nick stevens' golo sports blog

give the acc the credit it deserves

 abuse

Is anyone else sick and tired of hearing about how the Atlantic Coast Conference is in a supposed "slump" this year?

I am.

Up until recently, every single team in the conference had a .500 record or better. Now, only Virginia has a record below .500, but their non-conference record was well above that mark.

If you are one of those people who claim the ACC is so bad this year, ask yourself: Are you comparing the ACC to ACC's of the past? Or, are you comparing them to other conferences in the country today?

You should be doing the latter.

I can name reason after reason as to why the ACC isn't as bad as people say, and believe it or not, it all starts at the bottom.

The Virginia Cavaliers have had a mediocre conference season so far, but even they have had a quality win. The Wahoos beat No. 17 Arizona in Tucson in November, and they had a two-point loss to Syracuse in early December.

Duke won the Maui Invitational, where they are undefeated, by knocking off the likes of Illinois and No. 11 Marquette; and N.C. State put together a string of wins that included South Carolina and Villanova to claim the Old Spice Classic title. In fact, Duke had two Top 25 wins by the end of November, and the Wolfpack have played more Top 25 teams than any other team in the conference.

Did I mention that the ACC won the ACC/Big Ten Challenge?

We have seen Duke and North Carolina dominate their non-conference opponents, and the only exception between those two is the one-point No. 11 Pittsburgh overtime win over Duke at the Aeropostale Classic at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Are you a numbers person? That's fine too. The numbers favor the ACC over every other conference. The ACC ranks No. 1 in the nation in the conference RPI.

Break it down team-by-team. Duke has the top RPI in the ACC, ranked No. 2. North Carolina follows the Blue Devils with a No. 4 ranking, then it's Clemson with No. 22. Five ACC teams (those listed above, plus Miami and Maryland) are in the RPI Top 50. The Wolfpack are just outside the Top 50 at No. 52, then the rest of the teams, with the exception of Virginia are ranked between No. 74 and No. 89. UVA is an unimpressive No. 142.

Even more impressively, nine of the twelve ACC schools have Strength of Schedule ratings inside the Top 50. In fact, five of them are inside the Top 15.

Now, I've given several examples of November and December wins for ACC schools, and I know what you're about to say: "November doesn't matter."

If that's the case, the bad losses that some teams suffered in that time frame don't matter either.

I think those games do matter. If they didn't matter, they wouldn't play them. I think how you are playing in February and March is more important than how you're playing in November and December, but to say the games don't matter is ridiculous.

The bottom line is, the ACC is better than most conferences top to bottom - just like any other year. Realize, if you think the Atlantic-10 is better than the ACC, you're saying that if all of the A-10 teams played the ACC teams, the A-10 would come away with more victories.

*Laughing uncontrollably*

If the ACC only gets four teams into the NCAA Tournament, it sure will be disappointed. If that does happen, I hope the Selection Committee can show me 60 other teams that better than the rest of the ACC... I can tell you now, they can't.