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OT - NCAA Tournament 2014

You do know that pretty much every coach of a prominent program spends the week before NCAA Selection Sunday banging on at length about the relative strength of their league, right? I know it's annoying ... bt it's completely typical. The only people who pay it any mind are fans and provincial sports writer types.
 
I'm sorry, but I don't get the ACC hate around here. One of the passions I've developed in my nearly 19 years living in the Triangle--after growing up in the heart of the "old" Big East--is ACC basketball. It's a treasure and we are fortunate to have four of its more prominent programs within a 90-minute drive. There are few rivalries in all of sports better than the Carolina-Duke-State basketball rivalries.

Perhaps someone like me, who wasn't born and raised in the area when the conference was smaller, has less nostalgia for the conference's good ol' days of seven or eight teams, but I am thrilled with the expansion of the ACC. Adding programs that pretty consistently field highly-competitive basketball teams--like Syracuse, Louisville and (to a lesser extent) Pittsburgh--is awesome. I'm a Carolina fan and I have and will find it a lot easier to get up for a regular season against Syracuse or Louisville than I will against Clemson or Georgia Tech. Sure, I'm not too pumped up about games against BC or Notre Dame, but the overall impact of expansion for basketball is fine with me.

With programs like Carolina, Duke, State, Virginia, Wake, Syracuse and Louisville that regularly have winning seasons, I think we're in for a lot of great basketball for years to come.
 
One of the worst aspects of the previous (not recent) additions to the ACC was the unfortunate undoing of the conventional Home & Home series. I don't think I've ever heard a good explaination as to why the NC State-Duke Home & Home demise was seen as exceptable to anyone.
 
HeyKurtz said:
I'm sorry, but I don't get the ACC hate around here. One of the passions I've developed in my nearly 19 years living in the Triangle--after growing up in the heart of the "old" Big East--is ACC basketball. It's a treasure and we are fortunate to have four of its more prominent programs within a 90-minute drive. There are few rivalries in all of sports better than the Carolina-Duke-State basketball rivalries.
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Can't speak for others but I enjoy ACC basketball as well. What I do hate is the "ACC superiority" crap you have to listen to regularly around the Triangle, especially when it is unfounded. When the conference is good feel free to brag and enjoy it. When it is down or average, such as this year, please accept it and don't make BS excuses such as ACC expansion....which is total crap. I fail to see how adding additional teams (that are actually good in basketball) hurt Duke, UNC and other "traditional' ACC schools. If the teams are good you will win your games and usually increased competition helps in the long run and tournament time. I don't see Virginia fans this year complaining about ACC expansion?
 
Just note that a lot if not all of that Acc superiority talk comes from just two fan bases ... differing colors of blue, you do the math. And yeah, they annoy everybody else inside the ACC as well.
 
HeyKurtz said:
I'm sorry, but I don't get the ACC hate around here.

Perhaps someone like me, who wasn't born and raised in the area when the conference was smaller, has less nostalgia for the conference's good ol' days of seven or eight teams, but I am thrilled with the expansion of the ACC. Adding programs that pretty consistently field highly-competitive basketball teams--like Syracuse, Louisville and (to a lesser extent) Pittsburgh--is awesome. I'm a Carolina fan and I have and will find it a lot easier to get up for a regular season against Syracuse or Louisville than I will against Clemson or Georgia Tech. Sure, I'm not too pumped up about games against BC or Notre Dame, but the overall impact of expansion for basketball is fine with me.
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I guess that did it for me. I do not care about Louisville, Boston College and Syracuse. I doubt I ever will. They're just too far away in places I don't really care to visit. I've watched Clemson all my life and got excited about GA tech, FL St and Miami joining the league.

At twelve teams I started to notice it was hard to care about each individual rivalry. And if you only play at someone's football stadium every four or maybe six years, you are not in their conference.

The ACC is no longer a conference. It's a league with many teams I won't bother to watch.
 
Yeah ... but reality is reality and you just described virtually all of the BCS conferences. In general, the ridiculous amount of money in the football TV rights deals has made basketball an afterthought. At least the new ACC has cobbled together a strong group with which to move forward. I mean ... a league with traditional powers UNC, Duke, Syracuse and Louisville that also features secondary level schools with strong traditions in NC State, Ga Tech, Pitt and Virginia ... that's a oretty good setup to produce some significant contenders year in and year out. Sure, some years will be better than others, as that's the nature of these things. But the ACC is all but guaranteed to remain relevant in basketball for the foreseeable future. That's about all you can ask in the modern landscape of college basketball.
 
jeffbear said:
Yeah ... but reality is reality and you just described virtually all of the BCS conferences. In general, the ridiculous amount of money in the football TV rights deals has made basketball an afterthought. At least the new ACC has cobbled together a strong group with which to move forward. I mean ... a league with traditional powers UNC, Duke, Syracuse and Louisville that also features secondary level schools with strong traditions in NC State, Ga Tech, Pitt and Virginia ... that's a oretty good setup to produce some significant contenders year in and year out. Sure, some years will be better than others, as that's the nature of these things. But the ACC is all but guaranteed to remain relevant in basketball for the foreseeable future. That's about all you can ask in the modern landscape of college basketball.
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Bingo!

Had the ACC not made these moves, it would be near death or would have become a basketball-only conference. My point is that if they did have to expand, I'm pretty pleased that they picked up schools like Syracuse, Louisville, Notre Dame and Pittsburgh.
 
HeyKurtz said:
Bingo!

Had the ACC not made these moves, it would be near death or would have become a basketball-only conference. My point is that if they did have to expand, I'm pretty pleased that they picked up schools like Syracuse, Louisville, Notre Dame and Pittsburgh.
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I can assure you that FSU and Clemson would have found their way to football conferences (with Ga Tech hot on their heels) had the ACC not chosen to go through with the last two expansions. That writing was on the wall in LARGE print. From there you're probably looking at a Southeast version of the "new" Big East with the NC schools and Virginia making up the core group. Ugh. That would have been slow financial death and the end of whatever passes for college football in North Carolina
 
Tis a horrible day in heaven as our beloved Badgers lost to the heathens of North Dakota.
Hold your heads down for a moment of silence and know the Badgers will return and
remove the impostors from North Dakota and regain their rightful place on top of the standings.

Note the Wisconsin Basketball team is in the elite eight and joined by the following teams from the triangle area: Duke, UNC, NCSU and CCU. Whoops, I'm sorry they've all been removed.
Y'all can still back a winner though, Wisconsin is America's team.
 
I had UVa over Louisville in the finals. That went down in flames in a span of about two minutes last night.
 
I had Louisville winning it all, so my bracket is dead.

I am, however, one of eight (out of 44) people still alive in a Pick Six game where we pick one winner in each round as the tournament progresses. (You can't pick the same team twice and you get more points for picking lower seeds.) Carolina, UCLA and Michigan got me through the first three rounds and I've picked Michigan State in the Elite Eight games.
 
My bracket is hanging on by a thread. I still have a Florida vs. Arizona final in play but everything else dies with Louisville and Virginia. Stupid Mich State does it to me every bloody year.
 
Michigan over Florida with Michigan St. and Arizona also in F4. I'm still alive with all 4.... Way behind because of my 2nd round blunders, but still alive.
 
Well, those Arizona picks went by the wayside last night. My bracket is dead- completely- with Louisville and Arizona out. Perhaps it will come down to Florida and Michigan State?
 
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