Three teams — North Carolina, Duke and Clemson — will arrive at next week’s ACC men’s basketball tournament in D.C. as virtual locks to make the NCAA tournament. Four others — Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Virginia and Wake Forest — still have work to do to secure an at-large bid ahead of Selection Sunday. The stakes are high but nothing like they were 50 years ago, when a pair of top-five ACC teams met in the conference championship game knowing the winner would advance to the NCAA tournament and the loser would be left out.
North Carolina State’s pressure-packed 103-100 overtime victory against Maryland at Greensboro Coliseum on March 9, 1974, remains one of the greatest college basketball games ever played.