NCAA Basketball: Gonzaga’s comeback, Villanova’s upset and other takeaways

ACC struggles on a Friday night

As I mentioned early on, Boston College nearly lost to Detroit Mercy on the first game of the slate. It turned out that the rest of the ACC didn’t fare much better by the end of the day. There were 10 teams in the league that played on Friday and only two (Duke over South Carolina Upstate and Virginia over Monmouth) were blowouts.

The other eight were in doubt at some points. UNC beat College of Charleston, Miami pulled ahead of UNC Greensboro in the second half and Wake Forest beat Georgia by 10 points. On the low end including Pittsburgh losing to West Virginia by 25 points and NC State needing all 40 minutes to beat Campbell.

On the lowest end for the ACC’s results are Clemson losing to South Carolina and Florida State falling to Central Florida. At least for the Tigers, star forward PJ Hall returned for an offseason injury and led them with 15 points so that’s hopeful going forward.

Unfortunately for the Seminoles, they’re now 0-2. The loss to UCF wouldn’t be as bad, had they not lost to Stetson earlier in the week. Former Knights guard Darin Green was the only good player on the perimeter (17 points), as Matthew Cleveland fouled out with five points and Caleb Mills went 3/9 from the field for six points. With Florida and Purdue still in the non-conference slate, FSU could be in some big trouble and could make it two years in a row of missing the Big Dance.