The
ACC over the decades has built quite the basketball reputation. This has been
done with game after televised game and year after year of exciting, down-to-the
wire finishes in front of enthusiastic crowds. Last-second shots, sterling
defensive stands, coaches matching strategic and tactical wits with their
opposite numbers - these have long been the hallmark of ACC basketball. Judging
by the results of the last fortnight or so, it would seem Tech is fitting right
in. Three straight league wins, including one at one of the conference’s most
notorious pits, has served notice to the ACC.
The school that stormed the ACC in football is now making
a little noise in basketball, too. Tech knocked off one of the league’s
storied basketball programs in North Carolina State, punctuating the victory
with a clutch shot by Coleman Collins and a terrific defensive play by Jamon
Gordon on Wolfpack star Julius Hodge . The Hokies then sauntered into Alexander
Memorial Coliseum and pulled off one of the more remarkable road wins in Tech
history, stunning ranked Georgia Tech in a place where the Yellow Jackets rarely
lose. The basketball win at GT follows the football one there, making that other
Tech the first of the previous ACC membership to lose at home to Virginia Tech
in both major sports. The Hokies have encountered only slightly more resistance
in Atlanta than did Sherman.