ACC Could Send Five or More Teams to the NCAA Tournament
The Atlantic Coast Conference season ending tournament starts March 12 with no streaking teams left in the conference. Virginia won its first outright title for the regular season since 1981, but saw its winning streak of 13 games snapped on Sunday by Maryland.
Duke ended the winning streak for North Carolina at 12 on Saturday. No teams entering this week’s tournament have won more than two consecutive games.
This is the first season with a tournament format of 15 teams, which includes four double byes for North Carolina, Duke, Syracuse and Virginia. Teams 10-15 will have a play-in round. If a team from the bottom third of the draw was to win the tournament and earn the ACC automatic bid to March Madness, in five days it would have to win five games.
What that means is it is unlikely an underdog will rise to the top in the ACC tournament. This season the top four seeds are noticeably more talented than the rest of the conference. Those four teams were 56-8 versus the other 11 conference teams.
The top four seeds are shoe-ins for bids to the NCAA tournament, but unless other teams play superbly during the 4-day tournament, the conference might send just four teams to the tournament.
The fifth seed, Pittsburgh, lost its 5 games versus the top four seeds this season and its only strong non-conference victory this season was Stanford.
Other teams fighting to catch the eye of the selection committee for the tournament are North Carolina State, Clemson and Florida State.
Syracuse must halt its downward slide through rebuilding its confidence during this tournament, as it prepares for the NCAA Tournament.
The Orange started 25-0 but took a big stumble down the home stretch including losing to both Georgia Tech and Boston College the two teams with the worst conference records.
Injuries have hurt the Orange, but hopefully Jerami Grant will return after having back problems since their February 22 loss against Duke.
Virginia only played each of the other top three teams once this season and Duke was the only one on the road. Virginia lost that game 69-65. The conference does not even recognize the Cavaliers as the conference champion, that tag is put on the winner of the season ending tournament. Virginia has not won the ACC tournament since 1976.
For the Maryland Terrapins, the ACC’s charter member, it will be on its final journey down Tobacco Road. The Terrapins are leaving the conference as they have for a long time felt it was leaning too heavily towards the North Carolina schools. Forty-nine of the 60 conference tournaments have been won by a school in North Carolina.
The Terrapins home schedule was not what they had hoped with no home game versus North Carolina or Duke, which were typically the most anticipated games on their home schedule each year.
This should give them some extra incentive to go out in style as they head to the Big Ten next year.
This year’s tournament will likely feature two of the top four seeds and will ensure that the winner will likely be given a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
