RALEIGH, N.C. _ The first Duke-North Carolina game has always served as a sort of unofficial halfway point to the ACC season, typically a time to reflect and reassess. There are a couple big diversions from typical this year.
For one, that first meeting usually carries the heavy portent of title implications, even with so much of the season yet to play. That clearly isn't the case Saturday with North Carolina looking up at .500. The ACC's switch to a 20-game schedule dilutes the meaning ever so slightly anyway, while pushing it 12 games beyond the actual midway point.
Nevertheless, it's as good a time as any to look back on the first three months of the basketball season and the first half of the ACC season, where Duke and Louisville lead the way but other than that, things haven't exactly gone as planned, starting with that expanded conference schedule.
When the ACC went to a 20-game schedule, one of the goals was to create more high-quality games to impress the NCAA Tournament selection committee, not finish with eight teams at 10-10. Due to circumstances no one could have foreseen even as late as this fall, the precipitous drop in quality among ACC teams has left most of the schools in a situation where they might have been better off playing two more decent nonconference games.
At the moment, the ACC only has three locks for the NCAA Tournament, and if anything, would-be bubble teams are weakening their cases instead of strengthening them as they're sucked into the maw at the mediocre middle of the ACC. The ACC has two teams in the top 10 of Ken Pomeroy's efficiency ratings (Duke and Louisville), one more in the top 20 (Florida State) and a whopping 10 in the netherland between 50 and 100. That group isn't doing much to polish anyone's resume.
The reasons for the ACC's struggles are well documented, and that Virginia and Syracuse are in contention for a double-bye in Greensboro despite having their worst teams since 2011 and 2017 respectively doesn't exactly speak well of the league. Still, three is the worst-case scenario for tournament bids, and Virginia's probably a coin flip to be a fourth while Syracuse has an outside shot at best. The best-case scenario for the ACC is a strong Virginia finish combined with an upset tournament winner that gets the league to five. And everyone exhales.
