HokieDave over at vtbb.fanfoc.us asked me the following question regarding my “And the ACC Coach of the Year Award Goes To…” column a couple of days ago:
“I was curious that neither Coach K or Williams received mention in your article. Sure, neither has overcome the adversity of the coaches you mentioned, and neither team’s success is ’surprising’, but that can’t take away from great seasons for both teams. What are your thoughts on giving the award to a ’sentimental’ favorite versus a well-executed powerhouse that delivers when expected?”
I responded with the following:
With regards to Coach K and Roy Boy, I think it would take an amazing season, nothing short of an undefeated ACC schedule, to warrant COY award for those guys. When you have more All Americans on your team than the rest of the conference combined, I think you should be No. 1 or No. 2 in your conference year in and year out. If Seth Greenberg had eight All Americans on his team I think VT would have a top 5 team, too.
Now if you want to give out a lifetime achievement award for coaching, then definitely Coach K and Roy deserve consideration, especially K, because he built his program up to such a high level that all the top players want to come to Duke because they know they will win and win a lot. Maybe Coach K deserves ACC Recruiter of the Year every year, but not COY – he wins because he has the best players. Any half-decent college coach could win with that kind of talent. What makes a Coach of the Year is exceeding expectations. We expected UNC and Duke to be this good and go 1-2 in the ACC. Nobody expected VT, Wake and Miami to finish anywhere close to the top half of the conference, especially Wake and VT which faced extraordinarily unique challenges with WF losing its coach and VT being the youngest team in the conference.
Make sense?
My two favorite teams are Virginia Tech and any team that plays Duke… NC State got screwed by the refs in their game with Duke, today (although every team is told to bend over to the refs in games with Duke)… Ben McCauley, specifically, got screwed over on a horsesh*t phantom call for fouling DeMarcus Nelson, when in fact Nelson hooked McCauley. It’s bullsh*t.
And you know what? The best way to beat Duke is to do the same thing that Virginia Tech did last year (every team should be using that game as a model to approach Duke)… play them hard, we’re talking ball-hawking man-to-man defense… contest the three (no open looks)… Duke has no post game… and look Paulus is not that good… if you have a hand in his face, he collapses (he is weak)…
But you have to play hard, hard defense the entire game.
I am going to send a few ideas for t-shirts to you, Gary… I hate Duke… hate’em!!!!