Men’s Basketball
The performance of ACC teams in the NCAA Tournament the past weekend was mediocre, and they came nowhere near the success of representing teams from the rival Big East, which still has five of the eight teams it sent to the tourney. While the top two seeds from the ACC — one-seed North Carolina and two-seed Duke — both advanced, Wake Forest, Boston College and Clemson were upset by lower seeds in round one. The upset of the fourth-seeded Demon Deacons was the most humiliating, as they were manhandled by 13-seed Cleveland State 84-69. The six-seed Eagles were also crushed in round one, losing 72-55 to 11-seed USC; seven-seed Clemson at least kept its game close, dropping its contest by three to 10-seed Michigan.
Ten-seed Maryland made up slightly for some of its fellow conference teams’ debacles, upsetting seven-seed California in round one. The Terrapins were outclassed by two-seed Memphis in round two, however, falling 89-70.
Should Duke and North Carolina both advance through the next two rounds, they would meet in the Final Four in Detroit.
Women’s Basketball
The ACC has also underperformed on the women’s side of the NCAA Tournament — while all of the six teams sent to the tourney advanced to round two, only one team remains in the Sweet 16: one-seed Maryland. Duke, also a one-seed in the Tournament, was stunned 63-49 last night by nine-seed Michigan, which, incidentally, is where Duke coach Joanne P. McCallie was formerly employed as the head coach.
All three ACC teams that competed in the round of 32 Monday were also bounced — most notably, three-seed North Carolina failed to advance to the third round for the first time in five years, falling to six-seed Purdue 85-70. In addition, three-seed Florida State lost against six-seed Arizona State 63-58, five-seed Virginia was crushed by four-seed California 99-73 and nine-seed Georgia Tech was trounced by one-seed Oklahoma 69-50.
Maryland advanced easily in its second-round game, defeating nine-seed Utah 71-56.
Women’s Swimming and Diving
At the NCAA Championships in College Station, Texas during the weekend, N.C. State senior Kristin Davies won the Wolfpack’s first-ever national championship on the women’s side and first-ever diving championship for both the women or the men, winning the platform dive. Davies scored 339.65 in the finals, besting Texas senior Jessica Livingston’s runner-up score of 321.50.
Baseball
In one of the biggest upsets of the season, unranked Duke defeated No. 1 North Carolina in two of three games over the weekend in Chapel Hill. The Blue Devils won the latter two games of the three-game series by a run each, handing the Tar Heels their first series loss since April 2007 and their first series loss to Duke since 2001.
Clemson had a week with both a monumental high and a heartbreaking low. The Tigers first threw a no-hitter by committee Wednesday, as five pitchers in succession held USC Upstate hitless in a 14-0 victory, the first no-hitter for the Tigers since 1984.
During the weekend, however, the Tigers lost a series to Florida State in dramatic fashion, losing on a walk-off homerun in the ninth Sunday to drop two games in the series to the Seminoles in Tallahassee. For Florida State, the series win marked its first of 2009.
—compiled by Paul Montana
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