ACC men’s basketball schedules were released last week, opening an early window into the 2008-09 season. Compare a team’s schedule to others within the conference, and to various measures of strength and daring, and suddenly a lot more is revealed than which matchups promise to be the most intriguing.

A schedule can tell you what a coach thinks of his squad's prospects. A look at opponents chosen from outside the league reveals the calculations by which resumes are fashioned to attract tournament consideration. And, of course, a quick scan of the schedule can tell you how seriously to take a record bloated in advance of ACC competition.

Home cooking is always a good place to start, both if you’re dining and if you’re trying to gauge how programs have determined to meet the coming challenge.

Boston College, Maryland, and N.C. State went the safe route with 18 home games each. BC, seeking to rebuild in the wake of its first losing effort since 2000, arranged the ACC’s highest quotient of home contests, with 18 of 28 scheduled at Chestnut Hill (64.3 percent). That proportion could drop to 61.3 percent if Al Skinner’s team reaches the finals of the Dick’s Sporting Goods NIT Season Tip-Off Tournament, better known simply as the Preseason NIT.

N.C. State, along with Virginia and Georgia Tech, is not appearing in any in-season tournament. The Wolfpack play 62.1 percent of their games at home (including a pair at Reynolds Coliseum), a hefty portion that is not going to change. They enjoy a run of six consecutive home games between Dec. 13 through 31, and open the year with 9 of 11 in Raleigh.

Virginia plays an even heftier 17 of 27 games at lovely John Paul Jones Arena, 63.0 percent. UVa coach Dave Leitao, caught in rebuilding mode with modest resources, has scheduled four teams from the bottom 100 in the ’08 RPI, tied for third-most in the ACC behind Florida State (7) and Clemson (6).

Then again, four of the Cavaliers' non-league opponents are from power conferences and five are in-state rivals for whom UVa is the big game. Still, like N.C. State, the overall picture for Virginia is more that of a team trying to survive than one intent on reaching the NCAAs.

Maryland's striking reliance on friendly venues in 2008-09 reflects a well-honed strategy under Gary Williams. Entering his 20th season at College Park, Williams insists his program remains potent despite no NCAA bids in three of the past four seasons. “We can play,” Williams said of a squad that lost almost all of its interior experience after leading the league in 2008 in blocked shots and field goal percentage defense. “I’ve been doing this too long not to be competitive.”

To ease the burden, the Terrapins play 60 percent of their games at the Comcast Center and venture beyond the D.C. metropolitan area just once before traveling to Miami on Jan. 14. From Dec. 12 through Jan. 10 they play an ACC-leading seven straight home games, including their conference opener against Georgia Tech.

Maryland’s solitary escape from familiar territory is a doozy – the Terps join an eight-team field in late November’s Old Spice Classic in Orlando, held in the same Milk House arena where the AAU conducts its summer tournaments. N.C. State won the Classic last season, a result that’s a bit of a reach for Maryland in a field that features four teams from last season’s final Associated Press Top 25: opening opponent Michigan State along with Georgetown, Tennessee, and Gonzaga.

The Terps don’t play anyone else coming off a Top 25 effort, and the only regular season league champs they face are American (Patriot) and Morgan State (MEAC). Among the ACC's other reluctant travelers, Boston College has no Top 25 opponents or regular season league champions on its schedule. N.C. State hosts Marquette (No. 25) and travels to Charlotte to take on Davidson (No. 23), the Southern Conference champ and NCAA darling.

Virginia's sole ranked opponent from last year is Xavier (12). Coach Sean Miller's Atlantic 10 champions also meet Duke at the Meadowlands and could play Virginia Tech in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Puerto Rico Tip-Off. (Looks like the naming rights virus has spread from sports arenas and football bowl games to the array of in-season college basketball classics, tournaments, tip-offs, jams, invitationals, and the like. Here’s hoping the ACC Tournament remains immune.)

Virginia Tech was snubbed in 2008 by NCAA tournament selectors, apparently as a result of its weak non-ACC schedule. This season the Hokies are at the takeout end of the home cooking continuum, with less than half of their games (14 of 30) at Blacksburg. Three of the road encounters are on neutral turf in the San Juan event, a field that includes NCAA participants Memphis and Southern Cal. Coach Seth Greenberg’s squad never plays more than three straight games at Cassell Coliseum.

The Hokies face only one bottom-100 RPI team, Longwood, compared to four last season. The degree of difficulty is toned down in other respects, with just two certain big-time opponents (Wisconsin and Georgia), a third 2008 NCAA entrant (16-seed Mount St. Mary’s), and two in-state rivals (Richmond and Longwood).

Craig Littlepage, the UVa athletics director and former chair of the NCAA tournament selection committee, said while on the committee he looked at nonconference opponents in three groupings: guarantees (what Jim Valvano called “bops,” Dick Vitale calls “cupcakes,” and most of us call “slaughters”); regional contests; and BCS-level encounters.

Wake Forest dares the fewest BCS opponents, facing only an assigned game in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. Even better for the Demon Deacons, their Challenge matchup is with Indiana, a big name program that’s become a shell of itself in the wake of departed cheater Kelvin Sampson. Otherwise Bucknell and Brigham Young figure to the best nonconference opponents the Deacons face, a manageable task as they angle for NCAA consideration with a squad whose top players are underclassmen.

As one might expect, the strongest ACC schedules belong to the strongest teams, the ones not worried about making the NCAAs.

North Carolina plays half its games at home, Duke 51.6 percent. The Blue Devils play four BCS teams – Purdue and St. John’s on the road, Michigan and Georgetown at Durham -- plus Xavier and Davidson. The Tar Heels welcome Kentucky and Rutgers to the Smith Center, travel to Michigan State, and host NCAA entrant Oral Roberts and UNC-Asheville, the reigning regular season champ in the Big South. Duke plays one Bottom 100 team (Presbyterian), UNC two (Evansville and Penn).

Next time, we’ll look more closely at specific opponents and the rhythms of the schedule. Who plays home and home within the conference, and who gets to avoid a visit to Chapel Hill or Durham, may well become key factors in the league race and the scramble for NCAA bids.