In Defense of the ACC

Anthony Gruppuso-USA TODAY SportsAuthor’s Note: Thanks to Riley, Ned, Grumpy, and the rest of the BSD staff for their contributions to this article. Many of the points in this article were their ideas that I took and expanded upon.

For the Atlantic Coast Conference, college basketball season began with very high expectations and the clear title favorite in the Duke Blue Devils. Duke was number one in almost every preseason poll, and North Carolina was consistently in the top five, coming off of a loss to Villanova in the NCAA Championship game.

The conference had just come off of a season in which it saw four of its teams advance to the Elite Eight and two of its team advance to the Final…