Hype hard to find at ACC Tournament

This ACC tournament would be an incredible challenge for even the brightest marketer.

Consider the following quirks in this weekend's lineup:

A home-state megapower is in such disarray that its Hall of Fame coach said he's tired of yelling at players who constantly repeat the same mistakes.

With the exception of perhaps one team, all the NCAA at-large bids are decided, so many of the teams don't have much to play for.

Some of the best players who could or should be members of these teams are either in other conferences or playing professionally, some in such basketball glamour destinations as Belgium and Spain.

Finally, only two teams - No. 4 Duke and No. 19 Maryland - are ranked in The Associated Press' poll entering the tournament.

So how do you promote this?

Cue the water skiing squirrel. Roll out as many goofy half-court shot contests for fans as you can dream up. And is The Famous Chicken booked yet for this week? Yes?

Well, fortunately the tickets are paid for, and the Greensboro Coliseum is officially sold out. Hopefully fans and fat cats will use them.

If they do, here are the missing pieces they might notice from this weekend's ACC tournament in Greensboro:

Where's the drama?

Barring an unlikely run by a team seeded No. 8 or lower, this tournament seems destined to be devoid of passion and drama.

The top six teams - Duke, Maryland, Florida State, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest and Clemson - appear to be in excellent shape already for at-large bids to the NCAA tournament. The bottom five teams - Boston College, Virginia, North Carolina, N.C. State and Miami - will make the NCAAs only through the unlikeliest of scenarios: by becoming the first team in league history to win four games in four days to capture the ACC's automatic bid.

So there are 11 teams in this tournament whose post-Greensboro destinations are pretty much determined or in little danger of generating any suspense. (Is it safe to say that Boston College's snaring of an NIT bid won't generate screaming headlines on the front page of The Boston Globe's sports section?)

That leaves Georgia Tech as the only one of the 12 teams that appears to have a shot at influencing its odds of making the NCAA tournament without winning the ACC. For the seventh-seeded Yellow Jackets (19-11, 7-9), this tournament is a big deal.

"Obviously, it's very important," Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt said.

Aside from that, the most important question for any team coming into Greensboro is whether top-seeded seed Duke can improve its chances of earning a No. 1 seed for the NCAA tournament.

Another factor ratcheting down the drama this weekend is the lack, for the first time since 2002, of a compelling player villain who's universally despised by fans of every team but his own. The tournament has had a nice run with UNC's Tyler Hansbrough, who was preceded by Duke's J.J. Redick, with N.C. State's Julius Hodge thrown into the mix.

(Sorry Greivis Vasquez. You're not in the same league as Hansbrough and Redick when it comes to angering enemy fans).

So Public Enemy No. 1 is who now? Jon Scheyer? If that's the case, this tournament couldn't get more benign - or less passionate.

A decent UNC team

You know it's an abysmal season for North Carolina when coach Roy Williams - whose teams usually have an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament wrapped up well before March - doesn't refer to the ACC tournament as a "cocktail party."

Instead, with the defending national champion slouching with a 16-15 record, the Hall of Fame coach said he's approaching the tournament, "it's our only chance left, and that does make you look at it a lot differently. ... It gives us a chance to still play for a big, big prize, and that's the way we're looking at it."

The Tar Heels really don't have another choice. Instead of worrying about how an extended run in this tournament could hinder the rest they prefer to prepare for a long NCAA run - the reason why Williams placed so little importance on it in the past - the Tar Heels instead must win four games in four days to earn an automatic bid.

Did we mention already that no ACC team has ever done that?

"It's going to be very difficult," UNC senior Marcus Ginyard admitted. "Whether you've been getting your butt kicked all year or you've been playing great, four games in a row in the ACC, especially in the ACC tournament, is going to be tough."

For the team, and for the tournament. An early exit for North Carolina could mean an early exit for its fans - who are known to flood the Greensboro Coliseum, which is only an hour's drive from Chapel Hill.

And without UNC, it could be an awfully small "cocktail party."

With another in-state favorite, N.C. State, seeded No. 11, it seems unlikely that Wolfpack fans will be motivated to show up in droves, either, even though they're rejoicing at North Carolina's misfortunes.

Wish you were here

With the tournament returning to Greensboro, it's difficult to reconcile the fact that the college basketball's best freshman is from Raleigh and won't be here.

Former Word of God Academy point guard John Wall spurned Duke and N.C. State and wasn't offered a scholarship by North Carolina. He has Kentucky ranked No. 2 in the nation instead.

Guard Elliot Williams is Conference USA's second-leading scorer after transferring to Memphis from Duke. Forward Shamari Spears, a Boston College transfer, leads Charlotte in scoring and rebounding. South Florida center Gus Gilchrist signed with Virginia Tech, transferred to and then from Maryland, and now averages 13.8 points and 6.1 rebounds per game.

Then there are the guys who left early and aren't even in the NBA. Whenever opponents collapse inside on Trevor Booker, you wonder how good Clemson would be if 3-point shooting ace Terrence Oglesby hadn't left to play professionally in Spain.

Brandon Costner, N.C. State's scoring leader last season, had a year of eligibility remaining, but he's also playing professionally now, in Belgium.

Back when Sidney Lowe was playing for N.C. State instead of coaching the Wolfpack, few players left before their senior years. It was a time when players such as State's J.J. Hickson, UNC's Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington and Wake Forest's Jeff Teague and James Johnson might have stuck around instead of jumping to the NBA.

"Anytime you have players to leave early, it certainly takes away from the amount and talent pool that you could have had on your team or in your conference," Lowe said. "Being able to still have a guy like a J.J. Hickson or a Brandon Costner, guys that played well and would have had some experience in this conference, it definitely helps a great deal."

With the best players cycling out of college basketball earlier, opportunities are created for incoming freshmen. But this season, the impact of freshmen has been minimal.

Freshmen of note

Derrick Favors was voted the ACC's Preseason Rookie of the Year, so it wasn't surprising that the Georgia Tech forward was named the ACC's Rookie of the Year on Tuesday.

This was projected to be one of the top incoming recruiting classes in the ACC, with seven recruits earning the maximum five stars by Scout.com: Favors, North Carolina's John Henson, Clemson's Milton Jennings, Duke's Mason Plumlee and Ryan Kelly, Miami's Durand Scott and Florida State's Michael Snaer.

Scott and Snaer made the All-Rookie team, along with Favors. Although Plumlee missed six games early with a broken wrist, he's averaging 14.8 minutes for the fourth-ranked Blue Devils. But Jennings, the highest-rated recruit to ever sign with the Tigers, often got lost in the shuffle of forwards and has yet to start a game. Kelly got bumped out of Duke's rotation fairly early, and Henson didn't start coming on strong until he was moved to power forward late in the season.

And it was Maryland forward Jordan Williams, a recruit who came in with less hype (and less stars), who ended up pushing Favors the hardest for top rookie honors.

"The expectations placed on the kids, and sometimes, [that] they place on themselves, can be unrealistic," Clemson coach Oliver Purnell said. "There are really very few kids that can come in and live up to that kind of hype."

But that's just another reason why the ACC tournament might also be missing its usual hype this time around.