ACC women's tourney unnecessary--for now

This article is not an attack on women's college basketball. The NCAA justly gives talented athletes a national stage where they can display their talents. Although many fault the women's game for being drastically inferior to that of its male counterparts, the women's game, less influenced by finances, represents a purity in the sport that will probably never be seen again. That being said, the ACC needs to eliminate its women's basketball tournament immediately.

The simple reason is that there is no parity at this stage in the evolution of women's college basketball. Just as many major conferences did not necessitate tournaments in the men's game in the 1960s, there is too much of a disparity between the best and worst teams in the ACC to demand a three-game playoff. For example, the Big Ten did not create a playoff to supplement its men's basketball regular season until 1998. While the power conference may have waited too long to create the single-elimination system, the reason for its absence was obvious in the early 1960s. Ohio State's dominant squads featured players so talented that the Buckeyes' second team was arguably better than the starting five of any league school. Duke's dominance of the ACC is arguably even more so than the Ohio State men's teams of 40 years ago.

While it is not beyond reason to claim that North Carolina's women's team has a legitimate chance to defeat the Blue Devils, no one besides Duke's cross-town rivals could ever defeat Alana Beard and company in a must-win situation. It is true that Florida State downed the Blue Devils this year in Tallahassee, but it is also true that that was a fluke. It would take divine intervention for the Seminoles to pull off another upset in tournament conditions.

One reason the ACC does hold a tournament every year is to give all nine teams a shot at obtaining an automatic bid into the NCAA tournament. But the only teams with legitimate shots of tearing down the nets in Greensboro this year are two squads that will already receive automatic bids: North Carolina and Duke. There is simply too much disparity between the abilities of the Duke and North Carolina players compared to the rest of the ACC that seriously expecting an underdog to emerge from the field would be an irrational thought.