Syracuse Orange fans weren’t alone puffing out their chest and tweeting “ACC Rulez” over the weekend. With three teams left in the Elite Eight and two of the Final Four squads, the conference stands taller than any other league in America this March. Make no mistake this was a great NCAA Tournament for Jim Phillips and his basketball teams.
However, that doesn’t mean that all those takes from November up until a week ago were wrong. The ACC was down this year. The two teams left playing in New Orleans next Saturday started the year as the two highest-ranked teams in the pre-season AP poll- Duke was 9th, North Carolina was 19th.