Here’s a sure bet. Come March and the dawn of postseason competition in college basketball, some commentator will intone sagely that good guard play wins championships. This pithy truism will not come as news, even if you have the good sense to regularly tune out Digger Phelps and others of his ilk.

Certainly the value of reliable guards, particularly point guards, is not lost on coaches. That is especially true for the former varsity playmakers now plying the ACC men’s sidelines, most prominently Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Maryland’s Gary Williams, and N.C. State’s Sidney Lowe.

“It’s the most important position in what I do with my offense, because it’s about execution,” Lowe told a small media gathering on Monday. “If your point guard can’t get the ball to the right position to initiate the play, then it’s not going to work.”

A point guard is often described as an extension of the coach’s...

Coaches are not ones to forget.

Bob Staak, the former Wake Forest head basketball coach (1986-89), was in Raleigh last season to watch N.C. State in action. Once an assistant to Sidney Lowe in the NBA, Staak was on hand as a scout for the Orlando Magic. While making conversation in the press room, Staak was reminded of the great run his overmatched Demon Deacons enjoyed in the 1987 ACC Tournament.

Seventh-seeded Wake, led by diminutive Muggsy Bogues, reached the semifinals, only to lose 77-73 in double-overtime to Jim Valvano’s Wolfpack, the eventual ACC champs. But an acquaintance had barely finished harkening back two decades to savor the memory before Staak...

Now that Florida has been crowned as the men’s national champion, and the women’s title is about to be decided among squads that knocked off the top-seeded ACC teams, thoughts turn inevitably to next season. Dwelling on disappointment and defeat is no fun, especially when you follow a conference that fancies itself, with some justification, as the best in college basketball.

But, before we move on, it’s worth pausing to ask what happened to the seven ACC men’s teams that reached the NCAA Tournament, only to suffer a collective stumble.

We posed just that question to seven ACC coaches -- four head coaches and three assistants -- and got a variety of answers and perhaps a glimmering of insight.

“There’s no excuses. We just lost,” said an ACC head coach. “When you’re called the best conference, there’s...

As you watch the 2007 Final Four, composed entirely of teams from the power conferences, recall that only a year ago mid-majors were all the rage. George Mason from the Colonial Athletic Association had reached the 2006 Final Four, five teams from outside the power conferences made it to the Sweet 16, and basketball nirvana was declared.

The game had changed forever, intoned the experts. George Mason’s advance and the surge of mid-majors in the Sweet 16 were cited as proof that a great leveling parity had swept college basketball. To hear the chorus of convinced commentators, anyone could win a championship during the grand egalitarian spectacle of March Madness.

Nice storyline. Lovely fantasy. Unsupported judgment.

One year later, we are right back to a state of affairs in which, the longer play lasts in the NCAA Tournament, the more teams from the ACC, Big East, Big 10,...