In a world where teams are split into divisions and conferences, teams build heated rivalries with others based on proximity and rate of play – this is also true for fan bases. Sometimes, these conferences get shaken up, adding new teams which can drastically shake up a season. Many people may think that their favorite team is in one of these toughest divisions, and maybe they are. The toughest conference, or division for the sake of this article, is the Atlantic Coast Conference in NCAA men’s basketball.
“But, what about the AL East in baseball?” Sure, having the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox is tough, especially when you add in an increasingly improved Tampa Bay Rays and Baltimore Orioles. It’s hard to compare, though, when you can purchase a winning team every year. Disqualified.
“Okay, how about the NFC East?” Well, this one is easy. All these teams are terrible and since they play each other six times a year, the results get skewed and it looks tougher then it really is. The same goes for the NFC North and AFC North, minus the teams being terrible.
“Well Liam, I don’t know where you’re going with this then.” Lucky for you, imaginary reader asking me phantom questions, I’m going to explain.
The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) has a total of 15 teams, three of which were added this year. It has the second most national championships with 13, only behind the Pacific 12, which has 16. The Louisville Cardinals are set to join the ACC next season and the Maryland Terrapins are leaving.
Of the 32-game schedule, 18 of those games are against conference opponents. When you have the likes of Duke, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Florida State and newly added Notre Dame, Syracuse and Pittsburgh, terrible, yet amazing things are going to happen. Sure, a lot of conferences have great teams. Just look at the Pacific 12, filled with great teams like Arizona, Oregon and UCLA. The Big 10 is another one, with its top-tier teams always in the running in March. But the ACC takes the cake, especially after the teams it added.
This theory was tested this week during the Big 10/ACC challenge that featured some key matchups, including Duke/Michigan, Michigan St/North Carolina and Syracuse/Indiana. The challenge included 12 games and like last year, ended in a 6-6 tie. I’m not saying that these results are meaningful, especially when you look at how unranked North Carolina dominated the countries top ranked Michigan State. The season is far too young for this challenge to show everything important, though it is a window into the potential of some of these teams.
With the NCAA quickly becoming the home to high school players for merely a year before they jump to the NBA, the ACC tends to, for the most part, retain its players for more than one season. Since the 2000 draft, only 5 ACC players have left their schools as freshmen – Austin Rivers (Duke), Kyrie Irving (Duke), Brandon Wright (UNC), Marvin Williams (UNC), and Luol Deng (Duke); The Kentucky Wildcats have had 10 freshmen leave since 2009/2010 and another few expected to leave at the end of this season.
Considering that high school players must play at least one season in college before making the jump, that goes to show the level of professionalism put into most of these programs. That professionalism, my friends, is spearheaded by some of the winningest coaches in college sports history.
Jim Boeheim, head coach of the Syracuse Orange, has the second most all-time wins with 927. The Orange are a team that threaten to go deep in March every year and this season won’t be any different. Roy Williams has the 17th most wins in college basketball history with 704. No matter who is has on the roster North Carolina is always dangerous in conference games. The coach with the most wins in the history of college basketball is also the head coach of the USA national team. Mike Krzyzeski has 963 wins, 890 while leading the Duke Blue Devils. Starting next season, the Louisville Cardinals coach, Rick Pitino, will bring his 668 career wins – good for 20th all-time – into the ACC to make it even more star studded in the coaching department.
With the “one and done” being a relatively new annual tradition, many teams attempt to stack its roster full of first round draft talent in hopes of quick glory. While on paper this looks like a blueprint for success, it’s not always the case. This season, Kentucky had one of the most successful draft classes in NCAA history, signing five of the ESPN top-10 ranked high school players. Kentucky has been the trendsetter in the case of “one and done,” something other schools are beginning to do more of.
Beginning next season, Duke will take a giant step towards this exact method. Four of the ESPN top-25 have committed to Duke, making it the greatest recruiting class in Duke history. In theory, this is a great method; recruiting players that are sure bets to be NBA first round draft picks can’t fail, right? Kentucky has won one national title using this method, 25 percent success rate under head coach John Calipari. Last year, the year Kentucky went all in on freshmen, which saw the teams worst results in over two decades. Duke hopes to avoid that next season and live up to the “dream team” status they have received. But that is another story for another day.
In a conference that has arguably the greatest rivalry in sports, Duke/North Carolina, adding the teams they did will only make it far more ferocious and incredibly entertaining. To win the conference, teams will have to get through opponents that could very well be ranked in the Associated Press Top 25. The next three months will be entertaining but March, oh March, you will be the most thrilling of all.
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