Not sure where this goes, but Will Warren’s ACC preview is darkly humorous:
“ The ACC begins the year as a consensus fifth of the Power Five conferences by pretty much any metric you choose. This causes ACC fans to liquify their pants.
Duke (November 22) and North Carolina (November 8) lose early-season games that cause ACC Haterz to laugh and point, saying that even the top-end programs can’t beat the other conferences.
Sometime in January, a national journalist of some repute tweets that the ACC should only have two NCAA Tournament teams: Duke and North Carolina.
A rage of tweets by ACC-biased journalists in response criticize said media member, or members, for their anti-East Coast bias. They must think the Big 12 is actually good, so the ACC fans break down how many Q4 opponents are on Big 12 non-conference schedules.
The ACC conference slate plays itself out, and a conference with two great teams and a lot of question marks once again realizes that someone is legally required to finish third and win a lot of basketball games that don’t involve Duke or UNC. This team will rank 29th in KenPom and will go 14-6 in conference play. It will receive no lower than a 5 seed.
Two additional teams lock themselves into the field by - you guessed it! - someone having to win basketball games. Neither will be in the top 40 of KenPom, but both will be 7 or 8 seeds.
Somehow, a sixth team will sneak in via the First Four despite having 12 losses. This will be viewed as a crime, as it means a more interesting team with 26 or 27 wins gets left out.
This will be the most annoying, obnoxious league in terms of Twitter discussion, both pro- and anti-.
They will represent 25% of the Elite Eight at minimum.“
The "advanced stats nerd" vs. "that boy nice" conference
statsbywill.substack.com