Only One ACC Team In the Top 25

For the first time in over thirty years, only one team from the Atlantic Coast Conference is ranked in college basketball's AP Top 25. In the rankings that were released today (rankings are released every Monday during basketball season), fifth-ranked Duke is the lone representative of the vaunted ACC.

One year after winning its second NCAA National Championship in five years, North Carolina (14-12 overall, 3-8 ACC) has endured its worst season since Roy Williams became head coach (Williams succeeded Matt Doherty after Doherty's teams finished 8-20 in the 2001-02 season, and 19-16 in the 2002-03 season respectively). Wake Forest and Clemson began the season with much fanfare from the national media, but those teams have failed to live up to the lofty expectations that were placed upon them (which comes as no surprise to the Drive and Dish staff). Georgia Tech looked very good early in ACC play, and they had an impressive win over Duke in January. But they've fallen off as of late.

So Duke stands as the only ranked team from the Atlantic Coast Conference.

The ACC has not suffered for lack of media attention over the last ten to fifteen years. But despite North Carolina's recent 5 year mini dynasty in college basketball, the ACC has been in a quiet downturn in the last few years.

As for today's updated AP Top 25, aside from the aforementioned No. 5 Duke from the ACC, the rest of the top 10 is made up of three teams from the Big East (No. 4 Syracuse, No. 7 Villanova and No. 8 West Virginia), two teams from the Big Twelve (No. 1 Kansas and No. 6 Kansas State), two teams from the always maligned Big Ten (No. 3 Purdue and No. 9 Ohio State), one team from the SEC (No. 2 Kentucky) and one team from the non-BCS Mountain West conference (No. 10 New Mexico).

AP Top 25:

Ranking	Record	Pts	Pvs
1. Kansas (61)	26-1	1,621	1
2. Kentucky (4)	26-1	1,559	2
3. Purdue	23-3	1,470	4
4. Syracuse	25-2	1,455	5
5. Duke	23-4	1,323	6
6. Kansas St.	22-4	1,302	7
7. Villanova	22-4	1,189	3
8. West Virginia	21-5	1,183	8
9. Ohio St.	21-7	1,097	9
10. New Mexico	25-3	997	12
11. Georgetown	18-7	846	10
12. Pittsburgh	21-6	806	19
13. BYU	25-3	795	16
14. Michigan St.	21-7	794	11
15. Butler	25-4	673	18
16. Vanderbilt	20-6	599	17
17. Wisconsin	20-7	528	14
18. Gonzaga	22-5	506	13
19. Tennessee	20-6	480	20
20. Temple	22-5	452	21
21. Texas	21-6	445	15
22. Texas A&M	19-7	225	24
23. Richmond	22-6	202	25
24. Baylor	20-6	147	22
25. N. Iowa	24-3	128	--

Others receiving votes: UTEP 86, Virginia Tech 76, Maryland 57, Missouri 17, Illinois 14, Xavier 13, Marquette 11, Louisville 9, Mississippi St. 5, Oklahoma St. 4, Utah St. 4, Cornell 2, Murray St. 2, Wake Forest 2, Clemson 1.

North Carolina Steamrolling Competition

By Mark Buckets

Could the North Carolina Tar Heels be an overlooked team?

This, from a team that opened the year at number one and ended the regular season in the exact same position.

How can that be?

Well, if you’ve watched any college basketball lately - Drive & Dish certainly has - you’d have to recognize North Carolina as the best team in the country, far and away.

While UCLA was struggling to stave off Texas A&M - an hour from their campus - the Tar Heels were waltzing into the Sweet 16 for yet another run at a national title under coach Roy Williams.

This is a runaway train without a conductor blazing down the tracks towards a car laced with dynamite. They’re that destructive.

While Memphis was struggling to score points (Chris Douglas-Roberts saved the days once again) against another unspectacular SEC school, Carolina rolled from the opening tip and put the Arkansas Razborbacks down to sleep, winning by 31.

Memphis fans, let me be the first to say: Jarvis Varnado is no Tyler Hansbrough.

Without point guard Tywon Lawson, the Tar Heels looked “ordinary.”

Ordinary to some, unreal to others.

Quentin Thomas as your third-string point guard? He would start - and probably excel at that school eight miles down the road - on almost any team in the country. That is undeniable.

At this point, it appears Kansas is the only team with a puncher’s chance at North Carolina.

As good as Sasha Kaun, Darrell Arthur, and Darnell Jackson are - this three-headed monster has been spectacular this year - they’ve yet to go against a team with equal interior depth. This edition of the Kansas Jayhawks have been through more adversity than most of us will ever know. That fact leads you to believe they have the chops to give North Carolina a run for their money. History isn’t on their side, however.

North Carolina presents a bevy of problems to each and every one of the other number one seeds left standing in the round of 16.

Memphis? They are probably the team that can match up the best athletically with North Carolina, but they lack the intestinal fortitude to compete with the Tar Heels.

UCLA? Kevin Love v Tyler Hansbrough? Push. Those backing these two superstars up? I’ll take Deon Thompson any day over Lorenzo “Brick” Mata-Real.

The North Carolina Tar Heels appear to be headed on a fast track towards another National Championship. It would take a supreme effort - in combination with an off day from Ol’ Roy’s crew - for any team left in the Sweet 16 to dash Carolina’s title dreams.

For the Love of the Game: North Carolina's JV Team Exists in Anonymity

Two weeks ago, ESPN's Dana O'Neil wrote an excellent piece about North Carolina's Junior Varsity basketball team. I neglected to link to it at the time because it ran the day of the North Carolina / Duke game. But it's a must read article, so I've linked to it today.

North Carolina's JV team is a hold over from the days when freshmen weren't eligible to play Varsity college basketball. Freshmen have been eligible play on the Varsity for decades now, but North Carolina never did away with their JV team.

North Carolina's JV team is made up entirely of walk ons. And although there's always a chance that players will be called up to play for the Varsity Tar Heels (a few JV players get invited to try out for the Varsity each year), North Carolina's JV Heels play primarily for the love of the game.

I've always loved the fact that UNC continues to maintain JV basketball. And I think it's too bad that JV basketball is, for the most part, a thing of the past in Division I basketball (thanks, largely, to Title IX). Kentucky still maintained its JV team as recently as the Rick Pitino era, but I'm pretty sure that Kentucky JV basketball is just a memory now, as well.

Drive and Dish just wants to show some love to Roy Williams for insisting on keeping JV basketball part of the North Carolina basketball tradition.

Drive and Dish Tidbits

By Trashtalk Superstar

It's mid February, it's 10 degrees in Chicago, the second half of the NBA season has officially begun, college basketball's regular season is heading into its stretch run, and Drive and Dish presents another installation of the ever popular Drive and Dish Tidbits:

1.) North Carolina coach Roy Williams has taken umbrage with remarks made by Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, with regard to "certain" college basketball teams' reporting of injuries.

Much has been made by the media -- both local (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) and national -- of the injuries that have plagued several members of the North Carolina basketball team this season. On Sunday, Krzyzewski stated that Duke doesn't discuss injuries, "unlike other schools."

Williams interpreted Krzyzewski's statement to be a backhanded jab at him and at his North Carolina program.

On his Monday radio show, Williams opined that an unnamed coach should "coach (his) own damn team, I'll coach my team."

And in a Tuesday news conference, Williams revisited the topic: "It's not like I'm getting a dadgum plane and flying it around to say, 'Roy fell against a wall and banged his nose' or anything." Williams continued, "We have to do those things (talk about injuries) and everybody's hurt. But there's different stages of being hurt."

"If you're hurt and missing games, that's not exactly like having a hangnail. And so we do have some people that are getting hurt and missing games. I don't think that somebody should say we're putting it in front of the public."

Apparently, Coach K's comments really got under Roy Williams' skin. According to the linked article:

When a reporter attempted to ask a follow-up question, Williams said he didn't want to discuss the comments further and have "battles through the media." But when the news conference ended, Williams came back to the topic once more.

"I said before we played Duke it's impossible to have any more respect than I do for Mike," Williams said, "but I felt like that comment was aimed towards us."


After thoroughly researching the subject matter, and following hours of intense deliberation, the Drive and Dish editorial staff has arrived at the following revelation: Coach K and Roy must really not like each other as much as they say they do.


2.) ESPN's Pat Forde says that a "source close to the unsettled coaching situation at Indiana University" has told him it's likely that Indiana coach Kelvin Sampson will be suspended "for the purpose of future termination."

Drive and Dish has heard this before. Our official position is: we'll believe it when we see it.


3.) Speaking of the Indiana/Sampson scandal, Toki Wartooth at Paint the Town Orange reminds readers that Indiana knew exactly what they were getting when the hired Sampson in 2006.

IU was well aware that Sampson had a history of violating NCAA bylaws at Oklahoma. They simply didn't care.

Last Thursday, Drive and Dish discussed Sampson's history, his hiring at Indiana, and his shady behavior since arriving in Bloomington.

Indiana used to be one of the cleanest programs in major college basketball.

But integrity has been in short supply in the IU Athletic Department as of late.

Hopefully, Indiana will have to pay a price for their indifference toward the following of NCAA bylaws (just to be clear: Drive and Dish likes Indiana University and IU basketball [and we've got several friends and associates who are IU alumni] ... we just don't like Kelvin Sampson, or what Indiana basketball has become under his stewardship).


4. ) Also at Paint the Town Orange: despite being a few days old, Mr./Ms. Wartooth's post game account of the Penn State / Illinois game provides a great synopsis of Illinois' 2007/08 season.


5.) Tuesday's upset victory over #16 Drake marked Bradley's sixth game of the season against the four Division I basketball programs from the state of Iowa. Bradley has now defeated all four of Iowa's Division I teams.

Bradley beat Iowa State (65-56) Nov. 14 at Carver Arena in Peoria, beat Iowa (67-56) Nov. 23 at the South Padre Island Thanksgiving Tournament and beat Northern Iowa (75-73) Jan. 12 in Cedar Falls, IA.

According to the official website of the Bradley Athletic Department:

"Of the states that boast multiple NCAA Division I institutions, Bradley has not swept every Division I team a state has to offer since beating both Arizona (67-59) and Arizona State (92-85) during the 1963-64 season (Northern Arizona was not yet playing Division I men’s basketball at the time)."


6.) Drive and Dish doesn't like to discuss recruiting, but since we've been so Duke/North Carolina-centric lately (and since hardcore Duke fans account for a significant portion of the Drive and Dish community), we'll pass along the following recruiting buzz: Duke appears to be the likely destination for 6'11" power forward Mason Plumlee, of the Christ School in Arden, NC.


7.) More Duke stuff: DeMarcus Nelson takes viewers on a tour of Duke's practice facilities at Dukeblueplanet.com.


8.) As the NBA trade deadline approaches, two league sources have indicated that Denver is in "full pursuit" of troubled Sacramento forward Ron Artest.

North Carolina Investigates Itself For Possible Recruiting Infraction ... Surprise! ... Clears Self of Wrong Doing

By Trashtalk Superstar


The University of North Carolina conducted an internal investigation over potential violations of NCAA basketball recruiting guidelines. UNC determined that no NCAA rules had been intentionally violated and that the basketball program is, therefore, totally clean.

Whew!

What if North Carolina had decided that they were guilty? Would they have imposed sanctions upon themselves?

The act of conducting an internal investigation is a total charade. In the last two years, the Ohio State and Kansas basketball programs have conducted similar internal investigations. Like UNC, they also determined that while some violations may technically have occurred (unintentionally, of course), they all resulted from big misunderstandings. Honestly.

Not surprisingly, in the previous two cases, the NCAA determined that the self reporting was sufficient and that no NCAA sanctions were necessary. North Carolina will get the same response.

Look, the recruiting violation that UNC committed was minor and probably was actually unintentional. And for the record, the NCAA is a shockingly inefficient bureaucracy whose rules and bylaws are often vague at best. It's unbelievably easy to unintentionally violate some ridiculous NCAA bylaw. Anyone who has ever played or coached a college sport at an NCAA institution can attest to this.

North Carolina violated a ticky tacky NCAA rule. They almost certainly were unaware that they were committing a recruiting infraction. After all, the recruit merely talked to two former UNC basketball players at a UNC football game. That could have even occurred without anyone in the basketball program knowing about it. Logically, what's to stop a recruit from recognizing a former player and initiating a conversation with that former player? And accordingly, would a former player have to refuse to acknowledge a stranger who attempts to initiate a conversation with him? Even if he's unaware that the person attempting to initiate the conversation is a basketball recruit?

Many of the NCAA's bylaws are preposterous. North Carolina (which is generally regarded as a clean program) violated one such bylaw. But the rules are the rules. And North Carolina should be treated like any other basketball program which has committed a recruiting violation.

Unfortunately, the NCAA's method for distributing sanctions/punishment may be even more mysterious and questionable than any of the inane bylaws in their dauntingly volumnous rulebook. Marquee programs like Kansas, Ohio State and North Carolina are almost almost never held accountable for their infractions of NCAA bylaws. But programs of lesser stature usually get the book thrown at them. Kentucky basketball has long been notorious for not playing by the rules. At various times in their history, they haven't even pretended to follow the rules. Take for instance the fact that during one practice session, legendary Kentucky coach Adolf Rupp erupted at one of his players: "For what we're paying you, you damned well better play better than that." That was in the 1940's. Yet the NCAA left Kentucky alone until 1989 - when the FBI busted the Kentucky basketball program and coach Eddie Sutton for mailing thousands of dollars in cash to recruits. Only after the FBI became involved did the NCAA decide it was time to look into possible recruiting violations at Kentucky.

North Carolina's recruiting infraction was minor. They really don't deserve anything more than a slap on the wrist. Not that Tar Heels fans have anything to worry about: a slap on the wrist is the most that UNC will receive (truth be told, they probably won't even get slapped on the wrist - they're North Carolina after all). But the NCAA has dished out heavy penalties to other schools for committing similar minor violations. Our readers who are Illinois fans know this all too well.

For the purpose of clarity, it isn't Drive and Dish's intent to slam North Carolina. What we're slamming is the uneven treatment of member institutions by the NCAA.