Cumberland Times-News

Local Sports

Related Photos

  • Georgia Tech coach MaChelle Joseph throws a ball during practice for the Atlantic Coast Conference women's college basketball tournament in Greensboro, N.C., Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Georgia Tech plays Wake Forest on Thursday. Photo/Chuck Burton

    ‘Anything can happen’ at ACC women’s tournament
March 6, 2013

‘Anything can happen’ at ACC women’s tournament

JOEDY McCREARY Associated Press

JOEDY McCREARY

AP Sports Writer

The Atlantic Coast Conference had to settle one tiebreaker for its women’s tournament by flipping a coin.

The games might be that close, too.

The tournament begins Thursday in Greensboro, N.C., and it’s shaping up as a much tighter event than it seemed just a few weeks ago.

A top-seeded Duke team that once looked capable of cruising through Greensboro unchecked on its way to a top seed in the NCAA tournament suddenly appears beatable following the loss of perhaps its most irreplaceable player.

The season-ending knee injury to point guard Chelsea Gray — the league leader in both assists and steals — can’t help but pull the Blue Devils back closer to the pack and make a four-day tournament with four Top 25 teams a more even affair.

“I’ve always felt like (at) the ACC tournament,” Clemson coach Itoro Coleman said, “anything can happen.”

That was certainly true last year, when the two top seeds were knocked out in the quarterfinals, but it hasn’t always been the case.

Not since 1999 has a team other than Duke, Maryland or North Carolina won the tournament, and at least one of them has reached the title game every year since 1992.

Those three are once again the top three seeds — but for a change, other teams during the regular season showed they can beat them, too.

Fourth-seeded Florida State defeated both the Terrapins and Tar Heels, and fifth-seeded Miami last week beat the Blue Devils for the first time in program history.

Now it’s up to those schools to prove they can challenge the league’s standard-bearers in tournament time. The 23rd-ranked Seminoles have reached the semifinals just twice while the Hurricanes have never advanced past the quarterfinals.

“The reality is it’s a brand new season, and seeds don’t matter,” Duke coach Joanne P. McCallie said. “That’s just how you figure out who plays who.”

The sixth-ranked Blue Devils (27-2) won a league-record 17 ACC games — this was the first season with an 18-game conference schedule — and are 3-1 without Gray. Talented freshman Alexis Jones, who scored a season-best 22 points in the season-ending win over North Carolina, makes the Duke team go and shot-blocking sophomore Elizabeth Williams still patrols the paint.

Yet they find themselves in an uncomfortably familiar situation, because if the opening-round seeds hold, they’ll face eighth-seeded North Carolina State in a rematch of last year’s quarterfinal won by a Wolfpack team that has pulled at least one upset in each of coach Kellie Harper’s previous three seasons.

No. 10 Maryland (23-6) and No. 15 North Carolina (26-5) tied for second place and split their regular-season meetings. Because both teams lost twice to Duke and once to Florida State, the tiebreaker for the No. 2 seed came down to a coin flip won by the Terrapins, who await the Wake Forest-Georgia Tech winner in one of their final ACC tournaments before they leave for the Big Ten.

And coach Brenda Frese, a two-time champion here, says this is no time for sentimentality.

“We’re excited to play against the best competition,” she said. “Greensboro does it the best, in my opinion, the way they put their tournament together. ... We just want to come in there and give it our best shot.”

The Tar Heels have won the tournament nine times but have reached the title game just once since reeling off four consecutive titles from 2005-08.

Text Only
Local Sports
  • Sports Briefs - 05/18/2013

    May 17, 2013

  • Sports Calendar - 05/18/2013

    May 17, 2013

  • Miners pad streak to 44

    Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. When you’re as good as Mountain Ridge, that means sometimes it takes a lot of luck, and on Friday afternoon the Lady Miners blended hard work and serendipity beautifully to collect their second straight Class 1A West Region title with a second consecutive 5-4 over North Carroll in a nine-inning thriller at Kemp Mills Park.

    May 17, 2013

  • Allegany advances to state tournament

    Trenton Eirich doubled to lead off the seventh inning and scored the winning run on a throwing error, lifting Allegany to a 2-1 win over Clear Spring for the Class 1A West Region baseball championship Friday evening at McCurdy Field.

    May 17, 2013

  • Freeburn, Amtower win state tennis title Freeburn, Amtower win state tennis title

    Keyser’s Megan Freeburn and Kari Amtower headed to Charleston as undefeated region tennis champions.

    May 17, 2013 1 Photo

  • spts - VENTURI Venturi, US Open champion and CBS analyst, dies

    Ken Venturi, who overcame dehydration to win the 1964 U.S. Open and spent 35 years in the booth for CBS Sports, died Friday afternoon. He was 82.

    May 17, 2013 1 Photo

  • spts - BYRON NELSON Bradley maintains lead at Nelson

    Keegan Bradley again bogeyed Nos. 1 and 18 in the second round of the Byron Nelson Championship.
    Unlike the first round, Bradley didn’t set a course record. But he still finished with a three-stroke lead.

    May 17, 2013 1 Photo

  • spts - NFL SEAHAWKS Seahawks DE Bruce Irvin suspended 4 games

    Seattle Seahawks defensive end Bruce Irvin was suspended for the first four games of the 2013 season on Friday after the league announced he violated the NFL policy on performance-enhancing substances.

    May 17, 2013 1 Photo

  • spts - ORB Favored Orb ready, raring to go at Preakness

    Everything’s a go for Orb.
    The Kentucky Derby winner was in a playful mood the day before the Preakness, making faces for photographers between nibbles of grass outside his stall at Pimlico Race Course.

    May 17, 2013 1 Photo

  • Moorefield earns trip to state tournament

    Brooke Riggleman and Beth Cook homered in a three-run first inning and Taylor Zuber fired a three-hit shutout Thursday night as Moorefield overpowered South Harrison, 9-0, to win the Region 2 championship and a trip to next week’s Class A state softball tournament.

    May 16, 2013