LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — This is the time of the year when NCAA men’s college basketball coaches go to bat for their conferences.
They argue why winning on the road in their league is more demanding than winning on the road is in other leagues.
They lobby for more NCAA Tournament bids than the bracketologists are forecasting.
There was a time when coaches in the Atlantic Coast Conference did not sense the need to lobby for anything. They had it all.
March 2024 will not be one of those times.
In a season where bracketologists are forecasting 9 bids for the Big 12 Conference, 7 for the Southeastern Conference and a half-dozen for a down Big Ten, the consensus is the ACC will land at most 5 bids and perhaps as few as 4 or even 3 to the 2024 party when the bracket is revealed March 17.
Duke, North Carolina and Clemson are surely in the field.
Virginia and Wake Forest are polishing their credentials, currently likely No. 10 or 11 seeds.
Pittsburgh and Syracuse (which visits Louisville Saturday night) are scrambling to get to the bubble.
To that, I’d say this: The ACC bashing has gone too far.
This is trending toward being the third consecutive season the ACC will be limited to no more than five tournament teams.
I understand that when NCAA Tournament Selection Committee selects the 68-team field, they focus on what the contenders have achieved this season.
This season Syracuse and Miami have joined Louisville and Notre Dame in not being what those programs used to be.
When the committee begins serious discussions in Indianapolis in two weeks they’ll look at the yearly nuts and bolts credentials:
Quad I wins and losses. Strength of schedule. Performance out of conference. Computer power rankings. You know the list.
Past performance is no guarantee of future success. But in March, ACC teams have performed at a level that should inspire extra conversation, if not consideration.
Critics chirp the league is no longer what it was in the days of Michael Jordan, Ralph Sampson, Christian Laettner, Shane Battier, Tyler Hansbrough or Ty Jerome. They made the same case last year, too when the ACC was limited to five bids, three fewer than the Big Ten or SEC.
2023 Scoreboard
- Big Ten 8 bids, 6-8 record
- SEC 8 bids, 9-8 record
- ACC 5 bids, 7-5 record
Credit that to Miami winning four games while rolling into the Final Four. But the Hurricanes had to overcome the hardship of starting the tournament as a 5-seed despite winning a share of the ACC regular-season title.
But that’s just one season, right? Anything’s possible in one tournament. A ball rolls in. A ball rolls out.
There are more reasons to respect the ACC.
I checked the NCAA Tournament performances by the six power leagues — ACC, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC — since 2010.
I looked at how each league performed in two ways — overall winning percentage in the tournament and how many seasons teams from those six leagues won more NCAA Tournament games than they lost in the 13 individual tournaments.
2010-2023 Scoreboard
1. ACC 134-76, .638 winning percentage. ACC teams won more NCAA games than they lost 11 times, broke even once and posted their only losing tournament performance since 1987 in 2021 when the league went 4-7. So that’s 11-1-1.
2. SEC 100-66 .602. SEC teams won more than they lost 10 times, broke even twice and posted a losing (5-6) record in 2022. That’s 10-1-2.
3. Big 12 109-190 .573, 9-3-1.
4. Big Ten 124-90, .571, 7-2-2.
5. Big East 103-78, .569 7-4-2.
6. Pac-12 68-52, .567, 8-3-2.
What I see is a modest difference between the records of the Big 12, Big Ten, Big East and Pac-12, a bump up to the SEC and a bigger bump to the ACC, which has won 4 of 13 national championships during that stretch. (Only the Big East has more with five.)
The current 2024 bracket forecasts have the ACC getting three sure bids, with Wake Forest and Virginia working to bump that number to four or five. The history of the ACC shows the league deserves more respect.
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