With few opportunities for quality wins in a down year for the ACC, Virginia and Florida State will look to pick up a marquee victory in Tallahassee tonight.
Most of the time in college basketball, the ACC is the deepest conference in the country. With a litany of quality programs, opportunities for big wins to bolster resumes for the NCAA Tournament usually present themselves with regularity in the ACC.
That won’t be the case this season, with the league in the midst of an unprecedented down year. North Carolina has been savaged by injuries while programs like Syracuse are underachieving, leaving the chances for marquee victories few and far between for tournament hopefuls.
One such chance presents itself tonight in Tallahassee, when the defending national champions, the Virginia Cavaliers, take on the Florida State Seminoles. The pressure is on for Virginia in this one since the Cavaliers have stumbled a bit of late.
Some drop off was expected for Virginia, which lost three key players to the NBA in DeAndre Hunter, Kyle Guy, and Ty Jerome, but what we have seen so far is very underwhelming. Virginia’s defense is still the toughest to score against in America, but the Cavaliers’ offense is downright anemic, putting up only 55.1 points a game.
To make matters worse, only one of the teams that Virginia has lost to this season would be a tournament team today, and that is Purdue. The Cavaliers have already lost to Boston College and Syracuse in league play, so they need a big win on the road to stop the bleeding.
For Florida State, this game presents a chance to assert their status as the league’s third-best team after Duke and Louisville. The Cardinals already lost to the Seminoles earlier this season, and Florida State enters this contest on a seven-game winning streak.
Leonard Hamilton’s team is an interesting group since they don’t have one true go-to-guy on offense, instead of relying on a deep rotation to generate their points. That formula could be tough in March when someone will need to step up to hit the big shots in clutch moments, but it should be a recipe that will give Virginia problems in this one.
How to watch Virginia at Florida State
- Date: Wednesday, Jan. 15
- Time: 7:00 p.m. ET
- Location: Tallahassee, FL
- Venue: Donald L. Tucker Center
- TV: ESPN2
- Live Stream: WatchESPN
- Odds: The Action Network
- Prediction: Florida State
For more NCAA basketball news, analysis, opinion and features, check out more from the FanSided college basketball section to stay on top of the latest action.