The ACC Preseason Poll And The Most Interesting Speculation You’ll See Today

This could be very interesting for Duke, if not the rest of the ACC.

The ACC released its Preseason Poll on Tuesday and it’s probably about what most people would expect: Duke and UNC are at the top, followed by Wake Forest, Clemson, Virginia and Miami.

Obviously, nothing is cast in stone and no games have been played and we’ll have to see how things play out. That said, a couple of early hunches:

Louisville, Notre Dame and Georgia Tech may be underrated.

First team All-ACC is pegged at RJ Davis, Hunter Sallis, Markus Burton, Nijel Pack and Cooper Flagg.

Flagg is also understandably expected to be named Rookie of the Year. And that brings us to what we think is the most intriguing subplot of Duke’s and the ACC’s preseason.

Let’s start with a basic fact: not many of us have seen enough of this team, let alone the rest of the league, to know who the best freshmen will be. That said, here's the intrigue: what if Flagg isn’t the best freshman in the ACC?

Okay, that was a psy-op to prepare for the real question, which is this: what if he’s not the best freshman at Duke?

To be clear, this is a speculation and the hype with Flagg has been really, really huge. There’s no doubt that he’s really very promising. The run with the Select Team and the comments from the members of the U.S. Olympic team also made that very clear: they recognized him as an inevitable equal when he joins the league.

Which makes the buzz about Kon Knueppel even more striking.

We’ve heard twice now that Knueppel has been the best player in practice, with one observer saying that it wasn’t even close. One writer said that he wasn’t comparing him to Larry Bird exactly, but that his game reminded him of Bird’s because Knueppel never played like he was rushed. He made the game come to him instead.

If those things are correct, and keep in mind that all of them are from limited perspectives, that means that Knueppel is playing at a very high level indeed.

And if that’s true, then that’s going to be one of the most interesting themes of this season.

1. Duke (42), 956.
2. North Carolina (11), 924.
3. Wake Forest (1), 800.
4. Clemson, 765.
5. Virginia, 743.
6. Miami, 659.
7. Pitt, 636.
8. NC State, 550.
9. Louisville, 518.
10. Notre Dame, 462.
11. Syracuse, 454.
12. Georgia Tech, 433.
13. SMU, 344.
14. Virginia Tech, 252.
15. Florida State, 251.
16. California, 206.
17. Stanford, 165.
18. Boston College, 116