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Josh Howard is averaging 18.9 points and 8.2 rebounds per game.
AP
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Maryland
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Wake Forest
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Duke
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N.C. State
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Virginia
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Georgia Tech
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North Carolina
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Clemson
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Florida State
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21-0
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Combined home record of the top six teams in the ACC this year. Who will be the first to blink? |
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"I have been waiting so long to meet him. That's the only coach in my life I've wanted to meet. I used to love Duke. I looked over there a couple times when we were shooting free throws. He was doing the same things he does on TV in real life."
-- Florida State junior Tim Pickett, on meeting Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. Pickett had 15 points, nine rebounds and four assists as the Seminoles defeated Duke 75-70 in Tallahassee. |
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Tim Peeler, Special to CNNSI.com
Let's give a little love to J-Ho, the guy who just may be the best player in the ACC this season. He's certainly one of the most complete -- and underrated -- players in the country.
World, meet Josh Howard, All-America candidate. Josh Howard, meet the world.
The 6-foot-6 Wake Forest senior is coming off the best game of his career, in which he not only scored a career-high 32 points, grabbed 10 rebounds and added two assists and three blocked shots, but also knocked down the game-winning basket.
It wasn't pretty and it wasn't even designed to go to him, but Howard got through three North Carolina defenders, threw in a makeshift, left-handed layup and was fouled in the process. Seconds later, he got a hand in the face of Jawad Williams as the North Carolina sophomore missed a potential game-tying 3-pointer.
Just another day in the life of Howard, who has become the ACC's most complete player, ranking in the top 10 in nine of the league's 12 statistical categories. He's scored at least 30 points three times this season and has been named ACC Player of the Week on three occasions.
Maybe that's because he's a senior and everybody else in the league, including most of his teammates, is so young. Maybe it's because Howard, for the first time in at least two seasons, is completely healthy. Or maybe it's just because the Deacons (15-2 overall, 5-2 ACC) have one of the most consistent lineups in the ACC, with steady guards and mountainous inside players who dominate the boards.
Whatever it is, the athletic native of Winston-Salem, N.C., now in his fourth season as a starter for the Demon Deacons, is starting to get the recognition he has long deserved. He recently joined Maryland's Steve Blake and Duke's Chris Duhon as the ACC's only representatives among the 30 midseason finalists for the John Wooden Award as the nation's best player.
"I really believe he is one of the outstanding players in the country," said Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. "He is certainly playing that way. His teammates get a lot of confidence playing with him. He does something you really need a key player to do: He wants the ball and he wants to make a play in critical situations."
As one of two seniors on the Wake Forest roster, Howard is a good example for Wake's younger inside players, sophomore Vytas Danelius and freshman monster Eric Williams. His relentlessness on the boards -- he is third in the ACC with 8.2 rebounds per game -- has inspired the other two to work hard, too. This is why the Demon Deacons lead the nation in rebounding margin at 12.6 per game, more than three more per game than any other
Division I team.
"I know I'm really determined when I decide to go to the offensive glass and I just use my athleticism to go after the ball," Howard told the Winston-Salem Journal. "Maybe it's heart. I'm not scared to go in there and bang with those big boys. I know I'm going to get knocked on my butt every once in awhile, but it won't happen all the time. Those times it doesn't happen pretty much the ball ends up coming my way."
Howard -- who has averaged 24.5 points, 8.3 rebounds, 2.3 assists, 2.3 blocks and 1.5 steals in his last six games -- has generally basked in the role of star for the Deacons, something he's always had the potential to do, but was generally hampered by persistent ankle injuries and the shin splints that still bother him today.
"When he was a sophomore, he was kind of a fill-in-the-blank guy," said
Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt. "They had other guys who could score in the low post, they had other guys who could shoot. He was the guy who would get an offensive rebound, make the slash to the basket and was always good for a key steal here and there.
"Today, he is just a complete player. He provides a tremendous security
blanket for their kids."
And gives the Demon Deacons a tremendous asset going into the second half of the ACC season.
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One of the reasons North Carolina State has managed to start the ACC season 5-2 is the improved inside play of sophomore center Josh Powell. The Wolfpack don't have much to offer in the post, with a starting lineup that features guards Cliff Crawford, Scooter Sherrill and Julius Hodge, not to mention that junior forward Marcus Melvin spends more time on the perimeter than most shooting guards.
So Powell is left to do a lot of dirty work inside, in rebounding, scoring and interior defense. He got off to a great start in his freshman campaign, but tailed off significantly in the second half of the season. So he added 20 pounds of muscle to his frame in the offseason and hoped to become a bigger factor inside.
This year, he started slowly, but has been getting hot as the season goes along. Even though he was playing on a sore hip -- a result of the fall he took against Maryland -- Powell made all eight of his field goal attempts against Clemson on Sunday, and has now made 19 of his last 24 shots. In fact, in the Wolfpack's last three games, Powell has averaged 15.3 points and 5.3 rebounds.
But the 6-foot-9 sophomore will have perhaps his biggest challenge of the season Thursday night, when the Wolfpack travel to play Wake Forest, which features the nation's top rebounding team and one of the league's most fearsome frontlines.
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HOT: Maryland
The defending national champions are 10-1 since losing three games to ranked opponents earlier in the season; most notably, the Terps have won 25 of their last 27 ACC regular-season games, the only blemish this year coming at Wake.
NOT: Duke junior point guard Chris Duhon
He's scored in double figures in only one of the Blue Devils' last 12 games, and even coach Mike Krzyzewski says his team's top playmaker is struggling; Duhon didn't score a point against Butler and didn't have an assist against Florida State.
HOT: Wake Forest point guard Taron Downey
With freshman Justin Gray still out with a broken jaw, Downey has taken over the responsibility of running the Wake Forest offense; he has averaged 13.5 points, 4.3 rebounds and 3.5 assists and made nine 3-pointers in the Deacons' last four games.
NOT: Duke-North Carolina I
The season's first installment of "college basketball's greatest
rivalry" is kind of cool, mainly because the Tar Heels enter the game on a four-game losing streak and the Blue Devils have lost three of their last four conference games. It looks like a regular game between the ACC's fourth- and seventh-place teams instead of the Greatest Show on Earth.
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North Carolina freshman Rashad McCants still has some things to learn about the college game, even though he does go into Wednesday night's game against Duke as the second-leading scorer in the ACC, at 18.8 points per game.
But North Carolina coach Matt Doherty wants McCants to play defense too, and the lack of it in a 20-point loss to Georgia Tech earned McCants a seat beside Doherty for the start of both halves against Wake Forest. McCants is also expected to be out of the starting lineup against the Blue Devils, though Doherty said he was pleased with McCants' defensive effort against the Demon Deacons.
Still, McCants is in an offensive slump. He took six shots in his first 93 seconds off the bench and made only one of them. In his last three games, he has made only 16 of his last 47 field goal attempts. Meanwhile, fellow freshman Raymond Felton seems to be taking over as the Tar Heels' most valuable rookie.
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 Wake Forest senior Josh Howard
His 32 points and 10 rebounds, plus the game-winning 3-point play, gave the Demon Deacons their third consecutive win over North Carolina, which hasn't happened at Wake since 1971.
Florida State
Seminole fans -- yes, there are some of those in basketball -- rushed the court after Sunday's 75-70 victory over the Blue Devils, FSU's second straight home win over Duke.
Georgia Tech's Marvin Lewis
He averaged 21.5 points, four rebounds and 3.5 assists in wins over North Carolina and Virginia last week and is now fourth in the ACC in 3-point shooting percentage at 41.2 percent.
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With all due respect to the hoopla that is the North Carolina-Duke rivalry, Wake Forest has the most meaningful schedule coming up this week.
Thursday, the No. 14 Demon Deacons (15-2 overall, 5-2 ACC) try to extend their winning streak over North Carolina State to seven games and their home winning streak to 13 games. The Wolfpack have had trouble handling the Deacons for the last three years, though the two teams did play a one-point game in Raleigh last year.
The game will feature the ACC's top two scorers, N.C. State's Julius Hodge (19.2) and Wake's Josh Howard (18.9).
Sunday, the Demon Deacons travel to play No. 15 Marquette in an nationally televised intersectional matchup. It's the second straight season the two teams have met, the Deacons winning 64-59 in Winston-Salem in December 2001.
Skip Prosser's team has been criticized for playing a weak non-conference schedule, after games with the likes of Yale, SMU, South Carolina State, North Carolina A&T, Bethune-Cookman and Elon. But the Deacons do own victories over Temple, St. John's and Wisconsin, the only previous non-conference foe that was ranked at the time it faced Wake.
So the game against the Golden Eagles (15-3) should be a good indicator of what Wake can do in March, when the NCAA tournament rolls around.
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Virginia sophomore point guard Keith Jenifer was suspended from the team indefinitely for what head coach Pete Gillen described as "conduct detrimental to the team." Jenifer was arrested for an altercation near campus with another student, according to Charlottesville police. He was charged with misdemeanor assault and battery and is scheduled to appear in court Feb. 28. Jenifer started 14 of the Cavs' first 16 games. His absence will mean more playing time for oft-injured junior point guard Majestic Mapp. "The leg's still not 100 percent, but he's certainly going to play more," Gillen said. … North Carolina's next win will give the Tar Heels 500 regular-season victories in ACC play, making them the first ACC team to reach that milestone. … There has yet to be an overtime game played this year in conference play and only two involving ACC teams all season: Indiana's win over Maryland on Dec. 3 and Miami's win over North Carolina on Jan. 4. … Clemson's Edward Scott leads the ACC in minutes played, averaging 38.3 minutes per game.
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