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View Full Version : Is the ACC Tournament important? What can be done?



SoCalDukeFan
03-13-2010, 12:54 AM
I went to Duke in the Stone Ages. To get to the NCAAs you had to win the ACC Tournament. The ACC T was huge.

Obviously now if yout team has to win the ACC T to go to the NCAA T then it still is potentially big. But for many, what does it really matter? Same for the other major conferences. Kansas, Kentucky, Syracuse and Duke will get 1 or 2 seeds regardless of how they do in their tournaments.

One idea would be to make it a rule that the top seeded team from each conference has to be the conference tournament winner. Obviously if say Miami wins the ACC it makes things interesting. This would mean that the top teams had something to play for.

Another would be that if they go to a 96 team tournament (which I think is the dumbest idea in the history of sports) then give the conference tournament winners the first round byes.

Or are you happy with the conference tournaments as they are?

Your thoughts
SoCal

Cameron
03-13-2010, 01:21 AM
But for many, what does it really matter?

It determines the legit ACC Champion for that season. So, yes, it matters. The regular season first place finisher banner is nice and all, but it isn't legit. Not in this conference. That's what makes the ACC so special. We're the only conference that still recognizes are tournament winner at The Champ.

And it couldn't make ACC Tournament weekend anymore exciting each and every year. I live for this thing. It is, simply, heaven.

Cameron
03-13-2010, 01:23 AM
I should make it known that I wasn't insinuating that you didn't know those attributes of the ACC tourney, SoCal. Merely stating why I love it.

papa whiskey
03-13-2010, 01:57 AM
If you pay attention on selection Sunday year to year, the ACC tournament as well as all other major conference tournaments matter greatly. Teams regularly move up or drop 2-4 seeds in the big dance based on performance in conference tournaments. Take this year for example. If we lose Saturday and OSU and WVU both win out, our #1 seed could be in jeopardy. If we win out we are all but assured a top seed. Conference tournaments certainly don't mean as much as they used to but they are still very important.

ice-9
03-13-2010, 03:20 AM
It WILL be in jeopardy. If we lose to Miami -- a semi bad loss -- and OSU and/or WVU win their conference tournaments we will most certainly be demoted to a 2 seed.

Chris4UNC
03-13-2010, 04:03 AM
In my mind if anything should be changed it should be that regular season champs should get the automatic bids. Yes, I know, they go to the NCAA anyway....at least that is what you think. The smaller conferences often see their conference regular season champs sitting at home while a cellar dweller that ran off 3 games or so in row in three days ends up in the NCAA field. That my friend is totally unfair!

I think conference tournament games should simply be seen as games on the schedule and taken into consideration as part of a teams total body of work. In other words a team that is, say, 7-23 should not go to the NCAA just because 3 of those wins brought them a conference tourny title. If UNC would have rattled off 4 wins they would have finished the season at 20-15. In my opinion they still would have been hard pressed to get in the NCAA unless those 4 wins would have come against the highest seeded opponent possible.

Chris4UNC
03-13-2010, 04:04 AM
I went to Duke in the Stone Ages. To get to the NCAAs you had to win the ACC Tournament. The ACC T was huge.

Obviously now if yout team has to win the ACC T to go to the NCAA T then it still is potentially big. But for many, what does it really matter? Same for the other major conferences. Kansas, Kentucky, Syracuse and Duke will get 1 or 2 seeds regardless of how they do in their tournaments.

One idea would be to make it a rule that the top seeded team from each conference has to be the conference tournament winner. Obviously if say Miami wins the ACC it makes things interesting. This would mean that the top teams had something to play for.

Another would be that if they go to a 96 team tournament (which I think is the dumbest idea in the history of sports) then give the conference tournament winners the first round byes.

Or are you happy with the conference tournaments as they are?

Your thoughts
SoCal

In my mind if anything should be changed it should be that regular season champs should get the automatic bids. Yes, I know, they go to the NCAA anyway....at least that is what you think. The smaller conferences often see their conference regular season champs sitting at home while a cellar dweller that ran off 3 games or so in row in three days ends up in the NCAA field. That my friend is totally unfair!

I think conference tournament games should simply be seen as games on the schedule and taken into consideration as part of a teams total body of work. In other words a team that is, say, 7-23 should not go to the NCAA just because 3 of those wins brought them a conference tourny title. If UNC would have rattled off 4 wins they would have finished the season at 20-15. In my opinion they still would have been hard pressed to get in the NCAA unless those 4 wins would have come against the highest seeded opponents possible.

NSDukeFan
03-13-2010, 11:31 AM
In my mind if anything should be changed it should be that regular season champs should get the automatic bids. Yes, I know, they go to the NCAA anyway....at least that is what you think. The smaller conferences often see their conference regular season champs sitting at home while a cellar dweller that ran off 3 games or so in row in three days ends up in the NCAA field. That my friend is totally unfair!

I think conference tournament games should simply be seen as games on the schedule and taken into consideration as part of a teams total body of work. In other words a team that is, say, 7-23 should not go to the NCAA just because 3 of those wins brought them a conference tourny title. If UNC would have rattled off 4 wins they would have finished the season at 20-15. In my opinion they still would have been hard pressed to get in the NCAA unless those 4 wins would have come against the highest seeded opponents possible.

Your solution would work fine if there was a double round-robin balanced schedule. Since there isn't, the best way to determine the true champion of the ACC is the tournament. Check out Georgia Tech's schedule vs. Virginia Tech's ACC schedules to see how fair it would be to go solely based on regular season results.

DukeFencer
03-13-2010, 11:47 AM
In my mind if anything should be changed it should be that regular season champs should get the automatic bids. Yes, I know, they go to the NCAA anyway....at least that is what you think. The smaller conferences often see their conference regular season champs sitting at home while a cellar dweller that ran off 3 games or so in row in three days ends up in the NCAA field. That my friend is totally unfair!

The Ivy League sends their regular season champ to the NCAAs, but of course they don't have a conference tournament. I thought there was at least one other conference that did this, but I can't find which one to check if they have a conference tournament or not. I was under the impression that the conferences had the option to choose how their automatic bid was given out. I'm all for the current way, however.

arnie
03-13-2010, 11:54 AM
According to Inside Carolina message boards (the most reputable authority out there), the ACC tournament is a waste of time and only "losers like Duke" win the thing.

Wait a minute? Other threads on that same board are complaining about how easy it will be for Duke to win and how unfair that is. Maybe it does matter to some.

SoCalDukeFan
03-13-2010, 08:55 PM
from Inside Carolina because I was trying to find an NIT selection show viewing party in Chapel Hill.

SoCal

arnie
03-14-2010, 09:26 AM
from Inside Carolina because I was trying to find an NIT selection show viewing party in Chapel Hill.

SoCal

I love it! If they do get in, looking forward to the Presbyterian fan in attendance.

DukeUsul
03-14-2010, 10:10 AM
Other ACC teams have cared a lot about the ACCT even after the NCAA expanded to more than just the automatic qualifier. It seems that most other schools stopped caring about the ACCT around 1998 or so when Duke started owning it. Funny that.

NYC Duke Fan
03-14-2010, 10:55 AM
What about if you win the regular season you get an automatic bid to the tournament and do not have to play in your conference tournament.

The pros would be that you avoid an injury to an important player in the conference tournament.

The con is that you have a one week or more layover without playing.

I have not figured out what to do if there is a tie for the regular season though .

Maybe you give each confeence the choice to adapt the above proposal.

CDu
03-14-2010, 11:03 AM
The Ivy League sends their regular season champ to the NCAAs, but of course they don't have a conference tournament. I thought there was at least one other conference that did this, but I can't find which one to check if they have a conference tournament or not. I was under the impression that the conferences had the option to choose how their automatic bid was given out. I'm all for the current way, however.

Yes, the conferences have the choice. They chose money over securing the best representative for their conference. The Ivy is the only holdout. The Big-10 and Pac-10 used to not have conference tournaments. The Big-10 started tourneys in 1998. The Pac-10 briefly had a tournament in the late-80s but dropped it. They brought it back in 2002.

CDu
03-14-2010, 11:06 AM
Your solution would work fine if there was a double round-robin balanced schedule. Since there isn't, the best way to determine the true champion of the ACC is the tournament. Check out Georgia Tech's schedule vs. Virginia Tech's ACC schedules to see how fair it would be to go solely based on regular season results.

I'm not sure that I agree that it's the best way, but it is an alternative way to determine the "true" champion. Do you really think that NC State and Miami were among the four best teams in the conference? Because that's what the tourney would suggest.

I agree that the double round-robin would be the best solution. I just don't think that a single-elimination tournament is actually better than a not-quite round-robin schedule in determining a champion. At least with the regular season, you don't see a truly awful team winning it.

NSDukeFan
03-15-2010, 08:35 AM
I'm not sure that I agree that it's the best way, but it is an alternative way to determine the "true" champion. Do you really think that NC State and Miami were among the four best teams in the conference? Because that's what the tourney would suggest.

I agree that the double round-robin would be the best solution. I just don't think that a single-elimination tournament is actually better than a not-quite round-robin schedule in determining a champion. At least with the regular season, you don't see a truly awful team winning it.

You're right, the regular season is probably a better way to determine the champ, but at least the tournament is a more fair way to determine the champ, though a balanced regular season would be the ideal way.

Spret42
03-15-2010, 09:00 AM
From the standpoint of purest competition, without a balanced regular season schedule you cannot truly determine a champion and the only way to crown one is a seeded tournament. With a truly balanced schedule there was/is absolutely no reason for a tournament. It only existed as a money grab. (Yeah, this is my pet peeve and I have been in big argument on this board about it in previous years. :))

There is nothing that needs to be changed about the current ACC tournament except maybe the rest of the ACC raising its game to Duke's levels and act like winning it matters. They could also possibly turn down some of the lights over the stands in the Greensboro Coliseum so it doesn't look like the game is being played on the sun.

JEA
03-15-2010, 09:26 AM
This article (http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/weblog/conference_tournaments_not_a_bad_way_to_decide_bes t_team/) from Ken Pomeroy addresses this very question using statistics. He concludes: "Giving up the excitement (and revenue) that a conference tourney brings is not nearly worth it considering that tourneys also do a good job crowning the best team."

I also think the conference tournament experience is one that fans would miss. I know it's difficult or impossible for a lot of ACC fans to travel to the ACC tournament, but I think there's something unifying about getting everyone in the conference together, seeing other teams, meeting fans from other schools, etc. With all the conference shifting that happens these days, I think conference tournaments make conferences more than just alliances of convenience/revenue, which in turn makes the regular season games more enjoyable.

Scorp4me
03-15-2010, 09:36 AM
One other potential possibility is that the ACC tournament helps to identify the hottest teams at the moment and therefore the teams most likely to represent the ACC in postseason play positively.

I would agree that perhaps the 4 best teams weren't the 4 remaining teams in the tournament, but they may have been the four hottest. I mean let's face it, teams do peak at different times, take Wake for example.

I would also agree that with an unbalanced schedule the regular season champ means much less AND there is still a great deal of prestige associated with being the Official Conference Champ. Back before they did away with the round robin this argument was much harder for me to decide on, unfortunately now it's just academic.

Devil in the Blue Dress
03-15-2010, 10:21 AM
From the standpoint of purest competition, without a balanced regular season schedule you cannot truly determine a champion and the only way to crown one is a seeded tournament. With a truly balanced schedule there was/is absolutely no reason for a tournament. It only existed as a money grab. (Yeah, this is my pet peeve and I have been in big argument on this board about it in previous years. :))

There is nothing that needs to be changed about the current ACC tournament except maybe the rest of the ACC raising its game to Duke's levels and act like winning it matters. They could also possibly turn down some of the lights over the stands in the Greensboro Coliseum so it doesn't look like the game is being played on the sun.

Back in the old days when the ACC was created, the idea of the tournament winner being the conference representative to the NCAA tournament was an idea promoted by the ole Gray Fox himself, Everett Case. The regular season conference schedule was a round robin which continued until recent changes in the conference.

While the tournament did create some revenue, Case was interested in the hype it created. Other conferences added tournaments similar to that of the ACC. For a number of years the conference tournament was held in William Neal Reynolds Coliseum.

hurleyfor3
03-15-2010, 12:05 PM
There is nothing that needs to be changed about the current ACC tournament except maybe the rest of the ACC raising its game to Duke's levels and act like winning it matters. They could also possibly turn down some of the lights over the stands in the Greensboro Coliseum so it doesn't look like the game is being played on the sun.

I don't have a problem with the lighting in Greensboro. The upper deck is actually kind of dark.

What the ACC should do is play it in Greensboro as often as possible. DC and Atlanta suck and Charlotte isn't quite as good and doesn't add geographic diversity. I understand the feedback from having the tournament in Tampa that one year was surprisingly positive. I'd be willing to have it in Boston once to see what it's like, but not in any other Northeastern city that doesn't have an ACC school in the immediate vicinity.

Dr. Rosenrosen
03-15-2010, 12:15 PM
Just ask VT... Most had them as a lock. Then they blew it in their first game and seemingly showed the committee how ready they were to be part of the big dance. So it's not just important to top seeds but middle of the pack as well.

flyingdutchdevil
03-15-2010, 12:18 PM
As a Duke fan, I love having the ACCT more in Greensboro than not. That said, I'd like to see a little more rotation in different states. If I were Maryland, GT, etc., I'd be ticked off with always having to go to N. Carolina to play. They should have a rotation system with 5-6 states along the Atlantic Coast (Mass., DC, Virginia, N. Carolina, Georgia, Flordia, maybe another) but never in a college's home town.

mapei
03-15-2010, 12:25 PM
I think the ACC tourney is hugely important. Realistically, you're not going to have a chance to win the NC every year - sometimes, other conferences are stronger, including this one. So here's a chance to get some hardware versus your peers. Take it and be proud.

That said, both the ACC and the NCAAs are a bit capricious with the single-elimination format. As often as not, true champions don't get crowned IMO. So I also would like to see the regular season count for much more than it does. I am every bit as proud of Duke's regular season banners as the tournament banners, which only mean Duke was the best team for three games.

Dr. Rosenrosen
03-15-2010, 12:30 PM
As a Duke fan, I love having the ACCT more in Greensboro than not. That said, I'd like to see a little more rotation in different states. If I were Maryland, GT, etc., I'd be ticked off with always having to go to N. Carolina to play. They should have a rotation system with 5-6 states along the Atlantic Coast (Mass., DC, Virginia, N. Carolina, Georgia, Flordia, maybe another) but never in a college's home town.

Gary whined for years about this. Loved their showing when the tourney came back to DC in '05. They pulled out all the stops to fill the stadium with red and then lost to Clemson. Oh the irony!

hurleyfor3
03-15-2010, 01:25 PM
Gary whined for years about this. Loved their showing when the tourney came back to DC in '05. They pulled out all the stops to fill the stadium with red and then lost to Clemson. Oh the irony!

DC had its chance. The weather sucked, hotels were too expensive and too far away, the city made no effort at hospitality and the cops were complete jerks to people trying to buy tickets. The latter matters to the conference, as it likes its arenas full of devoted fans -- as I understand it it is thinking about changing ticket allotments to this effect.

J_C_Steel
03-15-2010, 01:37 PM
If the NCAA Tournament expands to 96 and the winner of the ACC Tournament winner gets an automatic spot in the top 32 (which would apparently receive double byes), then it would certainly become more important than it is now.

Classof06
03-15-2010, 02:10 PM
I think the ACC Tourney is still extremely important and Duke's draw in the NCAA Tournament is living proof. Duke leapfrogged Syracuse to grab the 3rd #1 seed and has, on paper at least, the easiest road of any #1 seed to the Elite 8.

This would not be the case had Duke not won the ACCT.

J_C_Steel
03-15-2010, 02:13 PM
I think the ACC Tourney is still extremely important and Duke's draw in the NCAA Tournament is living proof. Duke leapfrogged Syracuse to grab the 3rd #1 seed and has, on paper at least, the easiest road of any #1 seed to the Elite 8.

This would not be the case had Duke not won the ACCT.

I think the "easiest road" came about more because of the logjam of Big East teams and the committee's decision that WVU would be better off playing in the East Region.

But still, seeding is less important than byes. That's why the ACC Tournament would become far more important if the winner got a double bye in the 96-team scenario.

EKU1969
03-15-2010, 02:26 PM
Ask Syracuse about double byes!

tele
03-15-2010, 02:37 PM
Winning the ACC tournament kept Duke from having to go out to the West Region and play at 5000 feet above sea level. I'd say that is important. Winning the regular season title likely got them a one seed ahead of West Virginia, and winning the ACC tournament got Duke the 3'rd one seed ahead of Syracuse.

Nice to see the accomplishment of those two preseason goals have instant impact and benefit to Duke in the NCAA tourney. Well earned and well deserved IMHO.

4decadedukie
03-15-2010, 03:44 PM
In my mind if anything should be changed it should be that regular season champs should get the automatic bids.

Perhaps, Chris, before the ACC's expansion to twelve teams, when each team played every other ACC club at home and away, your concept might have made some sense. Even then, however, your approach would not recognize a team's in-season, steady improvement or decline, which is important if the ACC Championship denotes the best team in March, at the conclusion of the season.

Further, how does your plan work when each ACC team plays a unique conference schedule? For example, would your system be fair to UNC -- who has to play Duke twice every year -- when other universities face normally-less-challenging opponents?

Most other collegiate sports determine the conference and NCAA champions through a tournament system; why should basketball differ?