2009 Player Projections: UNC, VPI, and Wake

North Carolina is going to be silly good.

Virginia Tech's Jeff Allen should be a superstar in his sophomore season, but don't expect big breakouts from his four classmates who helped the Hokies to a surprising 9-win ACC season in 2008.

Wake Forest would have a solid 8-man rotation of returnees. Throw in three high-quality incoming freshmen and Dino Gaudio might have trouble finding enough minutes to go around, especially once Jamie Skeen returns to the team in December.

NIT Preview: Morgan State at Virginia Tech

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I hate the new, politically-correct, NCAA-owned NIT. I'm not saying that the old NIT was perfect or anything--it was obviously biased towards teams from the Northeast, and there was always something that seemed just a little bit off about the way it was run--but at least it usually delivered some pretty solid basketball and compelling matchups in all of its games. Ever since the NCAA took over and instituted the silly rule that automatically invites all of the regular-season conference champions who crapped out of their conference tournaments, though, there have been five or six of these crazy lopsided first round games that exist for absolutely no reason. It's great that Morgan State won the MEAC, and it sucks that they lost in their conference tournament, but that's the way things go. There's no way Morgan State is a better team than Wake Forest or Utah or Washington or any of the dozens of teams that finished the season with winning records and would love to keep playing.

Game Preview: Virginia Tech at N.C. State

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State's ability to get to the free throw line is the only thing that makes them even remotely functional at the offensive end of the floor. The Wolfpack are third-best in Division I at getting to the line, with just under 20% of their adjusted possessions ending in a trip to the charity stripe. (Incidentally, they're also 4th-best at keeping opponents off the line, with just over 10% of adjusted defensive possessions ending with a free throw.)

This game shapes up to be every bit as ugly as the marquee matchup tomorrow night promises to be attractive. Those of you who don't get ESPNU probably should count yourselves lucky.

Game Preview: Virginia at Virginia Tech

Why is this game being played right now? It's Groundhog Day, and these two in-state rivals will be finished with their season series by dinner time. Granted, this rivalry doesn't have the cache of Duke-Carolina or a history of memorable games, but these two have still been designated as Primary Partners by the league office. They should rightfully be playing each other in the last week of the season. It's bad enough that the league is still only playing a laughably unbalanced 16-game schedule, but to compound that mistake by lumping home-and-homes so close together is just ridiculous.

Game Preview: VPI at BC

If you like watching Big Ten basketball, you'll love Virginia Tech at Boston College. Those of you who actually enjoy watching a well-played hoops game at anything more than a glacial pace, might want to just go ahead and skip this one.

11. Virginia Tech

2007 Record: 10-6, t-3rd place
Projected 2008 Record: 5-11 (953 PARTOBS, .293 raw W%)

Like Wake Forest, Virginia Tech has an accomodating schedule. The Hokies play only five games against the projected top four teams in the conference, and five of their eight games against the bottom half of the conference will be at home. Since young teams tend to struggle more on the road than they do at home--and the Hokies are nothing if not young--this is good news for the Hokie faithful.

Projected Player Contributions:

If ever there was a team for which expectations should be nonexistent, this is it. After losing Zabian Dowdell and the criminally underrated Jamon Gordon to graduation, the Hokies will look to a seven-man freshman class to provide around half of their floor minutes. Tech could become just the sixth ACC team since 1987 to have more than 50% of its floor minutes to first year players. The five previous teams to do so (Clemson '96, UNC '03, GT '98, and Wake '98 and '07) all won at least five conference games.

While it's hard to predict what freshmen will provide, it's easy to recognize that Deron Washington and A.D. Vassallo will have to carry the team. Washington is almost certain to find himself on one of the all-conference teams come March, and deservedly so; outside of leaping short Dukies in a single bound, there's little that Washington does particularly well, but at the same time, there are few holes in his all-around game. Vassallo is a very good scorer, and on occasion he can take a game over. He has been a defensive liability for his first two years in Blacksburg, though, and that will have to change for the Hokies to have any success.

How the freshmen develop, and how Vassallo, Washington, and the rest of the returnees play without the steady senior backcourt of a year ago will be interesting to watch. Seth Greenberg took a core group of freshmen that arrived in Blacksburg with him four years ago to heights not often reached by Virginia Tech basketball teams. Can he do the same with this group? And will Hokie fans deal with a four-year success cycle?

...And the Rest

Virginia Tech and Maryland are up.