As we just pass mid-December, it’s looking bad for ACC in regards to NCAA bids. I mean real bad. Before anyone says let the season the play out. It is playing out, and the ACC is in big trouble.
In 2021 if you can’t pick up quality wins in the OOC portion of the schedule good luck finding them during the ACC conference season, because there simply won’t many opportunities.
Saturday was another ugly day for the ACC. UNC who many thought was the ACC’s second best team, were pummeled by a Kentucky team by 29 that lost last week to Notre Dame. Louisville went to down to Western Kentucky. Georgia Tech never was in it against USC, Notre Dame lost to Indiana, and on and on.
It’s early, but in the NET rankings the ACC has just 4 teams in the top 65.
#9 Duke
#25 Virginia Tech
#31 North Carolina
#33 Wake Forest
That’s it. The entire conference has just 5 Quad 1 wins, and nobody more than more than 1.
If we’re using RPI, the ACC doesn’t have a single top 20 RPI team – Not even Duke.
Here’s the problem. Other than Louisville vs Kentucky the ACC has no more chances at OOC quality wins.
Duke will be a lock for the NCAAs and a high seed. They have wins over Gonzaga and Kentucky. After that then what?
Virginia Tech picked up a huge win over St. Bonaventure, a win at Maryland, and has largely been competitive against NCAA caliber competition.
Wake Forest won at Virginia Tech, and has a sneaky good win over Northwestern. They also haven’t lost to anyone they weren’t supposed to.
North Carolina either looks great or awful, but there is a win over Michigan that should carry weight by the end of the year.
Outside of Duke even those teams mentioned need to finish with probably 11 or 12 ACC wins in conference to feel comfortable.
If you don’t think it can happen where the ACC comes up short on bids back in 2011 and 2013 when the ACC was a 13 team league, they were a 4 bid league.
Now as a 15 team league, they could be looking at 4 bids yet again. I simply can see scenario where the league gets more than 6, and if I am calling it today I’d say they end up with 5. Duke already has 1 of those bids.
So it’s 14 teams fighting for 4 bids and possibly only 3.
It won’t be good basketball during the ACC regular season but it will be competitive with an absolute dog fight for just a handful of NCAA bids.
