Imagine that the hottest person at school just invited you to the senior prom.
Now replace hottest person with the National Collegiate Athletic Association and substitute the Big Dance for senior prom. March Madness is here, and as usual, the Atlantic Coast Conference came ready to play.
“While the ACC can hardly be judged as a whole, we can always count on powerhouses like UNC, Duke or UVA to represent the conference at its finest,” said sophomore basketball center Sebastian Kruger Bartolome. “They will all get pretty far, and in my opinion, UNC has a real shot at the championship game.”
While the ACC is known for being particularly strong in college basketball, not all teams in the conference share that spotlight this particular season. Here are the ACC teams that are heading to the NCAA tournament, the National Invitational Tournament and nowhere at all.
Despite suffering more losses than usual, the recent ACC basketball elites — the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, the University of Miami, the University of Notre Dame and the University of Virginia — migrated towards the top of conference standings and earned NCAA tournament berths.
North Carolina began the year as preseason top-ranked team in the country, but early road losses to the University of Northern Iowa and University of Texas at Austin highlighted the team’s weaknesses. However, the Tar Heels overcame their poor three-point shooting to win both the ACC regular season, tournament titles and a one seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Duke, facing a short roster after winning the national championship last year and an injury to senior captain Amile Jefferson, and Notre Dame, challenged by a lack of size, both finished with 11-7 conference records. But both the Blue Devils and Fighting Irish won tough games against the University of Louisville and North Carolina to earn a four-and-six seed in the NCAA Tournament respectively.
Miami utilized veteran players to finish 13-5 in the ACC and capture a three seed in the NCAA tournament. Similarly, Virginia finished 13-5 in conference play but used a suffocating defense to advance to the ACC championship game and earn a one seed.
The University of Pittsburgh and Syracuse University, which both finished the ACC regular season with a 9-9 record, earned berths to the NCAA tournament. The decision to include Syracuse remains controversial, as the team started league play 0-4 while head coach Jim Boeheim was suspended and finished the season losing five of their last six games.
‘’We had a really tough stretch in the middle,” said Boeheim in an interview with the Associated Press. “We dug a hole, but this team dug itself out.’’
Three ACC teams fought valiantly during the season but came up short of a trip to the Big Dance. Instead, Florida State University, Georgia Institute of Technology and Virginia Tech have received invitations to a smaller dance, the NIT.
In a classic example of good coaching, Buzz Williams transformed Virginia Tech from a 2–16 team last year to an impressive 10–8 conference record this season with notable wins over Virginia and Miami. The Hokies will look to carry this momentum into next year and search for their first NCAA tournament berth since 2007.
On the other hand, Georgia Tech fell into an early slump by losing five of its first six games. Florida State also ended their season in a fairly quiet manner but won three of their last four games to keep their postseason dreams alive. Both teams earned NIT births.
“It will help us get a feel for the postseason and what it is like,” said first-year Florida State guard Dwayne Bacon in an interview with Fox Sports. “I would rather be playing than sitting at home and wondering what we are going to do.”
But there are a few ACC teams that will not participate in postseason play at all.
Wake Forest University and Boston College finished 14th and 15th in the ACC respectively. While Wake was plagued with player suspensions and transfers, the young Boston College team suffered from inexperience. In fact, the Boston College football and basketball teams together went 0–27 in conference play this season, the first team to do so in 40 years.
After beating Duke, Miami and Louisville in early ACC games, Clemson University lost four of its last five games to end the season. Luckily, the Tigers will have plenty of time to plan for next season while they stay home this March.
Just as in seasons past, North Carolina State University depended heavily on a few key players, and this year, it did not pan out as they missed their first NCAA Tournament in five years. Although ACC star Cat Barber averaged over 23 points per game, NC State finished with a 5–13 conference record.
“Looking back at it from last year, we would have never believed we were going to go 5–13,” sophomore NC State forward Abdul-Malik Abu told The News & Observer. “It didn’t turn out to be that way this year, but we keep looking forward.”
The Louisville Cardinals are also sitting at home in the postseason but not for underperformance reasons. While Rick Pitino’s team finished 13-5 in the ACC, the school issued a postseason ban following allegations of sexual misconduct during recruitment.
As some would say, the punishment fits the crime.
