College Basketball Preview: ACC

The season is back and those office pools will be humming in no time. This is the first of seven installments on the big six conferences in the country as well as a post for the cinderellas and others who the world will know come tournament time. Today we start off with the Atlantic Coast Conference and leading the pack should be no surprise to the common fan: North Carolina. The Tarheels lost PF Brandan Wright to the draft but return sophomores Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington. Lawson and Ellington form a backcourt that is reminiscent of Raymond Felton and Rashad McCants. Lawson has speed and vision akin to Felton where as Ellington is a tremendous shooter but lacks the rounded game McCants had during his tenure in Chapel Hill. Holding down the frontcourt is the guy known as Psycho T: Tyler Hansbrough. He is an absolute beast and has the potential to average 20 and 10 this season. The new faces in the starting lineup belong to sophomore Deon Thompson and the SF spot is up for grabs between juniors Danny Green and Marcus Ginyard. Green can stretch the D with his beautiful stroke (41% from the field last season) and Ginyard could provide a premier lockdown defender ( averaged a steal per 16mins last year). This team is consensus top five in every preseason poll (not that they matter anyway) and could be cutting down the nets in early April.
The main competition of UNC in the ACC will come from Raleigh and Sidney Lowe's North Carolina State Wolfpack. They may have the best frontcourt in the country with emerging superstar Brandon Costner, the versatile Ben McCauley, and freshman stud J.J. Hickson. The backcourt takes a loss with the graduation of Engin Atsur but Gavin Grant's versatile play at SG will allow newcomers Farnold Degand or Javi Gonzalez to slowly learn the ropes and become comfortable running the offense. The rest of the ACC is full of young teams like Duke and Boston College, teams who are on the decline like Maryland and Georgia Tech, teams who have a star or two like Virginia and Florida State, and rounding out the conference are the just plain not good (sorry Virginia Tech) and the team who is more up and down than Jekyll, Hyde, and Niagara Falls put together ( ...if your guess was not Clemson than you have much to learn). Without further ado, my predictions for the 2007-2008 Atlantic Coast Conference:

Winner: North Carolina
Player of the Year: Tyler Hansbrough F/C North Carolina
Freshman of the Year: Kyle Singler F Duke
Most Improved: Alade Aminu PF Georgia Tech
Surprise Team: Florida State

All-ACC
C Tyler Hansbrough UNC
PF James Gist Maryland
SF Brandon Costner NCST
SG Tyrese Rice BC
PG Sean Singletary Virginia