Collegiate Times

Some people are making a big deal of the performance of Atlantic Coast Conference teams in the 2007 NCAA Tournament, but I'm not one of them.

What I have seen thus far has not really surprised me, at least not significantly. Yes, I thought the ACC may have more teams in the Sweet Sixteen and thought that the University of North Carolina had the potential to make a run at the national title and at least the Final Four, but the results aren't really all that shocking.

The ACC, a league now completely eliminated from NCAA Tournament play, finished its big dance with an overall record of 7-7, which is not really that bad. Let's be honest, the ACC did not really have any elite teams this season, but a lot of solid tournament-level teams that could play erratically at times.

The ACC is undoubtedly still America's premier college basketball conference from top to bottom. Of the four conferences remaining (Southeastern, Big Ten, Big East and Pac-10), do any of those leagues boast a team near as good as the North Carolina State University Wolfpack as its tenth-best member institution in men's basketball? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Having one elite team doesn't make a league great — it makes it top-heavy. The Big East's bottom-feeders are abysmal at best. C'mon, who would you rather play on the road, Seton Hall or NC State?

Actually, let's ask Tech head coach Seth Greenberg; he's played both away from home this season. Although I haven't actually asked Seth this question, I feel pretty confident in saying that he would likely rather play Dick Vitale's Pirates at the Ghettolands, or in this season's case Madison Square Garden, than Red-Blazer Sidney Lowe's team at the RBC Center in Raleigh.

Does it even need to be stated that the ACC has better basketball than the Big Ten? If it does, just consider the fact that the ACC is 8-0 in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. 'Nuf said.

The Pac-10 is a solid league, but really needs better years out of its historically premier teams like the Washington Huskies, Arizona Wildcats and Stanford Cardinal if it is to be considered the best in the country.

The Southeastern Conference being considered better than the ACC in basketball is fairly absurd. The ACC is in basketball what the SEC is in football — just plain intimidating.

Yes, teams like Florida, Tennessee and LSU are consistently good, but are we really about to put them up there with Duke, UNC and Maryland — teams that get every opponent's best shot every night and still manage to win 20-plus games?

Plus, it just is not all that hard to win on the road in the SEC. Colin Cowherd is right, going on the road in SEC Basketball is like doing so in ACC Football; the majority of the road sites just aren't that intimidating, although a few exceptions do exist.

While I believe the ACC to be the best basketball league from top to bottom, I would have liked to see them do better in the NCAA Tournament.

However, the inconsistency of the league's better teams hurt the conference in the big dance. We all know that teams like Virginia, Virginia Tech, North Carolina, Maryland and Duke are able to score big-time wins, but each is also able to lose games it should easily win.

Bottom line, consistency is key to success in the NCAA Tournament; when you have to win six straight games to win or four straight to advance to the Final Four, being inconsistent will eventually catch up to you. All of the aforementioned teams played exceptionally well at points during the season, but each that went saw its level of play slump at some point this March, and was subsequently eliminated by a more consistent team.

The 2007 NCAA Tournament has only shown me things I already know, many ACC teams are pretty inconsistent, and teams that go deep in the big dance are not.