ACC Notebook: Q&A with Jen Hoover, ACCN joins Comcast
Good news, Comcast customers. Also, Wake Forest's head coach weighs-in on the loss to Nebraska.
Welcome back to All in the Game, y’all.
If you’re reading this and you’re a Comcast customer living in Pittsburgh, Miami, Atlanta or the Commonwealth of Virginia, I have good news.
Finally, the ACC Network is coming to your market.
The network launched under the ESPN umbrella in August 2019 with games, studio shows and features, but it has been absent to fans in markets where Comcast is the main cable provider. That left fans of Pitt, Georgia Tech, the Canes, the Hokies and the ‘Hoos searching for other ways to get the ACC Network’s content. It simply wasn’t accessible via a few clicks of the remote.
But that’s changing. Comcast issued a press release on Tuesday, touting its new multi-year agreement with Disney. And a deal with Disney means a deal with ESPN, and a deal with ESPN means a deal with the ACC Network. The renewal also includes continued distribution of the SEC Network on Comcast.
Per the release: “Comcast will distribute the ACC Network to its Xfinity customers, allowing fans and followers of the Atlantic Coast Conference to access the multiplatform network.”
A Comcast spokesperson told me that “the launch will happen in the coming weeks.”
I’ve written multiple stories for Pittsburgh Sports Now — here, here, here and here —about Comcast’s impasse with the ACC Network. Simply put, it was a real bummer for fans living in those markets to not be able to access the channel with relative ease. Not only is Comcast the main provider for big cities with ACC schools in them – like Pittsburgh, Atlanta and Miami – but it is also the main cable provider in Washington D.C., Indiana, much of the northeast, Houston, Nashville and pockets of California. And more rural places too, like where much of my folks live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. For the ACC Network to grow, it needed Comcast to be more easily visible in more places.
The ACC Network’s deal with Comcast now makes it available in more than 90 million households, and countless bars and hotels.
Q&A with Wake’s Jen Hoover
Wake Forest was off to its best start in more than a decade this season, entering Wednesday night’s game against Nebraska with a pristine 7-0 record. Unfortunately for the Deacs, they shot poorly and the Cornhuskers did not. Nebraska won 86-60 in Winston-Salem.
After the game, I caught up with Deacs’ head coach Jen Hoover for a quick one-on-one.
Here’s an edited excerpt of our chat.
MN: Obviously, the first loss of the year is tough. How is this group handling that?
JH: “This group is hungry. I told them, I thought we played our worst half of basketball all season in the first half, and we were only down 13. Credit to (Nebraska). I think they’re a really good offensive team. I thought they played Big Ten basketball – they were very physical with us. I didn’t think we responded very well to that… We took care of the ball tonight. Proud of us on that. But it doesn’t matter if you can’t put the ball in the hole.”
MN: Did you think the effort wasn’t there, or you just missed some shots?
JH: “I thought our effort was there. I don't know that we were locked-in on our game plan in the beginning. You know, Jaz Shelley – their best player – gets three wide open shots that I might’ve could’ve hit. And she’s definitely going to hit it. I don’t know how that happens, when your best player is allowed to get three wide open shots, and then you see what they did to (Jewel Spear) all night. She never had one of those. That can’t happen. They did a much better job of executing their game plan tonight… Tonight, we just couldn’t get stops. I don’t think we got one turkey, and we count on turkeys every game – that’s three stops in a row.
MN: Okay. I was going to ask you what a turkey was.
JH: “We usually have seven to nine a game… We’ll bounce back. The kids are tough. They’re tough minded. They know we’re a tournament team. And they know this is a great test and one that we got to learn a lesson from.”
MN: I remember talking to Jewel at ACC Media Day and she was talking about, you know, “People know who I am now. They’re going to have tape on me.” Nebraska guarded her tough tonight. How do you, as a team, get her into more situations where she can be successful?
JH: “I think one of the things is we tried to move around a little bit, and we tried to get her some backdoor looks early. We had a couple of turnovers that the timing was knocked off on. But she's a kid that is going to move without the ball and continue to work. And I think it just wore her down a little bit tonight, especially because she had to play so much at a point guard position to help Elise with that, with Kaia Harrison already being out, and then losing (Alexandria Scruggs). So, you know, we've got to regroup and kind of figure out what the plan is going to be moving forward because I don't know that we'll get Scruggs back for Saturday.”
Around the ACC
Duke freshman Shayeann Day-Wilson scored a career-high 26 points in the Blue Devils’ 91-65 win over Troy on Sunday. She shot 8-of-10 from three-point range, which tied a Duke freshman record for most three’s in a game. Day-Wilson also had six assists and five boards. Head coach Kara Lawson said of her performance: “She certainly shot the ball well and was playing very confidently, and I think that with Shay her confidence and her competitiveness – those two things combined – give her the ability to make plays. She’s confident in her skill, she’s confident in her vision, she’s confident in her ability to make plays and beat people.”
Louisville topped Colorado State 71-56 on Sunday, with Ahlana and Kianna Smith each scoring 11 points apiece. Jeff Walz said after the game: “It's like I tell them, `It's not about how many points you score. It's about how efficient you can be. If you score 20, and you go 9 for 29, that's not impressive to me. But to go 5 for 7, that speaks volumes… We passed the ball extremely well. We didn't panic.”
Here’s what Maryland head coach Brenda Frese had to say about N.C. State: “They were very, very aggressive. I think it put us on our heels. There’s no question how good N.C. State is. They’re just such a deep team… They poured it on for 40 minutes. You need to be able to have that kind of depth to be able to compete with the depth and the talent that N.C. State has.”
N.C. State now has a four-game winning streak over Maryland, an old ACC foe. That streak dates back to the 2013-24 season. The Wolfpack’s win over the Terps marked the fifth victory over a top-five team in the Wes Moore era.
For Pitt, Liatu King’s 19 rebounds vs. No. 23 Texas A&M last week were a career-high for her and the most by a Panther since Pitt joined the ACC. It’s also the most by a Pitt player overall since Chelsea Cole grabbed 22 boards on Feb. 20, 2010. King had another 19-rebound game – and 23 points – Pitt’s win over Northwestern on Friday. Following Pitt’s win over Rutgers on Wednesday, King is averaging 11.6 points and 11.6 rebounds while shooting 50% from the floor over her last five games.
Notre Dame’s win over then-ranked No. 16 Oregon State on Saturday was the first victory over a ranked opponent for second-year head coach Niele Ivey.
Wake Forest’s 94-48 win over UMBC on Sunday was its largest margin of victory in over two seasons.
Louisville will play in the Bad Boy Mowers Battle 4 Atlantis next season. The other seven women’s basketball programs joining the Cardinals in the 2022 event are: Gonzaga, Marquette, Rutgers, South Dakota State, UCLA, Tennessee and Texas.
Syracuse’s Priscilla Williams said Wednesday that she will redshirt this season. Williams is one of just three remaining players from last year’s team. Mike Curtis has the story at Syracuse.com.
Elsewhere in women’s basketball…
The Big South has agreed to broadcast package with ESPN for this season. ESPN will carry six regular season Big South games on ESPN3 – its free, non-subscription streaming service – and it will broadcast the Big South Championship from Charlotte on March 6 at 8:30 p.m. EST on ESPNU. It marks the first time ever that both of the Big South’s men’s and women’s basketball championships will be aired lived on linear networks.
Here’s the ESPN3 schedule:
Jan. 5 – Charleston Southern at Gardner-Webb
Jan. 18 – Hampton at Radford
Jan. 26 – Campbell at Presbyterian
Feb. 9 – Winthrop at USC Upstate
Feb. 16 – North Carolina A&T at Longwood
Feb. 23 – UNC Asheville at High Point
Stuff I Wrote
At The Next, I wrote about UNC’s 7-0 start, and how the Tar Heels’ defense is ridiculously awesome.
And for Inside MD Sports, I broke down Maryland’s win over Baylor.
Also Read
At the Peach Post, Brandon Sudge has the story from Georgia’s overtime win over Notre Dame.
Gabe Ibrahim takes a closer look at Virginia Tech for HerHoopStats.
As noted above, Pitt’s Liatu King has been awesome on the court lately. At the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Craig Meyer has the story about how King was raised off the court, by two deaf parents.
Be safe. Y’all be good.
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