Christmas Week Preview

Most teams have the Christmas holiday off, but there are some intriguing games before the year ends.  Let's start with the Diamond Head Classic.  Clemson travels to Hawaii with a big opportunity to turn their season around.  They have been pretty disappointing thus far, and will need to step up their game if they are going to knock off some decent opponents.  On Thursday Clemson takes on UTEP, a team out of Conference USA that has not been good thus far.  If they win that one, their next game comes Friday against the winner of Kansas State and Southern Illinois (likely Kansas State).  The best team on the other side of the bracket is Xavier, which is reeling a bit from suspensions coming out of that brawl.

Texas takes on UNC tonight in a matchup that last year Texas won.  The Heels are significantly better than the Longhorns, and should win this one without much trouble.

Florida State has its annual game against rival Florida Thursday night in Gainesville.  Many thought the Seminoles were a lock for the NCAA Tournament going into the year, but they haven't done anything to show that they deserve it.  After losing three games in a row, they have won three straight against underwhelming competition.  This game will be a much bigger challenge.  After Thursday, the games don't really start cranking back up until December 29.

A couple of other thoughts:

Virginia is starting to look more and more like the third best team in the conference - at least right now.  They had a solid road win at Oregon and only have a rather head-scratching loss against TCU on the record.  Every team besides Duke and UNC has question marks, leaving the door open for teams like Virginia to try and snag an NCAA Tournament berth.  Teams like Virginia Tech, NC State and Miami have shown flashes but whether they can produce when the competition steps up in ACC play is still a big question.