ACC preview - NCAA Basketball

Clark Kellogg gives us his opinions on this year's crop of Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) men's basketball teams. In all the ACC previews I've seen this year, Duke is the consensus number 1, but Clark seems to think that North Carolina looks pretty good this year, too:

North Carolina Tar Heels
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The young and talented Tar Heels have surprised me with how well the freshman class of Tyler Hansbrough, Bobby Frasor, Marcus Ginyard and Danny Green has played to this point.

Hansbrough is an absolute beast inside. His intensity and skill level are more like those of an upperclassman. The other freshmen have shown great promise as well, but conference play will present a greater challenge. As Lorenzo Romar (Washington's head coach) said recently, "freshmen have to learn to play through a scouting report."

That's why the play of senior David Noel and junior Reyshawn Terry will be so important to the Heels' success. They will have to be very consistent and productive in conference play to help smooth out the inevitable bumps that most freshmen experience when the intensity and familiarity increases.

I'm certainly looking forward to this afternoon's game - UNC vs. NC State, the first conference game of UNC's season and the first nationally televised (ESPN2) UNC game of any importance this year.

ACC preview - NCAA Basketball - Yahoo! Sports

Related sites:

• ACC BasketBlog
• YoCo: College Basketball