Welcome to the media room at the Greensboro Coliseum, the home of the 2011 Atlantic Coast Basketball Tournament. I’ll be tweeting live from Virginia’s game against Miami, which tips off soon. If you’re stuck at work or not near a TV, follow me @ChrisLangLNA if you’re interested in the updates.

I’ll be updating this blog post throughout the day, and I’ll post a link to Twitter when the page is updated.

Today’s tournament schedule:
Virginia vs. Miami, noon
Boston College vs. Wake Forest, 2:30 p.m.
Maryland vs North Carolina State, 7 p.m.
Virginia Tech vs. Georgia Tech, 7:30 p.m.

Some quick notes, etc.:

1. Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg announced late Wednesday night that freshman forward Jarell Eddie has been suspended for the remainder of the regular season. Virginia Tech sent out the following press release at 11:46 p.m.:

My colleague, Nathan Warters, will have a blog post on this later. His blog can be found here.

2. Your starters for today’s UVa game:
VIRGINIA (16-14)
Mustapha Farrakhan (G, 6-4, 181)  13.5 ppg/2.8 rpg
Joe Harris (G, 6-6, 202)  10.6/4.3
Assane Sene (C, 7-1, 239)  4.9/5.4
Sammy Zeglinski (G, 6-1, 185)  7.6/3.1
Will Sherrill (F, 6-9, 226)  4.4/3.0

MIAMI (18-13)
Durand Scott (G, 6-3, 200)  13.2/4.2
Malcolm Grant (G, 6-1, 180)  14.9/1.8
Garrius Adams (G, 6-6, 195)  7.6/3.7
Adrian Thomas (F, 6-7, 226)  9.3/3.9
Reggie Johnson (C, 6-10, 303)  12.0/9.7

3. Virginia is winless all-time as the No. 8 seed in the ACC tournament. That stat comes with a major caveat, though. All five occurrences came when the tournament was only eight teams and the No.8 played the No. 1 seed. So in reality, disregard that stat. It’s meaningless.

4. Virginia’s 7-9 ACC season was its best in the last four years.

5. The NIT bubble is a weird thing. Miami is still in contention for an NIT bid, and these middling power-conference teams have to keep an eye on the small conference tournaments to make sure that those leagues’ regular-season champions don’t steal NIT bids by losing in the conference tournament. Already, Coastal Carolina, Vermont, Fairfield, Missouri State, Murray State, Milwaukee and Florida Atlantic have sealed “automatic bids.“ There are still several small conferences left to play their tournaments, including the Big West, the SWAC, MEAC, the Patriot League and the Southland. More potential for chaos.

(Actually, it’s only chaos if somebody cares. I’m not sure how many people are paying attention to the NIT bubble.)

5a. ... or the CBI bubble.

5b. ... or the (gulp) CIT bubble.

6. Miami’s Reggie Johnson is every bit of that listed 303 pounds.

7. Miami has two starters from central North Carolina. Johnson is from Winston-Salem and Garrius Adams is from Apex, which is in the Raleigh area.

8. Miami is 5-6 in ACC tournament games, but two of those wins came last year when the 12th-seeded Hurricanes made a run to the semifinals.

9. I feel confident in saying that this year’s 12th seed—Wake Forest—won’t be making any such run. The Deacons finished 1-15 in league play, with that win coming over—wait for it—Virginia.

That’s it for now. I’ll update again after the first session with some impressions and notes from the first set of games, plus some quotes from the players and coaches involved.