Trent Forrest – Syndication Server

2020 ACC Tournament Completion: Duke topples top-seeded Florida State

The Blue Devils will have a chance to defend their ACC Tournament championship.

This is part of a series in which we are simulating the remainder of the canceled 2020 ACC Tournament using the sports simulation tool WhatIfSports.com. For more information about the simulation, check out the introduction here. For tournament progress to this point, refer to the bracket at the bottom of the post.

In a rematch of the 2019 ACC Tournament championship game, Duke and Florida State sought a chance to play for the 2020 title. Since these teams had the best overall records in the ACC during the season, this semifinal could have been the de facto title game. Regardless, the Blue Devils were not about to let an insignificant thing like seeds dictate their fate. As such, they knocked off the top-seeded Seminoles, 79-67.

Duke didn’t trail until there were four minutes left in the first half. Florida State expanded its lead to eight before the Blue Devils scored seven unanswered points to cut it to one at halftime. The teams traded leads for much of the second half and got the game to a 61-all tie before the Seminoles went on a scoring drought that lasted five-and-a-half minutes. That allowed the Blue Devils to go on a 12-0 run and not look back.

Tre Jones did a lot for the Blue Devils with 15 points and game highs of nine assists and three steals. Cassius Stanley also scored 15, doing so on 6-of-11 shooting from the field. Matthew Hurt added 13, and Vernon Carey achieved a double-double of 12 points and 10 rebounds.

Devin Vassell and Trent Forrest scored 13 apiece to lead the Seminoles. Patrick Williams scored 11 off the bench, and M.J. Walker added 10. Shooting 39.4 percent from the floor as a team played a key role in the loss.

2020 NBA Draft Big Board 5.0: Final update ranking Top 100 prospects

After numerous delays and postponements, front offices and draftniks have had more time to analyze the 2020 NBA draft than any previous year.

Originally scheduled for June, the ongoing pandemic pushed the big night back by five months. While this may cause some teams to overthink their decisions, it gave analysts plenty of time to study all of the top prospects eligible in this class.

This year, players had to participate in a mostly virtual pre-draft process. On the bright side, this meant that teams had the opportunity to interview more candidates than ever before.

However, the number of in-person visits were incredibly limited due to the restrictive parameters set by the league. Similarly, the NBA draft combine was conducted without the typical scrimmages where players can separate themselves from the others with impressive on-court performances.

Overall, the players that stood out in this pre-draft process had a different path to recognition than any other year. College basketball players did not have the opportunity to showcase themselves during March Madness. The nation’s top seniors did not get to participate in the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament.

As such, executives will rely mostly on the existing game footage as well as the intel they gathered during their conversations with the prospects. We also depended on similar strategies, getting access to one-on-one interviews with more than three dozen prospects and exchanging our thoughts with various scouts across the league.

This helped us put together our final big board, looking at the Top 100 players ranked on their potential to make a difference for teams in the NBA.

Relevant statistics were pulled from Synergy Sports Tech, Bart-Torvik, KenPom, Open Look Analytics and RealGM. Note that the age listed for each player references how old they will be on the night of the draft.

Ranking the top NCAA seniors in the country based on NBA draft stock

For the upcoming 2020 NBA Draft, seniors may have an advantage because they have the largest sample size of game film to show front offices.

Most other years, prospects have opportunities to boost their draft stock in the NCAA Tournament or during team workouts and the NBA Combine. But with at least some and potentially even all of those scouting events canceled this year due to the coronavirus, upperclassmen are arguably more valuable than usual due to increased exposure.

With that in mind, we broke the top prospects who have elapsed their college basketball eligibility and as such are thus automatically eligible for the 2020 NBA Draft.

1. Cassius Winston, Michigan State

Guard, 6-foot-1, 21 years old

During his four seasons at Michigan State, Cassius Winston averaged 13.0 assists per 100 possessions. Meanwhile, his career assist rate (43.1%) ranked as sixth-best among all NCAA players since 2009-10. While a bit undersized, he had always been incredibly productive in college and is arguably the most NBA-ready of the seniors who will be in this draft class. Winston is already an incredibly capable finisher and distributor out of the pick-and-roll, which will help his game translate to the next level. He has also been productive as a shooter off the catch, off the dribble and off screens. In fact, he shot above 40.0 percent from 3-point range on each of those attempts. Winston became the second consensus All-American in Michigan State history, also earning All-American honors back-to-back seasons.

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Notre Dame Basketball: Irish Collapse vs. Seminoles

the takeaway is the same old story: The Irish can stay in close games, but they falter when it really matters more often than not.

More than once on Wednesday’s ESPN2 broadcast of Notre Dame’s game against No. 7 Florida State, we were reminded it had been two years, three months and 11 days since the Irish last defeated a ranked team. For almost all of the contest, it appeared they would get that monkey off their back.

But the Irish (18-12, 9-10) let a 13-point second-half lead slip away to the point where they went back and forth between holding slim leads and being tied up. Finally, Trent Forrest rebounded his own missed layup and put it through with 3.8 seconds left to give the Seminoles (25-5, 15-4) their first lead since 5-4 and a 73-71 win.

Prentiss Hubb achieved game highs of 24 points and six assists while shooting 5 of 9 from 3-point range. John Mooney collected his latest double-double of 16 points and 11 rebounds. Dane Goodwin also scored 16 while coming off the bench.

Of course, the takeaway is the same old story: The Irish can stay in close games, but they falter when it really matters more often than not.