What happened to ACC basketball this season?
The conference is supposed to be the toughest in the country. It has produced three of the last five national champions and consistently puts teams in the Final Four. Yet somehow, the Missouri Valley Conference got the same number of teams (four) in this year's NCAA tournament as the 12-team ACC.
For the first time in my lifetime, probably for the first time ever since the field was expanded to six rounds, only one-third of the ACC will be playing in the Big Dance. When you consider how much success ACC teams have had in the tournament and how high the conference's RPI was this season (No.3 in the country), the decision to admit only four squads to the 65-team field is mind-boggling.
The NCAA tournament selection committee, chaired by U.Va. Athletic Director Craig Littlepage, insists that they do not consider the number of teams from each conference and instead look to choose the 65 best squads regardless of league affiliation. While this is clearly the best way to go about the process, it still doesn't change the fact that the committee does not believe a .500 record or better in the ACC merits a bid.
While I don't think the committee should set benchmarks that automatically qualify a team for the tournament, such as a .500 record in a top-notch conference, the achievement should at least catch the committee's eye and weigh heavily when they work to pick the 34 at-large teams in the field. And when you look closely at Florida State and Maryland, the two teams that reached that mark this season, it seems odd that they were left out of the tournament. Not when teams like Utah State and Air Force get at-large bids. Not when four teams from the Missouri Valley Conference are awarded berths in the tournament. Not when the 11-team Big Ten, who lost to the ACC for the eighth straight season in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, gets six teams in.
Florida State not only finished 9-7 in conference play, but beat No.1-ranked Duke in the final week of the regular season. And if it weren't for the shoddy officiating at Cameron Indoor in January, which led to the suspension of the three ACC officials working the game, the Seminoles would have beaten Duke on their home floor as well.
FSU did have an out-of-conference schedule that left much to be desired and did lose in the first round of the ACC tournament to Wake Forest, but that still doesn't change the fact that the Seminoles went 19-9 overall and played well enough in the ACC to finish alone in fifth place.
Maryland won its last two regular season games and beat Georgia Tech in the opening round of the ACC tournament to finish 19-12 overall while playing eight games against opponents ranked in the top 25. When you consider the 8-8 conference record on top of that, the Terrapins should be dancing right now instead of hosting an 11 a.m. contest Saturday against Manhattan in the NIT.
Even though this year's ACC may not have been as strong as it was last year, the conference still boasts solid teams from top to bottom. The Missouri Valley Conference, on the other hand, includes teams like Drake, Evansville, Indiana State and Illinois State, all of which finished well under .500 overall this year.
Bradley and Northern Iowa were improving their tournament profiles by beating up on these doormats while squads like Maryland and Florida State had tough competition almost every night during the ACC season. The two MVC teams tied for fifth in their conference with records of 11-7 against in-conference competition, but still got the nod over Maryland and Florida State.
In the end, nothing really happened to ACC basketball this season. The conference lost some of its big name players to the NBA Draft, but was still ranked the No.3 conference in the country and still provided a higher level of play than anything the MVC could produce.
Somewhere along the line, however, the selection committee lost respect for the ACC. Considering Virginia was only a couple of wins away from being in a similar position to Maryland this season, the Cavaliers can only hope this was a momentary lapse in judgment and not the beginning of a new trend.
If only to put all doubts to rest, I propose that next year the ACC take on the Valley in the inaugural ACC-MVC Challenge. I mean, the ACC has dominated the Big Ten all these years, why not move on to a conference that is apparently the ACC's equal? Once the MVC fails to win a single game in the Challenge, maybe then fifth and sixth place teams in the ACC will get the respect they deserve come NCAA selection time.
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