Afternoon links: ACC open to playing with itself; keeping an eye on West Virginia; and more

Hey, stop scheduling yourself, stop scheduling yourself, why are you scheduling yourself, stop scheduling yourself

In the wake of the ACC's announcement of an 8+1 model for scheduling in football, not surprisingly, the idea of potentially scheduling other ACC schools as "non-conference" opponents is being discussed. It might end up becoming a necessity in certain cases to fulfill the +1 requirement; we'll have to wait and see how much the conferences are willing to work together to make scheduling less of a pain. Problem is only two of the Power Five have the +1 requirement, so several of them aren't operating under the same scheduling imperative and have no added incentive to be accommodating. (Not to mention that the P12, B1G, and B12 have nine-game conference schedules as constraining factors.)

Plus nobody in the SEC wants to play Miami. :(

Miami athletic director Blake James, a proponent of a nine-game league schedule, said scheduling conference teams in nonconference slots is not ideal. But circumstances may end up dictating whether that happens.

"It's going to be more challenging to find nonconference games," James said. "A conference like the SEC doesn't want to play us. Florida has Florida State, so we're not going to have an opportunity to play them."

Dave Doeren isn't against scheduling a Coastal team as NC State's +1 every now and then:

"They are going to allow us to use that plus-one game in the conference as a nonconference game, so that will be interesting to see where it goes. When we don't have to play Notre Dame, playing Duke or Virginia or somebody from the Coastal that we don't play will be a discussion we want to have."

We play Duke so rarely these days, nobody seems to be able to figure out how far apart the schools are.

NC State and Duke are located about 35 miles apart.

It's also uphill both ways.

The great Terry Henderson mystery

West Virginia is losing players to transfer at a time when it can ill afford to do so. Eron Harris, the team's second-leading scorer last season, is gone, as is (for now, anyway) third-leading scorer Terry Henderson, who announced last week that he would leave the school.

No one seems to know why Henderson left school to return home to Raleigh, including his family. Huggins flew down to try talking him out of it, but it might be too late for that. I bring this up not only because of the Raleigh connection, but also because State obviously is interested in adding another guard at this point, and Henderson would be a good addition. I don't know how serious the interest on either side will be, but it's a situation to watch.

Asa Watson, Dontae Johnson begin life as pros

Asa Watson is already garnering attention in Boston because his older brother played for the Patriots. Tom O'Brien had some kind things to say about him to the Boston Herald:

"We were excited we had him at N.C. State," O'Brien told the Herald yesterday. "He's a fast, explosive guy. He doesn't have the height that Ben did, but he has a lot of the same physical qualities. As you would guess, he's a great character kid. He has a great work ethic. He's smart. Obviously, Ben was a smart guy, too."

Out west, the 49ers plan to slot Dontae Johnson at corner rather than safety. GM Trent Baalke called Johnson an "A-plus character guy."

Pitch counts, schmitch counts

Is it worrisome that NC State asks so much of Carlos Rodon? Sure. Will it necessarily affect his career down the road? No. And Rodon, for one, doesn't seem to care much about the pitch count discussion in his case:

He often throws hard and effectively late in his starts, a strength he attributes partially to the powerful legs he inherited from his father and a sign that pitch-count critics are off base.

"They do understand the mechanical situation, but they don't understand how my arm works or if I'm feeling tired," Rodon said. "They've never come out to me, 'Are you tired? Do you get worn out when you pitch at 132 pitches?' If you look at pitch counts, if I'm at 132 pitches and my last fastball is 95 mph, that speaks for itself."