Duke remains great, but the rest of ACC needs a basketball reckoning
RALEIGH, N.C. – We can officially report that all’s good with Cooper Flagg’s left ankle, which means all’s good with Duke. Blue Devils fans can exhale. Their 93-49 victory to open the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, with Flagg showing no sign of distress in his 22 minutes, means the march to a potential national championship is on.
As for the rest of the Atlantic Coast Conference?
Time to turn on the sirens. DEFCON 1. Take cover immediately. Look out below.
We are two days into this NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and all is not good with Duke’s peers in the nation’s most-storied basketball conference. Already, the ACC is down to its last breath – and it stinks like a case of acid reflux after a night of bratwurst and bourbon.
Maybe Duke can sanitize some of the stench. With Flagg at full health, the Blue Devils appear to be that good. But this year, there’s no running from the truth.
The ACC needs a basketball reckoning.
With just one team of the remaining 32 in the NCAA Tournament, there is no plastering over cracks in the foundation. After Louisville’s decisive loss to Creighton, Clemson’s embarrassing crashout against McNeese and North Carolina’s failed comeback from 22 points down in the second half against Ole Miss, this cannot be spun.
Only Duke, and Duke alone, can save the ACC’s wretched reputation for this year. And even then, the Blue Devils cutting down the nets in San Antonio would only suggest a heroic effort by coach Jon Scheyer and his players to overcome a league that inflated Duke’s record and didn’t provide the kind of test it deserved before the postseason.
These problems clearly existed a year ago when the ACC received just five NCAA bids. But the scoreboard is the scoreboard, and commissioner Jim Phillips was having a blast jetting around the country watching NC State make a miracle run to the Final Four, Duke and Clemson reach the Elite Eight and North Carolina get to the second weekend.
It’s easy to say your league is undervalued when you’ve got four of the final 16 teams.
But if you’re going to make a case that the ACC deserved better from the selection committee based on its performance in the tournament, you have no choice but to wear it when the league face-plants 12 months later.
Here’s how embarrassing things have gotten for ACC basketball: At Thursday’s news conference here, UConn coach Dan Hurley was asked about St. John’s coach Rick Pitino recently suggesting the ACC and Big East should merge.
“I don’t know if I have any space in my brain for conference realignment,” Hurley said. “I mean, I’ve been saying that. I talked to (Mike Krzyzewski) about that. He texted me that. I’ve mentioned it to people at the Big East. That would just obviously make tons of sense to come up with some way to get – I think the basketball programs in the ACC could really use that.
‘I think Syracuse has been hurt by losing the Garden, and Pitt’s been hurt by losing the Garden. It’s harder for them. Obviously there’s been major advantages from a football standpoint. I hope I’m not speaking out of turn for those folks, but how cool would it be to find a way to get Syracuse back in some type of ACC-Big East consortium tournament?”
Think about how humiliating that is for the ACC to have a Big East coach talking about that, here in the middle of college basketball country, inside an arena where last year’s ACC champion NC State plays its home games.
And even more humiliating: Why in the world would the Big East bail out a rival league like that? What would be in it for them?
Tournament success the last few years pushed off this conversation, but there’s no question now that the ACC must have it.
This isn’t about nonconference scheduling or computer numbers. It’s about the quality of its basketball teams. It needs better coaches and more investment in its rosters, period.
Duke has held up its end of the bargain. Louisville, despite its first-round flameout, is one of college basketball’s biggest spenders and quickly clawed back from the depths in its first year under Pat Kelsey. If NC State indeed lands the plane on hiring McNeese coach Will Wade and gives him money to spend, the Wolfpack will be nationally relevant quickly.
Those three programs will be fine. Everyone else in the ACC?
Major, major question marks.
Syracuse is giving Adrian Autry another year, which is probably a mistake. North Carolina is hiring a general manager, but not much is going to change if Hubert Davis just isn’t up to a job of this magnitude. Virginia’s impending hire of Ryan Odom makes sense on paper, but does the Cavaliers’ athletic department truly understand what it takes to compete these days? I’m not sure.
The league needs more – a lot more – from Georgia Tech. Pittsburgh is stuck in neutral. Wake Forest is always one or two pieces away from breaking through. Florida State and Miami both hired young, bargain-basement coaches because most of their investment is in football right now.
Point being, while everything in college sports is cyclical, there’s no guarantee ACC basketball is going to get back to the glory days anytime soon. The league is so big, so unwieldy with so much men’s basketball dead-weight (hello Boston College, Virginia Tech) that the league needs to start thinking boldly about how to get its mojo back.
Even if it wins a national championship, Duke can only carry the ACC so far. The Blue Devils looked like a truly great team Friday, taking care of business in their first NCAA Tournament game. But however far they go, it’s clear it will be despite the league they play in.