Aside from Duke, ACC is in decline
In three of past four years, they've produced one Sweet 16 team; that looks to continue
Last week's bracket was noteworthy for a number of reasons. The Butler Bulldogs were absent, nine Big East teams were present and we did our best to recognize better-than-expected play by the likes of Central Florida, Washington State and Cleveland State.
For me, though, the most potentially lasting storyline is that of the sagging Atlantic Coast Conference. Admittedly, the league had seven teams in the above Bracketology link, but aside from the No. 1 Duke Blue Devils, name a team that scares you.
For every Boston College or Virginia success story, there have been multiple occasions when a North Carolina, Florida State, Virginia Tech or NC State has fallen flat.
Instead, the Big Ten, Big East and Big 12 have taken center stage by supplying the next 11 teams (Nos. 2-12) in the Dec. 6 ESPN/USA Today coaches' poll. Another ACC squad (North Carolina) wasn't to be found until the "also receiving votes" category.
Even in its so-called "down" years -- three NCAA tournament bids in 1999 and 2000 -- the ACC featured a few elite teams. Since 1985, the conference has sent at least three teams to March Madness every year -- 1999 and 2000, as noted above, were the three-bid years -- and seven times during that span, they've sent four teams to the Sweet 16, meaning a quarter of the regional semis round was composed of ACC squads.
The ACC's pattern is one of both quantity and quality, of course, but "quality" is the overriding characteristic in good times and in bad. No conference has more national champions, No. 1 seeds, Final Fours and Sweet 16s in the modern era.
But the true measure of ACC dominance is that the league is never a one-trick pony. But last season only Duke cracked the Sweet 16. Could we be headed for a repeat?
For 2011, the projected seeding gap between the best ACC team (Duke at No. 1) and the league's second-best (North Carolina at No. 8) and third-best (Boston College at No. 8) teams is the largest in the history of the conference -- and the muddled middle of the ACC figures to become even more so once full league play begins, knocking more teams off the bubble than on.
Considering all the data, perhaps we should have seen this coming:
• The ACC has never had a second team seeded worse than No. 4 in the history of the expanded NCAA field.
• The ACC has managed only one Sweet 16 team in three of the past four seasons.
• It's been five years since an ACC member not named Duke or North Carolina made it through to the tournament's second weekend.
• The ACC is advancing a far lower percentage of teams in the past 10 to 15 years than when the NCAA tourney expanded to the 64/65 format.
• These declining figures are despite larger (not smaller) ACC membership.
I'll leave it to smarter folks to pinpoint the causes of an ACC decline, as the league had mostly avoided the cyclical nature of strengths and weakness affecting other power conferences. My gut tells me, as has been speculated in the past, that football expansion is the culprit. The absence of a true round-robin schedule, the dilution of certain rivalries and more fragmented fan bases have hurt the basketball product below the Duke-Carolina axis.
I'm not smart enough to tell the ACC what to do about it, but the numbers are as plain as day. The league's seemingly endless run as the "best of the best" may be drawing to a close.
And that was before Kyrie Irving stubbed his toe.
Joe Lunardi is the resident Bracketologist for ESPN, ESPN.com and ESPN Radio. He also teaches Fundamentals of Bracketology online at Saint Joseph's University. Comments may be sent to bracketology@verizon.net.
http://insider.espn.go.com/ncb/insider/ ... ortcomings
Lunardi is right; the ACC is very weak this year. Further, there are few teams with the type of freakishly athletic big men that have killed us in past years (Clemson and Wake a couple years, for example). The reason that MD scared me was Williams, but we managed to beat them anyways despite his monstrous game. If there were ever a year in which the ACC basketball schedule is favorable for us, it's this year.
