Doucette's ACC Basketball News & Notes

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The final weekend of the basketball regular season is here and it’s time to look ahead to the upcoming ACC Tournament at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. The Virginia Cavaliers will enter as the conference’s outright regular-season champion for the fourth time, and the third time under Coach Tony Bennett.

The win tonight makes us the first team in ACC history to go 9⃣-0⃣ on the road in conference play! #GoHoos pic.twitter.com/Q0pQS4pp65

— Virginia Men's Basketball (@UVAMensHoops) March 2, 2018

Winning games on the road are never easy, in the ACC as road teams won 32 of the 66 league games, (.484) overall. Home teams are 78-48, (.607), in league play, marking the second-lowest home court winning percentage over the last twenty years.

There have been plenty of close games in the league this year and the first two games of this past week, for example, were decided by last second shots and a total of four points. On the year, 33 percent (41-of-122) of the regular season games have been decided by five points or less, or in overtime.

This week, player of the week in the ACC is North Carolina State’s, Allerik Freeman. It is the second time that Freeman has been honored. The Rookie of the week in the league goes to Duke’s Wendall Carter. This is the third time Carter has won the award.

.@PackMensBball's Allerik Freeman named #ACCMBB Player of the Week, presented by @KIOTITractor: https://t.co/6lVLeC4Pd2 pic.twitter.com/7nUGiyLacj

— ACC Men's Basketball (@accmbb) February 26, 2018

Scoring has been a year-long problem for the Syracuse Orangemen unless your name is Tyus Battle. He has scored 10 or more points in 25 straight games. Battle has 15 20-point games on the season. He ranks third in the ACC in scoring, averaging 19.8 a game.

Where would the Boston College Eagles be without Jerome Robinson? It’s a question that Eagles fans would rather not answer. Robinson has been a consistent scorer for BC. Not only does he leads the conference in scoring at 20.9 a contest, he has also has scored over 20 points in eight of his last ten games.

A close call for the #BCEagles, but ultimately Miami takes it, 79-78, behind Jerome Robinson's 30 points.

RECAP: https://t.co/FeTh93YNVF

— BC Men's Basketball (@BCMBB) February 24, 2018

To give you an idea of how tight this league has been, the third through eighth-place teams in the current ACC standings are separated by one game in the loss column with one day left in the regular season.

As we looked ahead to selection Sunday, keep this in mind. Led by Virginia, the ACC leads all conferences with four teams ranked in the top 10 of the RPI, twice as many as any other league. The ACC leads all conferences with 10 teams in the top 50, and 11 in the top 70. The ACC is also tops with six teams listed in the top 20 of overall strength of schedule.