5 Games
The Tigers have managed to do this year, what has alluded them the past two. Get off to a good start and continue to play strongly through the conference. At 7-4, and three of the losses to a UNC team currently ranked 3 in the nation (with quite a bit of luck) and a Duke team that has been pretty dominant this year and holding the number 4 ranking, the Tigers are looking to get into the post season and make some noise. Out of the five conference games left, all are winnable and we should enter at least four of them as the favorite. I project a 3-2 finish to close out the conference at 10-6 and a number four seed in the ACC conference. In Bracketology on ESPN.com, we are currently “Up” to a six seed playing the opening round in DC in the South Region. Not bad considering I noticed us as a projected 8 prior to the UNC game couple weeks back.
The question now is can we finish strong and keep from making an early exit when the ACC comes to Charlotte? If so, that seed should hold and the Tigers can do something other than play an opener at home and a road game in someone else’s house for their post season tourney.
The in-conference momentum is definitely a drastic deviation from years past.
In ‘06, the team was 3-4 through 7 conference games. Unfortunately the loss tally hit 8 before the win tally hit 4.
In ‘07, the team was 4-3 through 7. That turned into 4-5 and then 5-9.
This year the team was also 4-3 through 7. They’re now at 7-4 and have as many wins as they finished with in either of the two previous years. And, as you mentioned, Bowman, the rest of the games on the schedule are winnable.
@ FSU - 14-12 (3-8)
Miami - 17-7 (4-6)
@ Maryland - 17-9 (7-4)
@ Georgia Tech 11-13 (4-6)
Virginia Tech 14-11 (5-6)
…and then they go and play their worst game of the year against FSU
Sometimes a poor game this time of year is jsut what you need as a wake up call toget the guys off cruise control into the tourney(s). Usually a good coach takes care of this but it happens to teh premier teams pretty much every year at some point, so to see us do this now, doesn’t worry me. It may be jsut a hiccup as well and now’s the time to get that out of the way.
I hope so, we need to take care of business against a hot Miami team right now