Top Freshman, Etc.

Although we pretty much stick to high school recruiting, it’s hard to ignore talking about the ACC now that the season has started. I noticed this post from the Bernie Ball blog, where he lays out his picks for the upcoming college basketball season, and he names the following players as his all-freshman team:

-Willie Warren, Oklahoma
-Samardo Samuels, Louisville
-Greg Monroe, Georgetown
-Tyreke Evans, Memphis
-Jrue Holliday, UCLA

This is a good group but I might knock off one of these guys in favor of Al-Farouq Aminu, when it’s all said and done. This list looks like it was created after watching only the first five games of the season and without actually being familiar with these players from their high school days. I’d be interested how this all ends up at the end of the season. Of course, that’s not to take anything away from these guys, and lists are just lists, nothing really meaningful.

Wake Forest’s Prospects

Over the summer, whenever I was asked which team in the ACC was going to surprise people, I answered, ‘Wake Forest’. I said that UNC would be the team to beat (that’s not hard to predict), Duke would be significantly better but still might struggle with post play down the stretch, and Wake Forest and Clemson would make some NCAA noise. So now the season has kicked off and I’m waiting to see how right or wrong I was. UNC has absolutely beaten the living daylights out of everyone they’ve played, even Kentucky and #8 Notre Dame, while Duke has looked really good against really weak teams. That’s not a knock; all of the ACC teams make a habit of playing as many ‘tune up’ games as possible, with one or two actual games in the mix, before going into the brutal ACC play. It’s not uncommon for teams to have stellar records before starting ACC play.

Some early thoughts so far? Boston College might really be in for a rough season, Maryland already looks completely inconsistent, UNC and Duke look like they are ready for the NCAA tournament already and Wake is playing well, despite being so young. Jury’s still out on Miami.