Duke, UNC not only ACC teams faltering

If you’re a fan of any Atlantic Coast Conference men’s basketball team, you’ve undoubtedly observed there appears to be a leaguewide slump this season. It’s not just your imagination.

With traditional powers Duke and North Carolina treading water and the COVID-19 pandemic still causing schedule headaches, March 14 could be a rough Selection Sunday for the league.

Even recent power Virginia, though still atop the standings, doesn’t exactly look like a title contender. The reigning NCAA Tournament champions were the only conference team mentioned in the first Top 16 preview released by the NCAA committee on Saturday, but the Cavaliers’ place as a No. 3 seed is now tenuous at best after Monday night’s blowout loss to Florida State.

So when was the last time the conference didn’t even have a No. 3 seed on the bracket? That would be never.

The NCAA began seeding the entire field starting with the 1979 tournament, and in every year but one since then the ACC has had at least one No. 1 or No. 2 seed. The exception was 1990, but even that year Duke made the national championship game as a No. 3.

That doesn’t mean the league got a team through to the Final Four every year, but being placed on the first or second line of the bracket is clearly the best path to a championship run.

Since the expansion of the tournament field to 64 teams in 1985, every NCAA champion from the ACC has entered as either a No. 1 or 2 seed. That’s mostly the Blue Devils and Tar Heels but includes Virginia’s 2019 title when the Cavaliers topped the South Regional. You’d have to go all the way back to 1983, North Carolina State’s miraculous championship run as a No. 6 seed, to find a league representative that started outside the top eight that ended up bringing home the trophy.

Unfortunately for the league’s current contenders, time is running short for needed quality victories to move up the bracket. Virginia Tech’s game at Florida State, originally scheduled for Saturday, is just one potentially helpful postponed contest that will be difficult to make up with Selection Sunday just over three weeks away.

Combined with the league’s winless bowl season in football, this isn’t looking like a banner year in the ACC in the money sports.