When Clemson head coach Rick Barnes was asked earlier this season to predict where his squad would finish in the always-tough Atlantic Coast Conference, he said he had heard people pick the Tigers to finish 10th -- in a nine-team league.
Asked to rate his team's strengths, Barnes noted that his most experienced player was the beat writer from a local newspaper.
Two months later, Barnes lost perhaps the most talented member of his team -- senior forward Devin Gray -- to academic ineligibility.
So what happens next? The Tigers come to Durham for their first ACC matchup of the year and proceed to upset Duke in Cameron Indoor Stadium for the first time since 1984. They record 10 wins before finally losing their first game to Virginia. Before their loss to the Cavaliers, they are one of the last three undefeated teams in Division I basketball.
Sound strange?
Not this year. Not in this league.
For this season, the ACC has proved to be perhaps the strangest conference of all. This has been a year with no givens, no easy games and seemingly no logic or order.
Just why is anybody's guess. Here are one man's ideas.
- Strength of tradition: The ACC has never been a weak conference, and is always rated amongst the nation's powerhouse leagues. This year is no exception, as most would agree that the ACC is the country's premier conference.
Three of the last four national championships belong to the ACC, with Duke bringing home a second place finish in the off year. With a foundation like that on which to build, every year is going to be an exciting one.
- The fall of the mighty: To the extent that any team has ever ruled the ACC, the league has belonged in recent years to Duke and North Carolina. Over the past 10 years, the two teams have combined for six ACC tournament titles and eight regular season crowns.
Yet this year, the Blue Devils have lost their first five games in conference play for the first time ever. Already, Clemson, Virginia and N.C. State have won on Duke's home floor-- something that, before this year, was about as easy as getting Chris Collins to calm down.
The Tar Heels, too, have proven fallible, succumbing to the Wolfpack in their ACC opener and barely surviving scares from Clemson and Virginia this past week. UNC now sits atop the league standings with the Cavaliers, but the door is open for a perennial also-ran to take over the throne.
- The rise of the weak: There are plenty of hungry teams ready and waiting to take over that top spot. Four years ago Virginia brought in four freshmen who have now matured into an extremely tight-knit group. With more young talent on the rise, the Cavaliers have proved powerful, albeit inconsistent.
Then there's Maryland, the ACC's new kid on the block. The Terrapins have also matured from a young team to a well-seasoned one, have added new ingredients (can you say Joe Smith?) and are suddenly a half-game out of the conference's top spot. Nobody's calling them kids anymore.
- All-Star talent: Dick Vitale has said many times this year he could take seven players from the ACC, match them up against seven college players from anywhere else in the country and come away with a victory. Vitale's super seven includes Smith, Duke's Cherokee Parks, UNC sophomores Rasheed Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse, Georgia Tech's Travis Best, Wake Forest sharpshooter Randolph Childress, and Florida State senior Bob Sura.
That, of course, leaves out guys who don't exactly spend their time on the court tripping over their own shoelaces. Guys like Carolina's Donald Williams and Tech's James Forrest. Lesser-lights such as Wake center Tim Duncan. Entire backcourts like Virginia's Cory Alexander, Harold Deane and Curtis Staples.
Dick Vitale says many things, some of which few care to hear.
But in this case, he's right -- there's no league like the ACC when it comes to talent. There's no other league where talent has been spread around to nearly every team.
With such a balance, it's hard to see the roller-coaster ride through this ACC season ending any time soon. At this point, you'd do just as well to bet N.C. State to win the conference title as you would UNC. Picking the winners of this weekend's slate of games would probably end up being about as profitable as investing in Toronto Raptors season tickets. Hoping for a return to the cool and calm ACC of old is about as useful as voting for Johnny Dawkins on your NBA All-Star ballot.
There is hope, though.
Clemson has lost its last three games, and were it not for Duke's persistent woes, would fast be approaching its customary spot in the ACC cellar.
I wonder how that beat writer's doing....
Abe Wehmiller is a Trinity senior and assistant sports editor of The Chronicle.
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