There are good marketing and public relations reasons to move the ACC Tournament outside North Carolina from time to time, and certainly the conference has embraced that concept with a vengeance since expanding from nine teams in 2005.

That first year the 11-school tournament went to Washington, D.C., and of course this year the 12-team edition is being played in Tampa. After a stop next year in Charlotte, in 2009 the ACC Tournament will return to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, where it set attendance records in 2001, drawing 36,505 fans per session. Then it's back to Greensboro for what is potentially an extended stay.

Just be thankful that Syracuse, deeply involved in the expansion discussions, did not join the ACC, or we would be seeing the cavernous Carrier Dome in chilly upstate New York, which seats 33,000 for basketball, as a regular stop in tournament site rotation.

Attendance in Tampa at the St. Pete Times Forum is listed at 22,269, about the same as the Greensboro Coliseum. Yet, all it takes is a peek toward the second and third levels to see that the stands at the Forum are not full.

Like Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium, which perpetually lists a sellout no matter how many empty seats are visible, the ACC Tournament goes by tickets sold and has been without public sale since 1966. Scalpers and fans stuck with tickets at Tampa continue to lament their inability to sell extras, or at least to command face value for anything except in the lower level.

Whether any of this matters to most ACC fans, who watchthe games on television anyway, is a valid question. An arena is an arena, and you can turn up the volume on your TV set if you want more crowd noise.

Yet something is lost when a place, an experience, a situation, an event we love is reduced to an anonymous commodity divorced from its setting. Too few traditions endure in our fluid society, particularly in the fast-growing Southeast.

Even among the ACC’s younger generation, such as Miami head coach Frank Haith, who grew up in Burlington, or Virginia Tech assistant Ryan Odom, who was raised in Virginia and North Carolina, there is sentiment to keep the ACC Tournament in Greensboro, where it is embraced as a proud and special occasion. Empty seats do affect the atmosphere surrounding the court, bleeding away some of the excitement. Inevitably, that will compromise the passion with which participants plunge into the competition, creating a spiral that transforms the unique into the ordinary.

For years the ACC took grief for its postseason tournament, with charges it drained competitors with unnecessary games played for the sake of revenue. Now virtually every league has its own tournament. The ACC should make sure it does not get lost in the very shuffle its leadership helped to create.

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One subtle sign of team strength is an ability to make more free throws than opponents attempt. This indicates a strong inside attack, a facility at converting foul shooting opportunities, and defense that is sufficiently solid to minimize fouls. Three squads entered the ACC Tournament with such a statistical profile -- Boston College, North Carolina and Virginia. Only the Tar Heels are left standing.

More often than not, teams that make more foul shots than their opponents try go on to prosper in postseason play. Sure enough, the Tar Heels are in the ACC Tournament finals and virtually assured a top seed in the NCAAs.

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N.C. State set a dubious record yesterday by failing to gain an offensive rebound against Virginia Tech. The previous low, one, was set by the Wolfpack in 1988. Following the game, N.C. State assistant coach Monte Towe teasingly told players, "Way to hit the offensive boards, guys!"