The Atlantic Coast Conference announced the Men’s Basketball Tournament championship game will now be played on a Saturday evening, a change that kicks off the tournament a day early.
The ACC regular season will now end on the preceding Saturday, with the 62nd annual tournament starting on Tuesday, four games on both Wednesday and Thursday and the Friday semifinals preceding the championship on Saturday.
Sunday afternoons have been the host of the championship game since the 1982 tournament, and ACC Commissioner John Swofford said he believes the conference’s players, coaches and fans will enjoy the switch.
“It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved,” Swofford said.
All 14 tournament games will continue airing nationally on ESPN and the ACC Network.
The 2015 tournament will again be held in the Greensboro Coliseum, a host to the event for the 26th time in conference history. The 2016 tournament will be held in Washington, D.C.; the 2017 and 2018 tournaments will be held in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
http://chapelboro.com/sports/acc/acc-mbb-championship-moved-saturday/GREENSBORO — The Atlantic Coast Conference men’s basketball tournament will return to North Carolina in 2019 and 2020 after its two-year stay in New York.
Commissioner John Swofford said at a news conference Thursday that Charlotte’s Time Warner Cable Arena would host the event in 2019 followed the next year by the Greensboro Coliseum, located a short drive from the league’s headquarters.
The announcement came one day after the league said it would hold its 2017 and 2018 tournaments in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, which marked a shift from the tournament’s Southern roots after waves of league realignment. The tournament has been held in North Carolina for 50 of 61 years, including in Greensboro earlier this month.
Greensboro will host again next year, followed by Washington, D.C., in 2016.
http://chapelboro.com/sports/acc/acc-mens-basketball-tourney-nc-19-20/ACC Commissioner John Swofford announced Wednesday morning that the league’s men’s basketball tournament is heading to Brooklyn.
There isn’t an Atlantic Coast Conference school within 200 miles, but New York is home to several large alumni bases and, perhaps more importantly, is a “media capital,” Swofford said at Barclays Center on Wednesday.
“I firmly believe that the experience for our players, our coaches and our fans will be second to none when we come to Barclays,” Swofford said. “It’s the media capital of the world, and we want our brand in this city, in this facility, in Brooklyn. So we’re really excited about this and what it can do for the Atlantic Coast Conference.”
The league will crown its champion at the arena in 2017 and ’18, after holding the tournament in Greensboro, N.C., in 2015 and in Washington in 2016.
The move to New York represents a shift from the ACC tournament’s Southern roots after years of conference realignment. The state of North Carolina has hosted 50 of the 61 events in league history.
But Louisville’s arrival in July will make it the seventh former Big East school to join the 15-team ACC since 2004, so those program were accustomed to playing their conference tournament in Madison Square Garden.
http://chapelboro.com/sports/acc/acc-basketball-tournament-moving-barclays-center/The No. 13 UNC women’s basketball team snuck into the third round with a 69-65 defeat of Wake Forest Wednesday night in Greensboro.
The Demon Deacons opened the contest with a 7-0 run shooting 3-3 from the field, including 1-1 from behind the arc. The Tar Heels answered with a 5-2 run, but then with the help of Dearica Hamby’s 19 first-half points shooting 9-11 from the field, the Deacs pulled away again and jumped out to a double-digit lead.
At halftime, Carolina was down 12 shooting 32 percent from the field in the first half, while Wake Forest connected on 59 percent of its attempts.
The Tar Heels hit the final basket of the first half and scored the next 14 points unanswered to take the lead at 41-39. In the middle of that run, though, there was a nearly 25-minute break in the action as all the lights went out in the Greensboro Coliseum.
Wake Forest stormed back to take the lead again, but finally play settled with Carolina in the lead. UNC was 3-4 in free throws in the final 30 seconds to fend off Wake and hold on for the four-point win.
Hamby only had ten points in the second half finishing with 29, but she still led all players. Wake’s Chelsea Douglas also tallied 20 points in her final contest as a Deac.
Diamond Deshields led the Heels with 17 points She also pulled down eight rebounds. No other Tar Heels hit double-figure scoring.
Each team turned the ball over more times than the number of field goals it hit. Carolina turned the ball over 22 times; Wake Forest had 26 TOs.
With the win, the Tar Heels improved to 23-8; the Demon Deacons finished their season 15-16.
Carolina faces No. 3 seed Maryland in the quarterfinals Friday with a scheduled tip time of 8:00 p.m. Maryland got first- and second-round byes with its 24-5, 12-4 regular season finish. The Tar Heels lost to the Terrapins 79-70 in Chapel Hill on January 9.
http://chapelboro.com/sports/unc-sports/unc-womens-basketball-survives-advances-def-wfu-69-65/CHAPEL HILL– The 2014 Tar Heel football schedule will feature six home games in Kenan Stadium and UNC’s first-ever ESPN Thursday night game at Duke on Nov. 20.
***Listen to the story***
The ACC released the schedule on Thursday, and the Tar Heels face a tough slate that includes nine teams that played in bowl games last season and five squads that won at least nine games.
Conference matchups in Chapel Hill against Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh and a season ender against N.C. State on Nov. 29 should provide an entertaining home menu for Tar Heel fans.
The Tar Heel Sports Network’s Lee Pace says he thinks it’s one of the most exciting schedules he’s seen in a while.
“I think it’s one of the most interesting schedules the Tar Heels have had in some time. Clemson is a cross-divisional game for the ACC. Any time you got Clemson, Florida State or Wake Forest, I think that amps up the schedule a little bit when you’re going across divisions. And then a great end to the season with the Thursday night game at Duke. I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff. It’s going to be a terrific fall for Carolina,” Pace says.
Also of note, Carolina will travel to South Bend, Ind. to face Notre Dame on Oct. 11 for the first time since 2006. The Tar Heels have failed to capture a victory in 11 previous tries at Notre Dame.
But all eyes will certainly be on Wallace Wade Stadium for the nationally televised showdown against Duke right before Thanksgiving. And this year, Pace says Carolina will be extra hungry to reclaim the Victory Bell.
“I think there’s a lot of excitement around the Duke rivalry the last two years. It was sort of dead in the water for about two decades, and then Duke has won the last two years. Carolina will have the emotional edge I would hope that night. It will be interesting to see what sort of atmosphere we generate for a week night game like that,” Pace says.
Carolina returns 17 starters from last year’s team that finished with a flurry to win six out of the last seven games and capture the Belk Bowl trophy. And it won’t be long before the 2014 team will be back in action in Chapel Hill.
Spring practice begins March 5 and the Spring Football ‘Blue & White’ Game is scheduled for Saturday, April 12 at 3 p.m.
The Tar Heel football season kicks off Aug. 30 with a home opener against the Liberty Flames.
You can view the complete 2014 schedule here.
http://chapelboro.com/sports/unc-sports/2014-tar-heel-football-schedule-provides-challenges-excitement/CHAPEL HILL– The UNC women’s basketball team is now ranked No. 9 in the nation in the latest AP poll released Monday and freshman sensation Diamond DeShields was named ACC Rookie of the Week.
Carolina moved up four sports from No. 13 in last week’s rankings thanks to a pair of impressive wins over No. 20 N.C. State and No. 17 Florida State.
DeShields earned the honor for the second time this season by averaging 23 points and eight rebounds in Tar Heel victories against the Wolfpack and Seminoles.
The freshman was a key factor in turning around the game at FSU for Carolina. She scored 18 of her game-high 25 points in the second half and was 4-for-6 on three-point attempts.
DeShields and the Tar Heels next take to the court Thursday when they host the Clemson Tigers at 6 p.m. in Carmichael Arena.
http://chapelboro.com/sports/unc-sports/9-tar-heels-turning-heads-thanks-dazzling-diamond/CHAPEL HILL – UNC Basketball scored a 15-point win over Northern Kentucky on Saturday, but head coach Roy Williams wasn’t pleased with his team’s performance—especially after a lackluster first half.
“My staff did a great job, because what I wanted to do was stay out at halftime and run sprints the entire frickin’ half,” he said after the game. “They thought it was not the right thing to do, but God, I wanted to do that so badly…
“I’m going to do that one of these days. I know, by God, we’ll make SportsCenter then.”
Williams changed 80 percent of his starting lineup between the first and second halves on Saturday in order to send his players a message. It paid off, as the second team pulled away in the first few minutes of the half—but Carolina still had to settle for an unimpressive victory over an unheralded opponent, with ACC play now just a week away.
At his postgame press conference Saturday, Williams singled out a few players—including Brice Johnson, who scored 9 points on 4-8 shooting against Northern Kentucky but has struggled since he led the Heels in scoring three weeks ago against UNC-G.
“I (was) just straightforward: I told him, you’ve got to get playing basketball again,” he said. “Brice is another one that’s going to be a really good player–he’s just got to get the mojo going.”
But with ACC opponents just around the corner, Williams is ready to move on. (And he’s also ready to move on from the PJ Hairston debacle, as evidenced by his response to a reporter who asked if Hairston would remain on the Carolina bench. “Guys, I’m trying to coach the guys I have,” he said. “Jesus Christ, he’s not on our team. I love him to death, but he’s not on our team.”)
ACC play begins for Carolina on January 5 at Wake Forest, but the Tar Heels have one more non-conference opponent to face before then, as UNC-Wilmington comes to town on New Year’s Eve. That game tips off at 5:00 in the Smith Center; coverage on WCHL begins with Countdown to Tipoff at 3:30.
http://chapelboro.com/sports/unc-sports/acc-approaching-williams-happy-heels-play/CHAPEL HILL – Sources close to the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Barclays Center in Brooklyn say the two parties have agreed to stage a future ACC Basketball Tournament at the brand new home of the Brooklyn Nets.
The ACC will vote on holding the tournament in New York Tuesday, but the sources say that the agreement has been made and the vote is a mere formality. Due to the addition of former Big East schools Notre Dame, Louisville, Pittsburgh and Syracuse, the ACC is anxious to play a tournament in the northeast.
The Barclays Center selected the ACC over the Big Ten, which has added Maryland and Rutgers to its conference membership. Both conferences may hold later tournaments in Brooklyn, but the ACC will come first.
The exact year the ACC Tournament will be played in Brooklyn has not been determined, but it will be at the Barclays Center and not Madison Square Garden. The 2014 and 2015 ACC Tournaments will be played in Greensboro. The 2016 Atlantic Coast Conference Basketball Tournament will be held at Washington, D.C.’s Verizon Center, the ACC announced November 14.
The 2017-21 tournament sites have not been determined, but one of those years it will be New York and the Barclays Center.
http://chapelboro.com/sports/acc/acc-tournament-going-new-york/GREENSBORO– Leading UNC women’s basketball scorer Diamond DeShields was selected ACC Rookie of the Week Monday on the heels of her superb play in the Cancun Challenge.
Carolina has now won the honor three consecutive weeks. Allisha Gray snagged the award on Nov. 18 and Stephanie Mavunga took the honor on Nov. 25.
DeShields averaged 23.3 points, 6.7 rebounds and 2.7 steals during her three games at the early season tournament. The Tar Heels posted a 2-1 record at the event.
The freshman shot 49.1 percent from the floor and served as a catalyst for the Carolina offense that put up big points.
No. 18 UNC hosts No. 15 Nebraska in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge Wednesday at 6 p.m. The game will be broadcast on 97.9 FM, WCHL.
http://chapelboro.com/sports/unc-sports/carolinas-diamond-deshields-named-acc-rookie-week/
GREENSBORO– Can you believe it? The Tar Heels won’t be playing a noon or 12:30 p.m. game Oct. 26 against Boston College.
The kickoff in Kenan Stadium is set for a rare 3:30 p.m. time slot. Chapel Hill folks will likely be excited for a little more time to tailgate and enjoy the game day atmosphere before making their way into Kenan.
Announced Monday by the ACC, other notable game times for Oct. 26 include a noon kick for Wake Forest at Miami and 3:30 start times in both Tallahassee and Blacksburg for NC State at Florida State and Duke at Virginia Tech.
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