Wake Forest coach Dave Odom was sitting at home last Sunday night, relaxing after his team's 71-57 victory over N.C. State. He had started figuring out which team would play which in this week's Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament, when he realized that beating State might not have been a good idea.
"I said, 'Golly. This is what we get for winning today's game,'" said Odom, whose club locked up the No. 4 seed in the conference tournament with the win. "We get to play Clemson, which is probably playing its best basketball of the year, and if the seeding were to hold up, we would get to play Duke, and we would get to play Carolina, if we could win and advance."
Such is life in the ACC, where winning the league tourney could be tougher this year than ever before, if your name isn't Duke or UNC.
The No. 1-ranked Blue Devils and fourth-ranked Tar Heels ran roughshod through the ACC's regular-season slate, racking up a combined 26-2 record against the rest of the league.
Five ACC clubs went 0-4 against Duke and UNC. No one other than Carolina beat Duke, and only Maryland, Duke and N.C. State beat UNC.
Now, consider this: to win the ACC Tournament, one of the "little seven" will probably have to beat both Duke and Carolina, perhaps in consecutive days.
That's one tall task, but one every other ACC team thinks-or, more accurately, hopes-it can accomplish. By pulling off the unimaginable, a lower-seven team would not only secure the league's automatic NCAA tournament bid, but would also disprove the notion that outside of Duke, Carolina and Maryland, no other ACC team clearly deserves an NCAA bid.
Many observers expect the conference to get fewer than its usual allotment of five or six bids.
Six of the league's nine teams-Clemson, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, Florida State, N.C. State and Virginia-have losing records
"You're looking at four losses to start with. To me, that's not a stigma. That's unique to our league," said Maryland coach Gary Williams, whose Terrapins (18-9, 10-6 ACC) meet sixth-seeded Georgia Tech Friday at noon. "I don't think teams should be penalized. If they're close to the .500 level, I think they should get strong consideration for the NCAA tournament because when those teams went into our conference, a lot of those teams were ranked in the top 25."
The Associated Press rankings of Dec. 29, the week before ACC action began in earnest, listed five league clubs (No. 1 UNC, No. 3 Duke, No. 15 FSU, No. 20 Maryland and No. 21 Clemson). Wake Forest (three weeks in the polls) and Georgia Tech (two weeks) were also ranked in December. But the rigors of the ACC removed all but Duke and UNC from the current rankings.
As a result, teams like Wake (15-12, 7-9) and Tech (17-12, 6-10) may need an ACC Tourney win to clinch a spot in the NCAAs. The Yellow Jackets have three-time All-ACC senior Matt Harpring, but will be underdogs against the Terrapins, who swept the season series.
"Any time there's a player like Matt Harpring on the court, anything can happen," Williams said. "He's not just talented, but so determined to carry that team."
If Harpring fails to carry his team past Maryland, the Terps could face UNC in the semifinals. Although Maryland handed the Heels one of their three losses, it has been burned twice by unanimous All-ACC selection Antawn Jamison.
In two meetings against the Terps, Jamison averaged 31.5 points and 14.5 rebounds.
"I think if Antawn were able to play Maryland like six times a year, he would be very happy," Williams said.
Jamison would also be happy to avenge all three of his team's losses. The Heels would play N.C. State (which beat them Feb. 21) on Friday if the No. 8-seeded Wolfpack (15-13, 5-11) beats seventh-seeded FSU (17-12, 6-10) Thursday at 7 p.m., and could meet Maryland in the semifinals and top-seeded Duke (27-2, 15-1) in Sunday's 1 p.m. championship game.
The Wolfpack will likely need an inspired performance from its front line just to reach Friday's quarterfinal matchup with UNC. The Wolfpack lost both of its regular-season meetings with the Seminoles and got outrebounded, 73-38.
"I don't know if you have to look a whole lot further than that," Pack coach Herb Sendek said. "That's a disparity that's almost hard to imagine."
In any previous year, Sendek wouldn't have had to worry about FSU's domination of the boards. This season, though, a new format graces the ACC tournament.
Instead of pitting the No. 8 and 9 seeds in a Thursday night play-in game, with the winner meeting the top seed on Friday, the league has restructured the first round and added an extra Thursday night game.
Now, the No. 1 seed (Duke) plays the No. 9 seed (Virginia) on Thursday, with the winner advancing straight to Saturday's semifinals. In the early game Thursday, the seventh and eighth seeds (FSU and N.C. State) will do battle.
The new format, proposed by ACC coaches, has received heavy criticism from fans, media and even one prominent coach. Duke's Mike Krzyzewski last week blasted the format because it gives the No. 9 seed a potential advantage-a free ride to the semifinals-over several other teams.
Odom, who helped devise the new format, defended it Tuesday.
"There was far too much talk about who was going to be in the 8-9 game, versus who was going to finish first or second in our league," he said. "There was this terrible imbalance there, and we thought that was wrong."
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