{"id":364,"date":"2010-10-28T15:04:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-28T22:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/capitalsports.us\/?p=364"},"modified":"2010-10-28T15:04:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-28T22:04:00","slug":"duke-is-no-1-but-how-is-unc-no-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/?p=364","title":{"rendered":"Duke is No. 1 … but how is UNC No. 8?"},"content":{"rendered":"
The fact that reputations play a critical role in preseason polls, especially in basketball, was obvious Thursday when the Associated press released its preseason men\u2019s rankings.<\/span><\/div>\n
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<\/a>That Duke is No. 1 is no surprise, although the Devils face a distinctly different challenge this time if they want to repeat as champs as they did in 1992. What is a surprise is that North Carolina is ranked No. 8 \u2013 a leap of faith in a program that was only 20-17 overall and 5-11 in ACC play in 2010.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Carolina should be toughened by last year\u2019s embarrassing effort and the hard running Roy Williams is feeding the team this preseason. Freshman Harrison Barnes may be one of the ACC\u2019s best players, and the rest of the young roster should grow. But this doesn\u2019t project as a great defensive team, with real stoppers on the wings. Duke didn\u2019t become a great team last year until  Brian Zoubek emerged late in the season and rivals struggled to score.<\/span><\/div>\n
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The second-best team in the ACC should be Virginia Tech, despite Seth Greenberg\u2019s concerns about lack of experienced depth. The Hokies return five <\/i>starters \u2013 almost unheard of in this era \u2013 and one of them is sweet scorer Malcolm Delaney. Yet Virginia Tech, despite a 25-9 record, landed at only No. 21 in the AP poll. <\/span><\/div>\n
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Only three ACC teams made the rankings, a surprising snub for a league that annually puts half a dozen into the Top 25. That won\u2019t last, as you\u2019ll see Florida State, Clemson and, yes, N.C. State push into the rankings this season. <\/span><\/div>\n
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You can get to the rankings by clicking here.<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fact that reputations play a critical role in preseason polls, especially in basketball, was obvious Thursday when the Associated press released its preseason men\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}