Collegiate Times

The juggernaut that used to be Atlantic Coast Conference basketball perhaps never seemed so hollow as when Memphis made one of its premier players look downright foolish.

In the week leading up to Maryland's merciless beating at the hands of the Conference USA champions, Terrapin team leader Greivis Vasquez told the media that Memphis would have a losing conference record if it played in the ACC.

Granted, the Tigers sport a No. 2 seed while the Terrapins crawled in as a mere No. 10, so Memphis' 89-70 victory doesn't mean the ACC has fallen into a bit of a rut.

Still, somebody should've told Vasquez that, in each for the past four years, the Tigers have found more success in the NCAAs than all the ACC teams combined.

This brought me to wonder whether Vasquez' notion of ACC men's basketball elitism remains valid right now.

It certainly did during a span from 2001-05 in which the ACC claimed national championship hardware in three of five seasons thanks to Duke, Maryland and North Carolina. But long gone are the days of Jason Williams, Juan Dixon and Sean May.

I woke up Monday morning realizing the conference at which I attend school had seen all of its National Invitational Tournament bids vanish, but took comfort in knowing the ACC had indeed advanced two Big Dance squads to the Sweet 16.

A cold sweat then overcame me at the thought that this had become a relatively good year for the ACC. So far, it's as good a postseason as any for this conference since 2005.

Following his team's claiming of the 2009 ACC Championship, Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewksi argued the merits of his league for NCAA tourney bids.

"I love the Big Ten, but I can't believe people are saying seven or eight teams, and they're not saying nine or 10 from our conference," Krzyzewksi said. "In (the ACC), count how many teams have been ranked in the top 10."

Following his squad's close victory over Virginia Tech on Feb. 28, Coach K would lobby for the Hokies' candidacy as an NCAA tournament team.

Tech would continue its skid to drop six of the final seven regular season games, head to the second round of the NIT, and get taken out to the woodshed of its own house against the Baylor Bears of the Big 12.

So has the ACC just become part of the major conference pack? Is it high time it gets off its high horse?

I devised a system to figure it out. Since North Carolina won the NCAA championship in 2005, the ACC hasn't so much as sent a team to the final round, so its drop shall be charted from the 2006 season.

Am I a math expert? No. Have I ever been invited to any ACC media committees? No.

I just have the assumption that the NCAA tournament is important.

Using a simple formula that values Sweet 16 entries as one point, Final Four entries as two points and championship winners as four points, statistics found that ACC men's basketball has actually lagged behind every other major conference except the Big Ten - and barely - since 2006.

Including the current tournament, here's how it shakes out:

The SEC racks up 20 points, Big East nabs 16, Pac-10 snaps up 15, Big 12 garners 14, the ACC limps in with eight and the Big Ten is in last with seven.

Heck, and let's throw in Memphis, by itself. The Tigers pulled down six.

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