia Tech took eighth and Virginia 11th.
Duke forward Kyle Singler edged out Maryland guard Greivis Vasquez as the conference’s preseason player of the year. Singler and Vasquez joined Clemson’s Trevor Booker, North Carolina’s Ed Davis and Virginia Tech’s Malcolm Delaney on the preseason All-ACC team.
Even without an anointment as the ACC’s top player, Vasquez was still a popular figure. The charismatic guard, who flirted with the idea of turning pro before opting to return for his senior season, lifted Maryland to a 21-14 record last season and a trip to the second round of the NCAA tournament.
That postseason appearance was unexpected after the Terps were overlooked heading into last season. Maryland was a seventh-place pick in the preseason, and landing that high could be interpreted as a nod to Williams’ acumen.
This year, though, Vasquez and the Terps enter with a little more hype and a lot more attention.
“It’s a little bit different,” Vasquez said. “People actually are looking at us differently. That’s definitely a plus. We’re going to have the same mentality we had last year. We’re going to work hard and not make that many mistakes like we did early last season. We’re just trying to win games.”
It won’t be the easiest task, considering the improvement anticipated from several teams. Georgia Tech reloaded with a potent recruiting class. Boston College, an NCAA tournament team last year, returns four starters.
Even Virginia, generally a second-division team for most of the decade, is invigorated after hiring coach Tony Bennett and installing a defense-oriented system.
“I think the consistency is going to be a key this year,” Williams said. “Last year you saw in the Big East, a couple teams lost a game they maybe should have won, and then they had to play a great team after that, lost that game. You start to lose confidence and lose that third game. All of a sudden, you play yourself out of the NCAA tournament. I think most teams are going to have to handle a tough loss somewhere along the way.”
The Terps know a little bit about that after some hiccups a few years after their 2002 national title. When Landon Milbourne (now a senior) arrived, Maryland was coming off consecutive NIT appearances to end an 11-year run as an NCAA mainstay.
In his career, Milbourne played sparingly on a round-of-32 team as a freshman, then started a year ago when the Terps returned to the tournament after a one-year hiatus.
Milbourne isn’t interested in another early postseason departure. Instead, he would like to throw another unpredictable twist into a conference that could be in for a wild winter.
“I always said I wanted to leave some kind of mark and come back and see some type of banner up on the roof,” Milbourne said. “We already got to the tournament, so we’ve got that up there. Now we’re trying to make it to the Final Four.”
Notes - Georgia Tech forward Derrick Favors was named the preseason rookie of the year. …
The ACC announced the 2012 conference tournament will be played at Atlanta’s Philips Arena. Atlanta already had been awarded the tournament.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.