Over the next two weeks, through the ACC Tournament, there will be a lot of lobbying from ACC basketball coaches about the number of teams the league should get in the NCAA Tournament this year. That will continue a season-long trend.
 
“We should get six, seven teams every year in the darn thing, because of how well our teams play,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said a few weeks ago. “This league has gotten messed over for the last five years. We’ve just gotten messed over. This is the best league.”

Posturing for the postseason, of course, is nothing new. But there's also a different method to the ACC's approach to March Madness this year, and it may pay off nicely on Selection Sunday.

After the ACC received only four invitations (same as the Missouri Valley Conference) to the NCAA Tournament in 2006, league officials re-examined their approach to the event. Part of their solution was seeking input from Virginia athletic director Craig Littlepage, the chairman of last year's NCAA selection committee, and Greg Shaheen, the NCAA's vice president of Division I basketball. Much of the discussion focused on scheduling practices.

“The point of emphasis was to play a competitively balanced non-conference schedule, home and away,” Littlepage said. “Don’t schedule to get to some elusive or magical number of wins.”

ACC teams mostly followed that advice in 2006-07. The league's non-conference Rating Percentage Index (RPI) went from fourth in the nation last year to second so far this year. Six ACC teams (UNC, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Boston College, Duke, Maryland) have winning conference records and impressive non-conference victories. Three more (Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech) also rank in the top 50 of the RPI and still have a shot at the Big Dance.

So, moving forward, the coaches will keep talking.

“It’s keeping up with the Joneses,” Maryland coach Gary Williams said. “Other teams have gone out of their way and directly talked about the ACC the last couple of years, which never happened before. If the gloves are off, the gloves are off. That’s OK. It’s kind of fun. We have to stand up.”

But they also hope that most of their planning and resume-building is behind them.

“We did our work in terms of scheduling, winning some quality non-conference games, so therefore it’s validated our beating each other up,” Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg said. “You would hope that would carry over with the committee.”

NOTE: Jerry Ratcliffe of the Charlottesville (Va.) Daily Progress and Patrick Stevens of the Washington Times tackled this topic from different angles in this week's edition of the ACC Sports Journal and at ACCSports.com.

ACC Teams In NCAA Tournament

2001 — 6 (plus BC, not yet a member)
2002 — 4 (plus BC and Miami, not yet members)
2003 — 4
2004 — 6 (plus BC, not yet a member)
2005 — 5 (plus BC, not yet a member)
2006 — 4
2007 — ?

ACC In 2007 RPI (Through Feb. 26)

North Carolina (24-5, 10-4 ACC) — 3
Duke (22-7, 8-6) — 9
Maryland (22-7, 8-6) — 14
Virginia Tech (20-8, 10-4) — 22
Boston College (19-9, 10-5) — 26
Virginia (19-8, 10-4) — 38
Clemson (19-9, 5-9) — 41
Florida State (18-11, 6-9) — 48
Georgia Tech (18-10, 6-8) — 51
N.C. State (14-13, 4-10) — 116
Wake Forest (13-14, 4-10) — 122
Miami (11-17, 4-10) — 149