ACC having March Madness success when it needed it the most
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March Madness: What to watch for in Saturday’s Elite Eight games
UConn continued their dominant ways in the Sweet 16, but will be joined by a hanful of underdogs in Saturday’s Elite Eight action.
DALLAS — Jim Phillips, the ACC commissioner, took the first flight out of Los Angeles on Friday morning but arrived here with a pep in his step that belied his lack of sleep.
In the political realm that seems to dominate so much of the conversation in college sports right now, these have not been great times for Phillips. His conference has been relegated to second-class status in recent College Football Playoff expansion negotiations, having been strong-armed by the SEC and Big Ten into accepting a lower share of revenue that used to be split equally among the Power Five.
Meanwhile, the ACC is being sued by Florida State and Clemson over language in the document that binds them to the league through 2036, suggesting their departure is only a matter of time and legalities.
And whether it was the CFP snubbing the Seminoles in December or Phillips’ league getting only five bids to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, there has been an air of grievance — and fragility — around the entire operation.
But the ACC’s roots are here in this tournament, in this sport where it usually seems to transcend whatever ugliness is swirling around the conference. And on Friday night, as the ACC secured a third spot in the Elite Eight — two of them here in the South Regional — Phillips acknowledged that March has made so many of those big problems seem a little smaller.
“This is an amazing conference that has 71 years of history, that stands for the right things and has been about incredible success competitively, national championship caliber in all sports – football, basketball, Olympic sports with world class universities,” Phillips told USA TODAY Sports. “So some of the narrative to me gets completely distorted from the reality of what’s actually happening in our conference. There’s a tension to certain areas of it, and I understand that. But to me, that hasn’t kept us from continuing to perform.”
And performing they are — to an undeniable degree.
The ACC will have at least one Final Four team cutting down nets Sunday in American Airlines Center when No. 4 seed Duke and No. 11 seed North Carolina State face off for third time this month. And it will have a second participant if No. 6 seed Clemson can beat No. 4 seed Alabama Saturday in the West Regional.
These are teams, by the way, that finished second, tied for fifth and 10th place in the ACC regular-season standings. And if Clemson can reach the Final Four for the first time in program history, it will be the second time in three years the ACC has had multiple representatives on the final weekend.
Dysfunctional conference? Not in this tournament.
“I’m not surprised,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “We’ve had battles against those guys the whole year.”
There are, of…
Read More: ACC having March Madness success when it needed it the most 2024-03-31 16:00:44