ACC Roundup - Miami’s Struggles Continue, State Wins A Tight One & Jaylen Blakes Continues To Excel

09.01.2025 16:00

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 08: Jaylen Blakes #21 of the Stanford Cardinal attempts a basket against Tyler Johnson #10 of the Virginia Tech Hokies in the first half at Stanford Maples Pavilion on January 08, 2025 in Palo Alto, California. | Photo by Eakin Howard/Getty Images

Miami’s season is still dreadful.

In Wednesday’s ACC Action, Florida State beat Miami 80-65, NC State nipped Notre Dame 66-65 and the state of California thumped the state of Virginia with Stanford taking down Virginia Tech 70-59 and Cal thumping the Cadavaliers 75-61.

Poor Miami.

The ‘Canes went up 5-0 but both Matthew Cleveland and Lynne Kidd picked up a pair of early fouls each and FSU rolled to a 13-2 run, taking a 39-25 halftime lead. Florida State is just bigger and once Kidd picked up foul #2, there wasn’t much Miami could do.

With the loss, Miami falls to 4-11 while palindromically the ‘Noles are 11-4.

Notre Dame fell at NC State when the Pack wiped out a late seven point deficit for the win. Ben Middlebrooks split his free throws to put the Pack up by one with 11 seconds left.

Notre dame got the ball to Markus Burton but he missed. The Irish backcourt combined to hit 10-27. With Matt Allocco added to Burton and Braeden Shrewsberry, it goes up to 13-32, a bit better but still not great.

This was Notre Dame’s second-straight one point loss to a Tobacco Road team. Duke is on tap for Saturday so hopefully the Blue Devils can do better.

Burton was out for some time with an injury, but we doubt he’s 100 percent. Just a tough situation for Notre Dame.

Tae Davis continued to play well for the Irish with 14 points and seven rebounds.

The Virginia Tech-Stanford game saw the first matchup of Duke transfers. Jaylen Blakes had 17 points and six assists and help limit former teammate Jaden Schutt to 0 points and just two shots in 34 minutes. He did get four rebounds however.

Maxime Raymaund had 19 points and 14 boards for the Cardinal.

Andrej Stojakovic had 23 points to lead Cal to its first-ever ACC win and also its first-ever win over Virginia.

This was a tight game for 20 minutes but the second half belonged to Cal. Virginia struggled on offense again - stop us if you’ve heard this before - and three starters hit just one shot each: Elijah Saunders and Isaac McKneely were both 1-8 while Taine Murray was 1-3. Blake Buchanan was 1-5 and Dai Dai Ames, who looked like he might be a big factor earlier, played just four minutes. We don’t know why.

And Duke transfer TJ Power got 13 minutes but took only one shot and missed that.

As noted previously, Virginia is still scoring at Tony Bennett levels - 60 here - but the D is no longer Bennett worthy. In the last three games, Virginia gave up 67 to NC State in a win, 70 to Louisville in a loss and now 75 to Cal. The precision is gone.

With the loss, Virginia falls to 8-7.

No more games until Saturday, but we’ll see Louisville vs. Pitt, Florida State visiting Clemson and UNC goes to Raleigh to take on the Pack. UNC freshman Ian Jackson downplayed the rivalry, saying this: “That’s our rivalry? Nah. NC State is a great team. Every team in the ACC is a great team. It’s a hard conference, but we’re just going to go out there and play our game. We’re not looking into it as a rivalry. We just want to go win another game in conference play. But they’re a great team.”

He’ll learn: UNC may not see State as a rivalry game, but the fans in the Lenovo sure as hell will and win or lose, they’re going to be after Jackson for all 40 minutes on Saturday.

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