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All-ACC Team

PG – Raymond Felton, North Carolina
SG – Justin Gray, Wake Forest
F – Rashad McCants, North Carolina
F – Julius Hodge, North Carolina State
C – Sean May, North Carolina

All-ACC 2nd Team

PG – Chris Paul, Wake Forest
SG – Tim Pickett, Florida State
F – Luol Deng, Duke
F – Marcus Melvin, North Carolina State
C – Sheldon Williams, Duke

Honorable Mentions: Elton Brown, Virginia; Chris Duhon, Duke; B.J. Elder, Georgia Tech, John Gilchrist, Maryland; Jamaal Levy, Wake Forest; J.J. Redick, Duke

I can hear Duke fans already; “how is J.J. Redick only on the 2nd team?”, “how is Chris Duhon only an honorable mention”, and “will this be on any sort of test, because if so, I will have to memorize it during my spring break instead of going to the Keys to drink semi-expensive Merlot and barbeque mutton.”
To that, all I can say is, shut up Dukies; go figure out a math problem.
But, some people might have some beef with my picks and deservedly so. But before you complain, let me explain the rationale for these selections.
1) I based my picks solely on ACC competition. So if you blew up for 42 points against Loyola of Maryland, that doesn’t show up on my stat sheets.
2) I have picked based on how players played basketball for those 16 games. It might sound ridiculous ("of course you pick based on performance!"), but wait until Chris Duhon is named ACC Player of the Year in a few days and you will hear about his leadership in the locker room. That’s great for pep rallies and for Dick Vitale, but the five guys on the first team of my list are, I feel, the best five players at their position in the ACC.
3) And most important, I have picked players (to the best of my ability) for each of the five positions on the floor. This means I won’t have four guards on my first team, like many an all-conference team tends to have.
It has become more difficult in recent years with players shifting all over the court. Meaning, Rashad McCants might play the two if Felton is sitting and J.J. Redick might run the point if Duhon needs a breather. Conversely, Marcus Melvin sometimes is the biggest man on the court for NC State and plays the role of their center. So what I’ve tried to do is to pick the player at the position they play the most.
OK, now onto the controversy.
(Note: The official All-ACC results have just been released, and I will be making reference to them in my explanation of my picks.)
The most surprising pick on my first-team is Raymond Felton. There has been a general consensus that Chris Duhon was the best player in the ACC this year and he might be rewarded with the player of the year honor, which, if he does, would be the biggest injustice since Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture over Goodfellas.
Duhon is good. He was second in the ACC in assists and steals, but isn’t in the Top 25 in any other category, including scoring. His supporters will say that Duhon plays tenacious defense, but I’ve seen him get lit up by all three of Wake’s point guards in both games this year and by B.J. Elder last week. Duhon’s defensive reputation is kind of like Derek Jeter’s; they’re both good only because everybody else says they’re good. But if you look at them play, their weaknesses are exposed.
So in comes Raymond Felton to the Point Guard spot. The Pre-season Player of the Year in the ACC (and only a 3rd team selection for the post-season team) averaged 12.6 points per game, 4.5 rebounds (good for 24th in the ACC), was first in assists, and third in steals. He was my narrow choice over Wake Forest’s outstanding freshman Chris Paul, who averaged more points than Felton and was close behind in every other major category.
Both are more deserving of their spots on this team than Duhon, who is getting sympathy votes because he is a senior, had a terrible year last year, and spent his first two seasons playing in the shadow of Jason Williams. If you want to honor Duhon give him a lifetime achievement award and a convertible; but don’t give him a spot that rightfully belongs to somebody else.
The rest of my first-team is pretty standard. Gray, McCants and Hodge all were on the official list (which, by the way was (with my selections in parenthesis):
1st Team – Hodge (1), McCants (1), Duhon (HM), Gray (1), Pickett (2)
2nd Team – Redick (HM), Williams (2), Melvin (2), May (1), Elder (HM)
3rd Team – Paul (2), Deng (2), Felton (1), Gilchrist (HM) and Georgia Tech’s Jarrett Jack (NR)
They added Jack, I had Levy and Brown instead. Every other player matched up, albeit in different locations.)
Ok, now on to the other Duke snub I made. This time, it was leaving J.J. Redick off the second team in favor of Tim Pickett. (For the record, Pickett was officially a first-team All-ACC selection, while Redick was on the second team, so put that in your pocket protector and calculate it Blue Devil fans).
For a few minutes I actually had Redick ahead of Pickett, but then changed my mind.
The reason I put Redick on initially was because I thought, “who would I want on the floor in crunch time, Redick or Pickett” and the answer was easy. Even though I hate him, Redick was the choice.
But then I realized that “crunch-time heroics” aren’t the benchmark of a great player. So I looked at the stats again and saw that while Redick outscored Pickett by an average of 1.5 points a game, Pickett grabbed 5.4 rebounds a game (11th in the ACC) and led the league in steals.
Pickett’s free throw shooting made me cautious. He and Redick got to the line this season a similar amount of times, but Redick is nearly automatic while Pickett shoots just 70% from the charity stripe.
But, in the end, I went with Pickett because he played great basketball on a mediocre team while Redick played pretty good basketball on a great team.
And I know that Sean May isn’t really deserving of first-team All-ACC honors, but there had to be a big man on the team, and May was the best big man in the conference this year.

ACC Player of the Year

Julius Hodge, North Carolina State

Take a look at the numbers of the three leading candidates for ACC player of the year, plus the numbers of one other guy who won’t get much support.

Points Reb Ast. STL FG% 3P%
Player A 19.9 4.4 2.1 1.7 .487 .420
Player B 10.1 3.9 6.3 2.3 .448 .321
Player C 13.6 3.2 5.7 2.8 .493 .473
Player D 18.1 6.3 3.8 1.6 .509 .349

By looking at these stats, it’d be pretty clear that you’d pick player D for Player of the Year, followed by C, A and then B.
Player D is Julius Hodge.
Player C is Chris Paul (surprised?)
Player A is Rashad McCants
Player B is Chris Duhon

Yet, Chris Duhon might take the player of the year trophy because his jersey says “Duke”. Duhon isn’t even the Player of the Year on his own team! He might not even be in the top three on his own team, but because of Dukie obsession, Duhon garnered 1st Team All-ACC honors and might get the POY. Awful.

ACC Freshman of the Year

Chris Paul, Wake Forest

Luol Deng was a nearly unanimous selection of the pre-season version of this award (is there any point to have a pre-season freshman of the year? Why not rename the award Most Hyped Freshman, because that’s who always wins. Does anybody else do this? Is there an Emmy award for the “Best New Show That Nobody Has Ever Seen”?)
Anyway, Deng had a great year, but Chris Paul is the choice. Even Dickie V said so.

ACC Coach of the Year

Paul Hewitt, Georgia Tech

I swear.. If Coach K or Roy Williams gets one vote for this award, the writer that votes for them should never be allowed to vote again and should be forced to cover NAIA Women’s Basketball for two years. I could have coached the talent in Durham and Chapel Hill and gotten them to 8-8.
Hewitt’s team lost their best player last year (Chris Bosh) and the preseason expectation for the Yellow Jackets was that they’d be playing in the 8-9 game Thursday night. Instead, Georgia Tech was the country’s hottest team through January and got some pretty nice wins in the ACC to boot (including a win at Duke, the first home loss for the Devils in two seasons).

All-ACC Disappointment Team

Todd Billet, Virginia
Vytas Danelius, Wake Forest
Jamar Smith, Maryland
Eric Williams, Wake Forest
Jawad Williams, North Carolina

I know Danelius was hurt, but he was still a pre-season 1st team All-ACC selection.
Jawad Williams never jelled in Roy Williams offense and Todd Billet was supposed to be a sharpshooter but shot only 34% from beyond the arc.
Jamar Smith and Eric Williams didn’t have bad seasons (both averaged nearly 12 points a game and were among the league leaders in rebounds), but the expectations for both were so much higher. Each seemed to take mental naps in key stretches of the season (Williams was benched for a freshman in the middle of the season, while Jamar Smith played exactly 34 seconds in the 2nd half of a crucial late-season game against Wake Forest.) And Smith’s free-throw shooting woes almost single-handedly kept the Terps from dancing this March. Williams and Smith weren’t awful, but they were awfully disappointing.

Best Game

#9 Wake Forest 119 over #4 North Carolina 115 (3OT) – 12/20/03

Thirteen players scored in double-digits, North Carolina scored the most points ever by a losing team in ACC history and the teams were one basket away from breaking the record for most points ever in a conference game.
All of this, plus it was the first ACC match up of the year and involved two top-10 teams.
North Carolina was up big late in the second half, but a furious Wake rally tied the game late, and the Deacons had a chance to win in regulation. The first overtime saw a total of 32 points scored, including two from Chris Paul with 1.2 seconds left. Paul was fouled on what would have been a go-ahead three-pointer, and converted two of three from the line to send the game into the second OT. Fatigue set-in during the second OT, as the teams combined for only four points.
The game changed with 3:41 left in the third-OT when Sean May fouled out. After that, Wake’s big men Eric Williams and Kyle Visser were able to push their way inside.
UNC went up 111-107 on a Jawad Williams dunk, but a quick three by Taron Downey and then a lay-up by Kyle Visser gave Wake the lead at 112-111. Wake’s Williams then backed up his UNC namesake for a tip-in to give Wake a three-point lead, that was gone when Melvin Scott drained a three-pointer on the other end to tie the game at 114.
On Wake’s next possession, Eric Williams hit a running jumper, and after a UNC miss, Williams was fouled. He made his two free-throws and Wake won one of the wildest games in league history.

Worst Game

Maryland 63 at #3 Duke 86 – 2/22/04

Yeah, there might have been more lopsided games in the ACC this season, but not between two teams that have had the nation’s best rivalry in recent years.
It was no secret going into this year that the Terps were going to be in rebuilding mode, and heading into their game in Durham, nobody gave Gary William’s young team much of a chance.
But they had held their own in their previous meeting with Duke and needed a win in the worst way in this Sunday match up. The Terps were also the last team to win in Cameron (albeit in 2001). But most importantly, this was Duke. And Maryland always played well against Duke.
Right?
No. Instead this game was over by the second TV timeout. Maryland turned the ball over 22 times, shot 37% from the field and 52% from the line in a game where they were down by as much as 27 and finished down 23.
In a huge “kick us when we’re down” moment, Coach K emptied his bench with two minutes left.
Some rivalry.

Worst Hair

J.J. Redick

What, is he trying out for Spike Lee’s next movie, Caesar Got Game?

Best Post-Game Celebration

Gary Williams after beating UVA.

Gary hasn’t been that happy or jumped that high since CVS had a 2-for-1 sale on Grecian Formula.

Most Over-hyped Game

#14 North Carolina 75 at #3 Duke 80
Yes, Duke-Carolina is a great rivalry. But did this game really warrant two-hours of live pre-game coverage from ESPN, a Sportscenter-on-location set and all that face time for Jay Bilas? (After listening to Coach K sing Bilas’ praises for three straight minutes, I was almost convinced that Bilas was to the ‘80s what Alcindor was to the ‘60s. Then I remembered, “hey… it’s Jay Bilas.”)
I mean, this was a game between one of the more mediocre teams to win the ACC in recent memory and an overrated, albeit talented, squad that had an 8-7 conference record headed in. But ESPN treated the game like it was Ali-Frazier IV.
All of this got me to wondering: if Dick Vitale and Howard Cosell were on The Apprentice, who would Donald Trump fire first? Ehhh, it’d still probably be Omarosa.

Most Ridiculous Voters

Two Associated Press voters in this week’s poll.

Duke lost to Georgia Tech at home this week. During the same week St. Joe’s finished their season undefeated, Stanford had their first slip-up of the season and Gonzaga continued to beat every other team in the country not named St. Joe’s or Stanford (the Zags only losses have come to the Top 2 teams in the country). Duke’s home loss was its 4th of the year. Yet, two… TWO voters in this week’s Associated Press Men’s Basketball poll voted the Blue Devils #1 in the country. FYI, Duke ended up at #4 in the poll.

Best Quote

“Halftime was… interesting.”
- Maryland coach Gary Williams in reference to his mid-game talk to his Terps who were losing to UVA by seven points. One can assume that Gary used many compound words of which neither end is printable during his tirade. Expect maybe “mother”.

Quote that Best Summarizes one Man’s Pretentious Attitude

“We didn’t have to shut off the lights or bring artificial (stuff) in here. It was just human beings being genuinely supportive of their team. What a refreshing sight.”
- Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski taking a jibe at Wake Forest’s pre-game ritual of blaring “Welcome to the Jungle” and turning the lights-off during pre-game introductions. What a prick.

Quote that Best Summarizes the Attitude of a Man that Doesn’t Have to Listen to Dick Vitale Call a Basketball Game

“He goes unnoticed because you expect so much. Everyone rants and raves about some of the freshmen in the country ... remember, he's a freshman and he's only done that the whole year and we're 22-3.”
- Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski on freshman Luol Deng who this year has received as much hype this year as Google’s impending IPO.

Best Use of WWF Moves

Debra Williams, mother of Wake Forest center Eric Williams.

Debra, who wears a trademark yellow hat during all Wake games, had her hat stolen by Buzz, the Georgia Tech mascot. After the theft, Williams ran down Buzz, got the mascot into a headlock and got her hat back. It’s makes it all the more surprising that her son is weak in the post.

Worst use of WWF Moves

Duke’s J.J. Redick

Redick punched Wake Forest guard Chris Paul during the team’s meeting in Winston-Salem after Paul had the audacity to play tight defense. Not shockingly, referees missed Redick’s girlie-punch, but saw the retaliation of Wake’s Trent Strickland and Duke’s Nick Horvath, who each earned technical fouls.

Biggest Headline Overstatement

Duhon’s Performance at FSU Amazing
- Duke Chronicle, 3/5/2004

The most laconic headline declaration since the Flanders Press announced in 58 point that “Playtime is Fun”.
By the way, Duhon’s numbers in his “amazing performance”… 12 points, 3 assists, 2 rebounds. He led the team only in assists. Simply amazing.

Best Bold Prediction
All six ACC teams will play on the Tournament's second weekend. The record for most conference teams in the Elite Eight is three, last done by the Pac-10 in 2002 (from three teams in the final eight to three teams in the field of 65 in two years flat. Good work Pac-10.). The ACC will match that this year with Duke, Wake Forest and Georgia Tech.