We've now won 3 of 4 in ACC play, only the 2nd time we've done this in 5 years.
As always if 'if's and buts were ....
It is interesting to think about how close DM has us to being a good (i.e. upper division team).
Usually it's a stretch to say 'we could have beaten dook or l'ville' to say we'd have a winning record etc. Those games we played well and scratched our way into them, but never had control.
Our 4 wins, so far, we've played with the lead even if we wound up hanging on with State and Miami. Usually you have wins that you could say, we really should have lost that game but these were games we controlled for the majority of the game, even is we are poor at closing them out.
Looking at our body of work and the relative consistency we've played with this year, only UNC and @GT were we out classed, we should have won @ Syr (9 point lead in the 2nd half), @ Clemson (12 point 2nd half lead), @ FSU (15 point 1st half lead and 8 point 2nd half lead early). In all of those games the home teams had to scramble to get to OT or hit the last second shot.
Based on all this we really should be 7-5 right now, with at least 9-9 in sight and one good upset away from 10-8.
As we approach this brutal stretch, if we were coming in at 7-5, I think we'd have expectations that we'd be able to steal one of the next 3. But coming off the last 4 years, with low expectations for this year, and not finishing off those other 3 games we are still in the mindset that we are pulling up the bottom of the ACC.
We've taken care of the bottom and middle of the ACC at home and our home losses are to the current #4, #9 and #12, which is pretty respectable.
What this amounts to is that we have played all season like the 6th or 7th best team in the conference, which is not too shabby when the top 5 are ranked in the top 12 of the country.
ETA: We've already won 2 games after January, in the last 4 years we won 7 (6 reg season ACC games) after January.
