ACCeptable Results?
Posted March 22, 2009, 8:46 PM ET

Back in 2005, the North Carolina Tar Heels won the national title and in the process cut down the nets in St. Louis. Roy Williams and UNC Nation were on top of the basketball world.

For passionate ACC basketball fans, that seems like ages ago.

For the past four NCAA Tournaments, the ACC has been just another league searching for a championship. Earlier this decade, Maryland, Duke and UNC had won the big prize and even Georgia Tech played for a chance to cut down the nets and call themselves national champs.

After watching the ACC get throttled over the weekend (no disrespect to UNC and Duke), I started looking a little deeper into the conference's lackluster productivity since the championship season of 2005.

Before I break down the numbers for you, can you remember a weaker effort by the conference during the month of March? Granted, this isn't March 11, 1979, better known as "Black Sunday" on Tobacco Road. That's the day that both #1-seeded UNC and #2-seeded Duke lost in Reynolds Coliseum to Penn and St. John's, respectively.

The last weekend of basketball, with the exception of Duke and UNC saving face for the conference in Greensboro, was downright hideous and embarrassing. Just take a sample of these outcomes and performances:

That's completely embarrassing for a conference that has been the standard of excellence for college hoops. I can't think of a worse overall weekend of tournament play by the conference. The last time the league suffered a losing mark in the NCAA Tourney was back in 1987.

Right now, the ACC is 5-5 with both shades of blue still playing. Only the SEC's weak 1-3 mark is worse among the power leagues. Even the Big Ten is over .500 this post-season (6-5)...and what does that tell you? But when you consider the Big East is 11-2 and the Big 12 is 9-3, it puts the ACC's horrific weekend into perspective.

Now let's get to the numbers, and it will showcase exactly what I'm saying about the ACC's inability to produce over the last couple of years on the big stage:

Since UNC's title in 2005, here is a list of the conferences / teams that they have placed in the Sweet 16:

Big East Pac 10 Big 12 SEC ACC Big 10 CUSA MVC A-10 West Coast Colonial So Con Horizon Sun Belt MWC

15 9 7 6 6 5 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1

The Big East has dominated, and this year is no exception with 5 Big East teams in the Sweet 16. A better sampling of the ACC's inability to compete in hoops is in the overall record, the last four years of NCAA tourney play.

Here are the updated NCAA records the last four years by the power conferences, heading into this week's Elite 8 games:

Big 12 Big East SEC Pac 10 ACC Big 10

31-16 32-17 29-17 32-21 24-20 23-21

How about Elite 8 appearances?

Big East Big 12 Pac 10 CUSA SEC ACC

4 4 4 3 3 2

The good news for the ACC is that they still have Duke and UNC alive...but the bigger question remains: for how long? We'll find out beginning Thursday night, when the Blue Devils battle with Villanova from the Big East.

Who knows?...Maybe the ACC can claim another national title with the Heels or Duke, but right now, it appears the odds are against them.

---

Like seemingly everyone else, my brackets seem OK. There haven't been any major upsets, and that doesn't surprise me at all. I'd stated before the tourney that it appears to me that the top 6 teams in America look to be a cut above everyone else. But teams ranked from #7 thru #40 are pretty even, and on any given night, anything can and will happen.

The biggest surprise to me has been the ACC's inability to perform. What appeared to be a strength, now looks like a weakness. The conference's quality depth has been obliterated in the post-season. The numbers I provided above speak to that point.

On my bracket, I've got 12 of 16 teams still playing, including all of my Elite 8 match-ups:

Since every team seeded in the Top 3 has survived to the Sweet 16, the games this week should be tremendous.

By the way, President Obama caught some grief for his basketball selections. Surely he has more to do than spend time with the media going over his Final Four picks....based on the fact that he only picked 19 of the 32 first round games correctly....maybe he isn't watching college hoops around the clock?

He still has a chance to get all of his Final Four picks....Louisville, Memphis, Pitt and UNC.