Winners and Losers: Duke, the ACC, Rex Ryan

LOSER: Duke ain’t all that good

Continuing in the mode of saying it like it is. The loss to Florida State on the road is one thing. Winning on the road in the ACC is never easy, and FSU has a solid ballclub this year. Having to rally to beat a depleted Virginia team at home is quite another.

I bleed orange and blue, but this UVa. squad wasn’t all that much when it had Mike Scott, and now his 15.9 points and 10.2 rebounds a game are on the bench in street clothes the rest of the way because of his ongoing ankle issues, leaving as the program’s inside presence one Assane Sene, who, God love him, is seven feet tall and doesn’t appear to know how to catch a basketball, much less dunk one. (Fond of the layup, the big guy is.)

This Duke team loves to shoot three-pointers; unfortunately, it can’t do that all that well. (Case in point: Duke was 5-of-20 from long-range on Saturday vs. Virginia.)

That, and the fact that point guard Nolan Smith is so indispensable that he has sat all of 40-some seconds total in Duke’s four ACC games to date, means, well, the folks in charge of facilities at Cameron Indoor needn’t feel compelled to clear space for any more NCAA championship banners anytime soon.
 

WINNER: A balanced ACC?

See above regarding Duke. So the Dookies are coming back to the pack, Florida State’s star is rising, Maryland’s may be as well (narrow losses to Duke and Villanova showing the Terps’ potential). North Carolina is abysmal, and Virginia Tech lost to Carolina (but beat Florida State). Virginia beat Tech and looked good in losses to UNC and Duke. Hmm … parity, it seems, is rearing its head where just last week hegemony was the order of the day.
 

WINNER: Trash talk?

It started with “Hard Knocks,” and continued with the PG-rated rants of Rex Ryan in advance of last week’s AFC divisional playoff upset by Ryan’s New York Jets over the Super Bowl-favorite New England Patriots.

The world of sportswriterdom has been wringing its collective hands over what it all means. Me, I like what Ryan and his Jets bring to sport. Which is to say, I hate sitting through press conferences and conference calls and media getaways full of “we’re going to go out there and give 110 percent” and “you have to give those other guys credit.”

it’s refreshing to hear a guy actually say, You know, I want to beat the living crap out of the other guys, and if we do, I’m going to take my time waddling across the field to shake their hands, and I hope one of my guys does a backflip in the middle of it all.

Column by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at [email protected].