Saturday night’s Maryland loss at Duke closes a historic chapter in ACC basketball history. It marks the Terrapins’ last visit as an ACC member to the Triangle area, long considered the heart of the conference (just ask Gary Williams). That game, a two-point loss in Cameron Indoor Stadium, seems like an appropriate last act in a long-running drama that has been playing since the formation of the ACC in 1953. Duke’s victory had many of the same elements that these games have had for years — specifically, a hard-fought, passionate contest with questionable officiating that ultimately resulted in another frustrating loss for the Terps.

The 1974 Maryland-N.C. State ACC Championship Game Sparked Changes To The NCAA Tourney.
(CNN/Sports Illustrated)

Maryland fans have long expressed the feeling that their team just couldn’t get a fair shake on Tobacco Road. Check out this game recap from a 1974 Maryland-N.C. State game in Raleigh. Near the end of the article, Terrapins’ head coach Lefty Driesell is quoted as follows: “My complaint is the charging calls against us,” Driesell said. “I’m not saying the calls were wrong but it’s only called that way in this part of the country.” He is certainly not alone in thinking that Maryland was at a distinct disadvantage when playing conference games in the Tar Heel State, whether they were on a rivals’ home courts or in the frequent ACC Tournaments held in Greensboro or Charlotte. As Maryland prepares to join the Big Ten next season, let’s take a look at some of the other memories that Maryland will be leaving behind.

Maryland was a charter member when the ACC formed prior to the 1953-54 basketball season. Although the Terrapins captured an ACC title in 1958, it wasn’t until the fiery Driesell arrived prior to the 1969-70 campaign that Maryland basketball became nationally relevant. At the time, North Carolina and N.C. State were the top programs in the league, but Maryland quickly joined them and produced some classic games that had a major influence on the rising popularity of the sport. In 1973, the ACC and its TV broadcast partner, C.D. Chesley, decided to go big with the N.C. State – Maryland game in College Park as a prelude for sports fans to the NFL’s Super Bowl Sunday showcase event. The 87-85 win for David Thompson‘s Wolfpack in front of a nationally-televised audience was a highly entertaining game that helped push the reputation of the ACC as the best and most exciting hoops conference in the country.

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It’s a little hard to believe, but the regular season is slipping away from us. Some of the small conference tournaments begin in a mere two weeks, and a few teams are running out of time to make a positive impression on the NCAA Selection Committee. One team that has made quite the recent impression is Florida, which has parlayed a two-win week over SEC rivals Tennessee and Kentucky into a #2 national and RTC25 ranking. The guys discuss the ascent of the Gators, the descent of the Wildcats (both Kentucky and Arizona), and a good number of other things in this week’s RTC Podcast, hosted by Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114). We also welcomed in RTC national columnist Bennet Hayes (@hoopstraveler) as he pushes into week two of his #rushthetrip covering the western half of the country. He shares some stories from the road, riffs on his favorite venues, and talks about what he’s looking forward to (other than his own bed) as he finishes up things later this week.

Make sure to subscribe to the podcast/podblast on iTunes so that you’ll get all of the episodes immediately downloaded to your listening device.

• 0:00-6:52 – Randy Eats Humble Pie on Florida
• 6:52-11:06 – What a Home Loss Means for Kentucky
• 11:09-16:54 – The Pac-12 Version of Struggling Wildcats
• 16:54-18:02 – What the Win Over Arizona Means for Arizona State
• 18:02-24:06 – WTF Sunday in the Big Ten
• 24:06-27:00 – Other Weekend Notes
• 27:00-40:37 – RTT: Bennet Hayes #rushthetrip
• 40:37-45:19 – Rivalries Fit for a Documentary
• 45:19-51:47 – Creighton Pounds Villanova… Again
• 51:47-56:11 – This Week’s Preview

With Selection Sunday getting closer every second, below is a second batch of bracketology for this week. West Virginia is the team making the biggest move after the Mountaineers dominated Iowa State Monday night. Florida and Syracuse also survived big games this week, although each in very different ways.

First Four Out: West Virginia, Baylor, Dayton, Missouri
At-Large Bids by Conference: Big 12 (6), ACC (6), Big Ten (6), Pac-12 (6),  AAC (5), Big East (5), SEC (4), Atlantic 10 (4), Mountain West (2), WCC (2)

With college basketball halfway through conference season and the NFL finally finished, sports fans across the country are starting to look more closely at this season’s version of  bracketology. My microsite colleague Chris Kehoe did a nice rundown of ESPN’s latest bracket focusing on the six ACC teams currently in the projected field. In this post we will take a hard look at a seventh ACC team that appears to have the best chance to join the others in the Big Dance this season. But as we will see, the Clemson Tigers have a lot of work ahead of it in order to merit serious consideration from this year’s NCAA Selection Committee.

K.J. McDaniels and Coach Brad Brownell Hope Clemson Wins Enough To Crash The NCAA Party
(Photo: clemsontigers.com)

After Tuesday night’s low-scoring home win over Georgia Tech, Clemson has a nice ACC record of 6-3 that is good for fifth place in the league standings. That puts them ahead of two teams that most pundits believe are going to the NCAA Tournament — North Carolina and Florida State. Of course, it doesn’t matter where you are right now, but rather how you are viewed by the Selection Committee on Selection Sunday. So with that in mind, let’s try to project where Clemson will be after the ACC Tournament concludes and its resume is complete. Below we list the Tigers’ remaining schedule along with Ken Pomeroy’s current ranking of each opponent and his predicted outcome for each game.

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ESPN.com’s most recent bracketology update has six ACC teams making the Big Dance, with Florida State firmly on the bubble and projected into the #8/#9 game. The division between the elite and the rest of the ACC has become clear and it now appears to be a two-team race for the ACC regular season title (although things could spice up considerably if Virginia knocks off Syracuse). With Pittsburgh’s soft strength of schedule and inability to capitalize against Duke and Virginia, look for the Panthers to obtain a gaudy win total but not much substance on their résumé. North Carolina’s up-and-down season seems to have steadied recently and the Tar Heels’ quality wins rival any team in America as they seem to be firmly entrenched barring a complete collapse (you never know with this group). Syracuse is pushing for a number one seed overall and as this week’s unanimous top team in the national polls; the Orange are well on their way to that goal. Virginia continues to trend upward thanks to its elite-level defense and corresponding ACC success, as the Cavaliers have only one ACC loss at Duke and are within striking distance of the Orange. Duke has a good number of losses (five) for a projected #2 or #3 seed, but the Devils also have some good wins and impressed many supporters in their tight loss at the Carrier Dome last weekend.

The Two Winningest All-Time Coaches are Hugging it Out For Bracketology (credit: SI.com)

The final development to keep your eyes on is whether Clemson can find a way of sneaking into the NCAA Tournament. The Tigers have three difficult games on the horizon — at Syracuse and Notre Dame, vs. Virginia — but if they can make it out of that stretch at 1-2, they could win the next five in a row until their season finale versus Pitt. If the Tigers finish out their season strong they could end up with 11 or 12 ACC wins and a seat firmly on the bubble. A win or two in the ACC Tournament could then result in a dance card. With that in mind, here is a snapshot look at the six ACC teams currently projected into ESPN’s Bracketology and their respective profiles.

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Another weekend down means another RTC Podcast. In this week’s edition, the guys were pleased to welcome Sports Illustrated columnist and all-around good guy, Luke Winn, who regaled us with stories about some of his favorite pieces over the past few years, a couple of teams that he believes might be overlooked according to the national polls, and his favorite graphic that he’s created in the always-entertaining and informative Power Rankings column. Aside from Luke’s visit, we also found time to run down what was a simply ridiculous weekend of college basketball — Super Saturday, instead — and examine the week’s most compelling upcoming games. As always, Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114) hosts the proceedings.

Make sure to subscribe to the podcast/podblast on iTunes so that you’ll get all of the episodes immediately downloaded to your listening device.

• 0:00-5:51 – Arizona Loses In More Ways Than One
• 5:51-12:34 – Duke-Syracuse Lives Up To The Hype
• 12:34-20:42 – Slew of Other Top 10s Fall (And in OK St’s Case Fall Again)
• 20:42-33:05 – Rush The Takes: Luke Winn
• 33:05-37:32 – Kentucky Takes a Tumble in the Ranks
• 37:32-41:55 – Randy Overrating Cincinnati???
• 41:55-47:08 – Ohio State And Wisconsin – Someone Technically Won
• 47:08-51:06 – Virginia Leaps Ahead of Pitt in ACC Power Rankings
• 51:06-58:47 – Week Preview

Daniel Evans (@bracketexpert) is Rush the Court’s resident bracketologist. He will update his brackets at least twice a week through the rest of the regular season here at RTC, but his updated brackets can be viewed daily at Bracketology Expert. As we approach March Madness, he’ll also provide occasional blind resumes. Evans has been ranked by the Bracket Matrix as the nation’s 11th-best bracketologist out of hundreds of entries. 

Five top 10 teams lost this weekend and my latest bracketology reflects all of the wild results. No. 1 Arizona finally lost after playing with fire multiple times in the last few weeks, but more importantly, the Wildcats also lost power forward Brandon Ashley for the season. The Wildcats — a lock to make the Big Dance — will be evaluated by the selection committee as a new team without their second-leading scorer and rebounder in the lineup. Don’t read too much into it right this second, though. If the NCAA Tournament started today, I have no doubt that Arizona would still be a No. 1 seed.

• Wichita State finally moved up to the No. 1 line in my bracket after Kansas lost to Texas, but like always, I’m going to be brutally honest about the Shockers. Wichita has only TWO wins over teams in my bracket and that is not the sort of quality resume you expect to see from a No. 1 seed. Still, I have the Shockers on the top line because they are undefeated and they look like a top-5 team when you watch them play.
• Texas is moving up in a hurry after a convincing win Saturday over the Jayhawks. UCLA is also moving up, even after a loss to Oregon State on Sunday. The Bruins are unranked because the Pac-12 is seen as a weak conference (other than Arizona) and it’s really unfair to UCLA. Despite their bad loss yesterday, Steve Alford’s team looks like the conference’s second-best squad at this point and have the quality wins of a middle-of-the-road seed.
• Pittsburgh is about to start sliding. The Panthers still lack a top-50 win after falling to Virginia on Sunday. For now, I left Pittsburgh as a No. 6 seed but the Panthers have the feel of a team that gets “shafted” on Selection Sunday and end up a couple of seed lines lower. I’m going to keep re-evaluating the Panthers, of course, but based on how the national media perceives Jamie Dixon’s team (currently seen as a Top 25 team), I have to predict the committee will likely see Pittsburgh in the same light and seed them accordingly.

For the first time this season, there are more than 36 at-large teams deserving a spot in the field which made it hard to pick the final few teams. The full bracket is after the jump:

First Four Out: Oregon, BYU, Clemson, Georgetown

Bids by Conference: Big 12 (7), ACC (6), Big Ten (6), Pac-12 (6), SEC (5), American (5), Atlantic 10 (4), Big East (3), Mountain West (2)

It’s getting hard to remember the days when Final Fours weren’t confined to cavernous NFL stadiums. It’s been almost 20 years since the last non-dome Final Four (Continental Airlines Arena and East Rutherford, New Jersey, played host back in 1996), and the streak has also served to rob the two coasts of any national semifinal hosting duties. There had been recent discussion of bringing college basketball’s biggest stage back to NBA arenas, but Monday’s announcement of the finalists for the 2017-20 Final Fours revealed that shift won’t be occurring for at least another seven years, if at all. In theory, the practice of getting as many fans as possible to the event is a noble one – more eyeballs is better, after all – but the continued avoidance of the two coasts (you know, where there are like, a few kind of important cities) is a puzzling oversight by the NCAA. Even forgetting for a moment that nobody wants to visit Indianapolis in April, or that part of what makes college basketball unique is its geographic comprehensiveness, the NCAA’s shunning of east and west coast host sites puzzles on a purely financial level. The brightest spotlight – and relatedly, most money – is to be found in America’s signature cities (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, DC, etc.), most of which can’t currently accommodate the NCAA’s 60,000 minimum seat requirement for a hosting facility. No worries if the host city rotation retains a heavy dose of domes, but NCAA, it makes too much sense (and cents) not to bring the Final Four back to the biggest population centers from time to time.

74,326 Fans Descended On The Georgia Dome For Last Year’s Championship Game. That Attendance Figure Would Shrink Significantly If The Final Four Moved Back To An NBA Arena, But The Benefits Of Such A Shift Could Outweigh Any Costs

Forgetting practical reasons for a moment, the NCAA’s reluctance to bring the Final Four back to NBA arenas takes away from the ubiquity of the sport’s reach. Professional sports are confined to 40 or so major American cities; college football covers a little more ground, but there are still nine states without an FBS program. In college basketball, only Alaska lacks a D-I college basketball program, and every one of the 351 programs has a “neighbor” within a few hours of them. Hoops covers America unlike any other sport; the game is almost everywhere. Equally spreading Final Four sites around the entire nation is a quixotic notion, but the sizable gap in current coverage doesn’t jive with one of the sport’s most defining elements.

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As conference hierarchies begin taking shape and teams gear up for the stretch run, this week offers a whole host of compelling O26 contests that are sure to impact the picture come March. Let’s take a look at the most intriguing match-ups on tap.

Game of the Week

Toledo (17-2) at Ohio (14-5) – 1:00 PM ET, ESPNU, Saturday.

The Bobcats host the 17-2 Rockets on Saturday in a huge MAC tilt. (John Kuntz / The Plain Dealer)

Efficient offense meets stingy defense in what could very well be a preview of the MAC Championship game on March 15. After losing at home to a gritty, defensive-minded Bowling Green group last Wednesday night, Ohio again found itself in serious trouble at Eastern Michigan last Saturday, trailing by 13 points late and completely unable to generate baskets against the Eagles’ 2-3 zone. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the Bobcats ripped off 20 points in the final eight minutes — including a 12-0 run to take their first and final lead — and stunned EMU to remain a game back of Akron for the MAC East’s top spot.  It was a big win for Jim Christian’s crew, but Saturday’s contest will be a different beast altogether.  For all of the conference’s tough defensive teams, Toledo is the stand-alone offensive power, ranking 11th nationally in offensive efficiency and featuring five starters each within the top 500 in offensive rating. That ability to score has helped the Rockets to a 5-1 conference record and a stellar 17-2 mark overall, among the best in the entire country.

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Daniel Evans (@bracketexpert) is Rush the Court’s resident bracketologist. He will update his brackets at least twice a week through the rest of the regular season here at RTC, but his updated brackets can be viewed daily at Bracketology Expert. As we approach March Madness, he’ll also provide occasional blind resumes. Over the past six years, Evans has been ranked by the Bracket Matrix as the nation’s No. 11 bracketologist out of hundreds of entries. 

The movement in my newest batch of bracketology focuses completely on the Big Ten. Ohio State continues to slide after a loss to Nebraska earlier this week and still lacks a single quality win. The Buckeyes are No. 9 seed, based mainly on their high RPI and the eye test which seems to suggest Ohio State is a lot better than its recent record.

Some other notes about the January 23 edition:

• Wisconsin started 16-0 and has now lost three consecutive games after a loss at Minnesota Wednesday night. The Badgers are now a No. 3 seed and at No. 9 on the S-curve. Villanova, despite getting destroyed by Creighton Monday night, stays on the No. 2 line for now. The Wildcats would have been the fourth No. 1 seed if the ‘Cats had won against Creighton.
• Michigan is flying up the board and is now a No. 3 seed after a big win over Iowa on Wednesday night. The win over the Hawkeyes followed another big win over Wisconsin last Saturday. Minnesota is also moving up and is a No. 6 seed after beating the Badgers.
• The last eight teams in the at-large field continue to look like a bunch of mediocre clubs with hardly anything separating them. Arkansas lost on the road Wednesday night at Tennessee, eliminating the Razorbacks’ chance of moving back into my field. Arkansas is now 2-22 on the road under head coach Mike Anderson and 44-5 at home. I need someone smarter than me to figure that one out. I’ll keep the Razorbacks outside of my field until they can beat anyone on the road, no matter what they do at home. Considering the Hawgs have only one more chance for a big win this year (vs. Kentucky, at Rupp) it’s likely they are done barring some kind of unbelievable turnaround in road games. Don’t count on it.
• The SEC has four teams in my latest field, but No. 12 Missouri barely made it after a loss to LSU this week. No. 10 Tennessee only made it because there really is a lack of quality teams in the lowest at-large seed lines and at least the Vols have a couple of good wins.
• The Pac-12 seems to be racing the SEC to get as few NCAA Tournament bids as possible. No. 1 Arizona is a lock, but teams like No. 10 California (which lost to USC Wednesday night) continue to dare the committee to only take two or three teams from the conference. No. 9 Colorado can’t help that Spencer Dinwiddie was injured against Washington, but the Buffaloes are now thrown into a group of Pac-12 bubble teams that they likely would have been head and shoulders above. No. 9 Oregon, No. 11 Stanford and No. 9 UCLA all appear to be very up and down this season.

The full bracket is after the jump.

NOTE: Teams in all capital letters are projected auto-bid winners.

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