ACC stumbling toward Selection Sunday and the wrong side of history

If you’re a fan of any ACC basketball team, you’ve undoubtedly observed that there appears to be a league-wide slump this season. It’s not just your imagination.

With traditional powers Duke and North Carolina treading water and the ongoing 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 their 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 ACC 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.

Of course 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.

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Jim Valvano and N.C. State won the 1983 NCAA Tournament, the last ACC team to win the championship seeded lower than third. (Photo: Getty Images, Getty Images)

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 also includes Virginia’s 2019 title when the Cavaliers topped the South Regional. You’d have to go all the way back to 1983, N.C. 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.

Follow colleges reporter Eddie Timanus on Twitter @EddieTimanus

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