The end of the ACC season is near. Have UNC, NC State and Duke all turned a corner?
The end of the season has arrived, quietly, like fog in the night. At times, as teams go on COVID pauses and postponed games evaporate into the ether, it has felt endless. Then again, so few games have been played compared to what we’re all used to that at other times it feels like things are still getting started.
The finish line has come near enough to see clearly, and if anyone’s going to get pointed in the right direction before it’s too late, now is the time.
Saturday was the day the Triangle teams, each in its own way, finally turned a corner.
N.C. State, in a blowout win over Wake Forest, looked like it has.
North Carolina, in a blowout win over COVID-slowed Louisville, looked like it has.
Duke, which upended Virginia as a rare Cameron underdog, looked like it has.
And not a moment too soon. After Saturday, N.C. State and Duke will each have four games left while North Carolina has three ACC games to go -- assuming all of that proceeds as planned, which it rarely has this season. Everyone will be encamped in Greensboro again before you know it, maybe even before new ACC commissioner Jim Phillips is.
The Wolfpack passed through Greensboro on Saturday on its way back from a comfortable 80-62 win at Wake Forest, its third straight ACC win on the road. The last time N.C. State did that, Julius Hodge was a freshman.
The first of the three this time around was the blowout of Boston College’s COVID-ravaged junior varsity team two weeks ago, an aberration bordering on farce even by the standards of this season. But hanging on at Pittsburgh on Wednesday in the wake of the dismal Duke debacle was a potentially season-defining moment for the Wolfpack, and N.C. State followed that up not with regression but progression, taking it to the Demon Deacons from the start and never letting up.
It’s almost impossible to quantify how far N.C. State has come in a week. Some of that is the natural evolution of young players, placed in roles for which they’re far from ready, learning how to handle the workload. But some of that, to echo the word Kevin Keatts would use, boils down to simple pride.
“It gave us a chance to humble ourselves,” Keatts said. “We had not had a game that we lost like Duke other than the Florida State game. It showed me our guys have a sense of pride.”
Just how much pride, N.C. State will find out quickly at Virginia, which will be coming off a 66-65 loss to Duke, the biggest win of the Blue Devils’ season so far. Duke may have more riding on a late-season surge than anyone. It was precisely the kind of quality win Duke has lacked and will go a long way toward resurrecting the Blue Devils’ NCAA tournament prospects, let alone a sense of optimism around the program.
“The season hasn’t gone the way we wanted and there’s been a lot of negativity,” Duke forward Matthew Hurt said. “We’re just not going to take anything for granted.”
With Hurt posting his third straight game of 20 points or more -- he had 22 against the Cavaliers -- Duke took the opportunity to demonstrate that its strong play without the now-departed Jalen Johnson was not some statistical fluke but a sustainable development going forward. Virginia and Duke always seem to bring out the best in each other, and this evening was no different.
“That was an epic game,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said.
If the NCAA tournament isn’t on N.C. State’s radar, and it’s back in the frame for Duke, North Carolina may have removed all doubt with Saturday’s 99-54 thumping of Louisville. The Cardinals were coming off a COVID pause that sidelined coach Chris Mack and were substantially less than 100 percent, but the Tar Heels allowed them absolutely no oxygen.
In terms of efficiency, it was North Carolina’s best offensive performance in an ACC game in more than four years, and with 48 points at halftime, the Tar Heels threatened to provide two-for-one biscuits for the first time in more than two years, falling a single point short. It’s harder to put a finger on this, but with Kerwin Walton banging in shots from long range and four big men in double figures, North Carolina looked like North Carolina, maybe for the first time this season, affirming that the Tar Heels have indeed shaken off their early ACC doldrums.
There’s just enough time left for it to matter. Even if all goes as planned, the Wolfpack and Blue Devils will still end up two ACC games short of the usual 20 due to postponements that quietly morphed into cancellations. Given the circumstances, that’s a full house.
The Tar Heels potentially had room this week to make up one of their four postponed ACC games but filled that spot themselves on Saturday by inviting Steve Wojciechowski’s similarly idled Marquette team back to his old neighborhood on Wednesday.
“We’re still hoping we get 27 in,” UNC coach Roy Williams said. “I don’t know if it’s going to happen or not.”
If anyone was going to turn a corner, this was the time. Saturday may have changed the entire trajectory of the season. Certainly the stakes are higher at the end than anyone thought they would be a month ago. And the way things have gone this season, the end could come sooner than expected.
This story was originally published February 20, 2021 at 5:20 PM with the headline "The end of the ACC season is near. Have UNC, NC State and Duke all turned a corner?."
