With college basketball season nearly upon us, it's time for the 2013-14 preseason voting! Today is "ACC Operation Basketball" and that means we get the media's votes on where each team will finish in the conference this season. After finishing 8th in the conference last year, the Boston College Eagles were once again voted to finish 8th.
Here is the 2013-14 ACC preseason ballot #ACCMediaDay pic.twitter.com/GNcE6unOuc
— BC Hoop News (@BCHoopNews) October 16, 2013
However, it's worth noting that the ACC has added 3 teams this season: Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, and Syracuse. All three of the new teams are predicted to finish ahead of the Eagles, so BC's expected improvement is a little bit hidden due to the new-look ACC. If the conference were not expanding this year, the Eagles would be ranked 5th out of 12 in the preseason poll.
It's hard to argue with where the Eagles are ranked in this poll, although it wouldn't be particularly surprising to see them outperform their projection either. Maryland and Pittsburgh could very easily turn in disappointing seasons while the Eagles could surprise some people.
The media also voted for the ACC Player of the Year, all-conference team, and Rookie of the Year. Predictably, C.J. Fair was voted preseason POY and Jabari Parker was voted preseason ROY. Jerian Grant, Rodney Hood, and Joe Harris join Fair and Parker on the preseason All-ACC team. It's a little bit surprising that Olivier Hanlan didn't make the preseason all-ACC team after what he did in the ACC tournament last year. They don't provide the voting breakdown for the all-ACC team so we don't know exactly how close Hanlan was from making that team. He did, however, received 3 votes for preseason POY.