ACC wants NCAA Tournament success to bring more seats to March Madness

No conference has had more recent NCAA men's tournament success than the ACC, but it hasn't translated into more spots in the field. League is trying to change that.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Over the last three rounds of March Madness, there has been no conference to celebrate more than the ACC: four different programs reached a Final Four, filled seven of the 24 spots in the Elite Eight and earned 33 overall tournament victories.

The ACC was the top-performing conference in all three categories, despite ranking fourth in the number of tournament bids during the period.

From the ACC's perspective, that is exactly the problem. Why has this become the Rodney Dangerfield Conference of college basketball? Why can't it get respect?

“It doesn’t really make any sense,” said North Carolina State coach Kevin Keatts, whose team contributed to that success in March with a surprise Final Four appearance last season.

And the disrespect continues as a new season looms. USA TODAY Sports' preseason men's college basketball coaches poll found only two teams worthy of a ranking: Duke at No. 5 and North Carolina at No. 10.

Meanwhile, the ACC has gotten bigger with the additions of California, Stanford and SMU, bringing the league to 18 members, and perhaps even better as a whole with some current bottom teams possibly joining forces.

But in the end, there is no doubt that commissioner Jim Phillips is tasked with improving the ACC's positioning relative to its peers in the eyes of the NCAA tournament selection committee. For a league whose history and tradition are intertwined with college basketball, it is an embarrassment and an outrage that it has received just 15 total bids in the last three tournaments, while the Big Ten and SEC received 23 and 22 bids, respectively have received.

“We need to do a better job of telling our story,” Phillips said.

But the ACC doesn't just have a narrative problem. The reason for the low bid count is largely purely mathematical. The analysis the committee uses to sort and rank teams, influenced largely by non-conference performance and strength of schedule, has not been flattering to the ACC of late.

Since adopting a 20-game conference schedule five years ago, ACC teams have had fewer opportunities to record non-conference wins early in the season. And whether it's transfer-heavy teams struggling to compete early in the season or a disproportionate number of teams going through difficult coaching transitions, ACC teams have too many bad losses and too few good ones Wins taken into conference games where they can help boost each other's numbers.

That's how a team like Wake Forest went 13-7, 10-10 and 11-9 in the ACC over the last three years, ending up on the wrong side of the bubble each time. And it's especially tough for coach Steve Forbes when his team posted victories over NC State, Duke and Clemson last season – all of which landed in the Elite Eight – but didn't have a good enough record to enter the general offer discussion .

“We weren’t winning the right games,” Forbes said. “What happens when you’re in the bubble is the pressure builds up. It's just not fun. We had some big wins, but then you lose a few away games that you probably shouldn't lose, and that costs you when you're on the cut line.”

Phillips said the ACC commissioned a detailed statistical analysis to help teams optimize their non-conference scheduling in relation to the NET rankings, which is the primary tool the NCAA uses to rank teams in quadrants to group.

In simple terms, teams improve their NET by beating top-30 opponents at home, top-50 opponents on a neutral site, or top-75 opponents on the road. They hurt their NET by losing at home to teams not ranked in the top 75 or losing to a team not ranked in the top 100 at any venue.

Some critics of the NET say it's too easy to game the system and doesn't necessarily reflect the true quality of a league, especially when a conference has grown as big as the ACC. But math is math, and it's better if you figure out how to use it to your advantage.

But you also have to win non-conference games early in the season to put good numbers in the machine, and that's something only ACC teams can control.

“We have to be smarter as a conference, the way we plan outside of the conference, and we have to control the win,” Duke’s Jon Scheyer said. “But for me, playing in the ACC and practicing the different styles of play and the different teams you play against is the best way to prepare for the tournament. There’s nothing you can’t see.”

The figures from March proved this. Given how many different ACC schools got deep into the tournament – it's not just Duke and North Carolina – the league was likely undervalued by the committee.

But a big part of the puzzle will be figuring out how to get some of the league's traditionally strong programs back on track. There is little doubt that the disaster at Louisville in two seasons under Kenny Payne, the significant downturn at Florida State and the slip-ups in the final seasons of Mike Brey at Notre Dame and Jim Boeheim at Syracuse contributed to the poor analysis and public perception have contributed.

And that path becomes even more complicated when you consider Tony Bennett's shocking decision last week to retire in Virginia. Combine that with the recent departures of Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Boeheim and Brey, and no league has had to replace so many legends in such a short period of time.

“Every league is going to go through this at some point,” Forbes said. “That's one of the reasons my agent told me to take the job because these people are retiring. There’s just been a lot of changes, but I think we’re stable.”

When the season begins, ACC fans will be paying close attention to how the conference finishes. First-year coach Pat Kelsey appears to be on his way to getting Louisville going pretty quickly. Damon Stoudamire nurtured the talent at Georgia Tech. There were good signs from Boston College, and Micah Shrewsberry's track record at Penn State should translate into a successful rebuild at Notre Dame.

If these teams can avoid bad losses early on, the ACC could finally get some recognition from the committee.

“We had a setback at the end of the conference due to rebuilds, new coaching situations or the transfer portal, and that really affected some of these rankings and some of the metrics overall that they look at,” Phillips said. “Whether we like it or not, the story begins in November and December in non-conference games. You have to perform at a higher level.”

ACC wants NCAA Tournament success to bring more seats to March Madness

ByVanessa

No conference has had more recent NCAA men's tournament success than the ACC, but it hasn't translated into more spots in the field. League is trying to change that.

By Vanessa

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