The cream of the Atlantic Coast Conference played Wednesday night, and the early game proved worthy of the league’s sterling reputation this year, as Syracuse’s John Gillon banked in a buzzer-beater from deep to give the Orange a 78-75 victory over No. 10 Duke. Coupled with No. 8 North Carolina’s 74-63 victory over No. 7 Louisville later on, the night was a showcase for four programs that all have won national titles, feature Hall of Fame coaches and (especially given Syracuse’s victory) will qualify for next month’s NCAA Tournament.
But if the ACC, one of college basketball’s most storied leagues, leaves a mark this year, it will not be because of its best teams. It will be because even its worst teams are pretty good.
The conference is in striking distance of the record for tournament berths. That figure, 11, was achieved in 2011 by the Big East in its earlier, larger incarnation of 16 teams. Already, the ACC, which has 15 members in men’s basketball, will almost certainly become the first conference other than the Big East to send more than seven teams to the tournament, according to figures provided by the NCAA. The tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985 (and to 65 in 2001 and 68 in 2011).
No matter what happens, numerous people familiar with both leagues agreed that the Big East of 2010-11, which included eventual champion Connecticut, is not as good as the ACC of this season.
“Looking at the ACC, they probably have more depth, because some of the so-called bottom teams like Georgia Tech and Pitt and others have gone and beaten good teams,” said Mike Tranghese, a former Big East commissioner. (Tranghese is now a consultant on basketball matters for the Southeastern Conference.)
Notre Dame coach Mike Brey, who led the Fighting Irish to second place in the Big East’s regular season in 2010-11 and currently has them fifth in the ACC, agreed. “I think this one’s tougher than that Big East year we got 11 in,” he said, because “the so-called bottom of the league is better than the bottom of the Big East back then.”
As an example, Louisville coach Rick Pitino noted that while a preseason news media poll picked Georgia Tech to finish second to last this season, the Yellow Jackets are 16-12 and 7-8 in the conference. Georgia Tech’s solid NCAA tournament résumé includes wins over North Carolina, No. 19 Florida State and No. 21 Notre Dame.
The conference’s bottom three teams — Boston College, Pittsburgh and North Carolina State — have beaten Syracuse, Florida State, Duke and No. 18 Virginia.
“On any given night,” Pitino said, “the bottom can beat the top.”
How the ACC arrived at this point is similar to how the Big East arrived at its own.
When the Big East was formed in 1979, the ACC — which then had eight members — was its model as a tidy, basketball-centric league in a college sports landscape dominated by football. It steadily accumulated members, including several football powers that helped the league amass revenue, all while maintaining an emphasis on national-championship-level basketball.
The 16-team Big East, which had grown alongside other leagues after adding football, came apart soon after the 2010-11 season, and the diaspora spilled over not only into a new Big East — a 10-team league with superb basketball and no football — and the new American Athletic Conference, but also to three different Power 5 conferences.
The ACC, which at previous points had absorbed Big East members like Virginia Tech and Miami, poached the top four Big East teams from that 2010-11 regular season: Syracuse, Louisville, Notre Dame and Pittsburgh.
Now it is the ACC that has the resources that come with being a football powerhouse — the current football champion, Clemson, is a charter member — to add to its tradition and its historical emphasis on basketball.
Its recruiting footprint extends up and down the East Coast and nearly to Chicago. Its coaches range from Hall of Famers like Pitino, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and North Carolina’s Roy Williams to lifers like Florida State’s Leonard Hamilton and Miami’s Jim Larrañaga to up-and-comers like Georgia Tech’s Josh Pastner and Virginia’s Tony Bennett.
“You’re talking about another league with institutions seriously interested in being really good at college basketball,” said Kevin White, Duke’s athletic director, who also served in that role at Notre Dame when it was in the Big East.
White, who is a member of the men’s basketball tournament selection committee, added, “The ACC has collectively been very strong-minded about being a pinnacle conference in basketball.”