Tournament time

A few seconds after Clemson held on (and held its breath) for a close win over Virginia Tech six days ago at Littlejohn Coliseum, Brad Brownell and Seth Greenberg embraced at the scorer's table.

Brownell and Greenberg have a good relationship, largely because Greenberg went out of his way to welcome Brownell to the ACC a couple of years ago.

Brownell had a big smile on his face as he said something into Greenberg's ear. Tried to read his lips and thought I made out: "Great flipping game." Or something like that.

About 20 minutes later, as Brownell waited to enter his post-game press conference, I asked him what he said to Greenberg. He said he pointed out that this game unfolded exactly like the first game between these two teams in Blacksburg.

I hadn't thought about it, but it's eerily true: At Virginia Tech, the home team was up two and the visiting team was fouled with a couple of seconds left. Visiting team misses the first free throw and intentionally misses the second. In Blacksburg, the miss was tipped out to Tanner Smith and Smith missed an open baseline jumper. In Clemson, the Tigers pulled down the rebound.

Weird.

A few thoughts heading into the tournament:

-- This is an interesting matchup, and I don't think it's a matchup Clemson's staff was stoked to see. Virginia Tech just battles so hard and is so physical that it's going to be a grind. The Tigers probably would've been much happier to see, say, Georgia Tech.

-- Virginia Tech is really good at defending the 3, and that's certainly been apparent when the Hokies have faced the Tigers this year. Clemson was 2 of 17 from beyond the arc in Blacksburg and 0 of 10 in Clemson.

Brownell says the Hokies are good in this area because they're so long, and also because they don't help as much on drives to the basket.

-- Laughed out loud when I saw the numbers for ACC coach of the year voting. Leonard Hamilton won the award with 21 votes, but he was almost overtaken by Mike Krzyzewski. Coach K had 20 votes. Virginia's Tony Bennett did a really good job this year and got nine. N.C. State's Mark Gottfried did a really good job this year and got five.

Mike Krzyzewski is the best coach in college basketball and has been for quite some time. If you gave him, say, Kentucky's or North Carolina's talent, he might go undefeated.

But let's not pretend K has a bunch of walk-ons. They were supposed to be good this year, and they were good. They also lost three games at home.

Twenty votes for coach of the year is a bit much, and it fuels the conspiracy theories that are popular at some other ACC locales.

LW