Barely a week into the ACC's regular season, it appears no flaw is big enough to keep a team from a first-division finish.
Already Florida State, projected to finish third in the preseason poll, has lost at Clemson, which was picked seventh. Then Clemson turned around and lost at Boston College, a team made up almost exclusively of newcomers that was picked dead last.
Upward mobility is alive and well in the ACC for the team that shows up ready to playThat will be the first goal for Wake Forest and N.C. State at 1 p.m. today at Joel Coliseum (WFMY Ch. 9).
Wake Forest, picked to finish 11th, is 10-6 overall and 1-1 in the ACC with a victory against Virginia Tech and a loss at Maryland. N.C. State, picked eighth, is 12-5 overall and 1-1 in the conference with a victory against Maryland and an upset home loss to Georgia Tech.
"Everybody has everything figured out,'' coach Jeff Bzdelik of Wake Forest said. "It's a 'Well-they're-going-to-win-these-next-three-games' kind of deal. And that's why you play the game. It's as simple as that.
"There are a lot of good players out there and a lot of really good coaches, and the game is still played by humans. So throw it up and see what happens after 40 minutes. That's really the deal.''
As strong as the basketball tradition is at both schools, neither Wake Forest nor N.C. State has a vintage team. The Deacons are notoriously weak on the boards, the Wolfpack have shown little to no ability to guard the perimeter, and both teams have short benches.
On the other hand, neither is without capabilities. For Wake Forest, Travis McKie ranks second in the league in scoring with 18 points a game, and C.J. Harris ranks third with 17.7. For N.C. State, Richard Howell is third with 9.2 rebounds a game, C.J. Leslie is averaging 13.7 points and 6.6 rebounds and is shooting 54 percent from the floor, and Lorenzo Brown has 115 assists against 50 turnovers.
But as coach Mark Gottfried of the Wolfpack pointed out after Wednesday's 82-71 home loss to the Yellow Jackets, not even the best are good every day.
"Sometimes, we'd all like to come up with this grand answer of why your team doesn't play good,'' Gottfried said. "Sometimes you just don't play good.
"Hell, I go play golf. Sometimes I'm terrible. Sometimes I'm a little better. It's a part of life.
"We have to play better. That's on us, not anybody else.''
Senior Nikita Mescheriakov of Wake Forest will play the next month with his mouth wired shut, to protect teeth loosened by an elbow during the second half of Wednesday's 70-64 loss at Maryland.
Trainer Greg Collins said no teeth were knocked out and no bones were broken.
Mescheriakov was back in practice by Thursday.
"Nikita's fine,'' Bzdelik said. "We just had to, after the Maryland game, make sure that his teeth were all in the proper spot.
"He took a good shot to the mouth. The officials reviewed it, and I saw it on tape. It wasn't anything other than just a basketball play."
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