Given how much I respect my colleague Sabreena Merchant’s knowledge of women’s basketball, even I had to take a step back this weekend and wonder if it were truly happenstance that she handed off the power rankings to me (a person who has acknowledged that my respect for the ACC was potentially not strong enough early on this season, mea culpa, mea culpa). The ACC sent a pretty resonant reminder this week to the nation: Hello, we’re still here and some of our teams are peaking in time for a dominant March.
NC State’s impressive win on Sunday over top-ranked Notre Dame (which followed a great Wolfpack road win over George Tech), wasn’t the only eye-opening victory. Louisville capped one heck of a week with road wins over ranked Florida State and Duke before returning home to take (an Alyssa Ustby-less) UNC down to the wire. The Tar Heels won their seventh straight game, including two over ranked opponents (add a third if Louisville is ranked come Monday — which it should be). A Ta’Niya Latson-less Florida State had won two straight games against lesser opponents, but behind a huge third-quarter outpouring and a massive showing from Sydney Bowles (32 points, six assists), the Seminoles upset No. 20 Georgia Tech on the road.
With that, there’s some good movement…
