Welcome to Tampa

    The sun shone brightly, the temperature around 80 degrees. Typical weather for Tampa in March. The Tampa-St. Pete area offers plenty of distractions, many of them outdoors, so it was no surprise there were at most 100 fans in the stands at the St. Pete Times Forum to watch pre-ACC Tournament practices conducted by teams from remote locales such as Raleigh, Blacksburg, Va., and Clemson, S.C.

    Clemson actually practiced twice; the Tigers' mid-morning session was truncated because a flat tire on the team bus delayed departure from their hotel. After Virginia finished around 7 PM, Clemson returned to complete its workout.

    Entrance today was free at the Forum, a hockey arena which claims to seat 20,500 for basketball but will doubtless squeeze in more spectators for the ACC Tournament. Still, as one usher put it as he watched Virginia players go through their paces, "It's such a nice day, not too many people are going to come in here after getting off work."

    Include Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg among those eager to enjoy the region's other recreational opportunities. Greenberg and several members of the Hokie entourage hurried off following their late-afternoon practice to watch the New York Yankees play an exhibition game against the Cincinnati Reds.

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    Coaches commonly find a way to schedule a regular season game in the same building where they will later play their league tournament. Florida State and Wake Forest both played previously this season at the Forum. FSU beat Providence 92-62 on Dec. 29 and Wake Forest lost to South Florida, located here in Tampa, on the same day.

    The Demon Deacons lost 75-67after making 4 of 23 shots from 3-point range. Freshmen Ish Smith and Anthony Gurley were each 1-for-7 on threes. Still, Smith insisted the Deacs hold an advantage over Georgia Tech, their opening round opponent, because they are familiar with the site. "They're shooters' rims," he offered, despite evidence this did not help Wake earlier.

    Smith, from Concord, N.C., raved about the atmosphere at the ACC Tournament, and the elevated level of competition, before acknowledging this was his first time at the event. "I've never been to one," the 18-year-old said. "I've seen them, maybe all of them on TV."

    Senior teammate Kyle Visser said, "He's seen it on TV, now he's going to experience it in real life."

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    The St. Petersburg Times certainly did not ignore the ACC Tournament in its Tampa edition. The newspaper bannered the tournament atop the front page, and devoted parts of three of 14 pages in the sports section to the event. This is, shall we say, a bit less than is the norm in the heart of ACC country. Of course, there is no ACC team in Tampa. The nearest ACC schools are Florida State, more than a four-hour drive away in Tallahassee, and Miami, three hours distant.

    Other than the tease on the front of the section, the two full sports pages with coverage of the ACC Tournament were the last two. Of those, half of one page was devoted to Greenberg's recommendations on where to eat or have fun. Greenberg coached for seven seasons at the University of South Florida, located in Tampa, before moving to Virginia Tech in 2003-04.

    We especially liked this compelling Greenberg recommendation for Mise En Place, a downtown Tampa restaurant: "It's one of my wife's favorites."

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    Two Georgia Tech assistant coaches perched in the stands, watching Wake Forest practice. Except during tournaments such as this, coaches are forbidden from personally scouting opponents. There's not much to see in these very public workouts, but that didn't dampen the spirits of one assistant. Acutely aware the Yellow Jackets have fared far better at home this season than on the road, he noted happily that, as the higher seed (#6 to Wake's #11), Georgia Tech gets to wear its white, or home, uniforms in its opener.