A Jersey Guy: What's happened to ACC hoops?

Remember when basketball in the Atlantic Coast Conference used to be the gold standard for the sport, or pretty much close to it?

Remember when the Duke-North Carolina conducted hand-to-hand combat twice during the regular season and perhaps another time in the ACC tournament? (Remarkably the two teams have never met in an NCAA tournament game) but they were only the lead act to talent-laden cast of teams?

Remember when the ACC would proudly display a cast of 8.9 or even 10 NCAA tournament worthy entries?

Ah, those were the days my friends when you could see teams from Duke, North Carolina ,Virginia, Notre Dame, North Carolina State, Florida State and, more recently, Louisville and Syracuse, grabbing the spotlight.

Maybe it's another Covid Consequence.

Maybe its just a cyclical in nature.

If you look at the projections of March Madness, which is slightly longer than a month from Selection Sunday, you see a different portrait of ACC basketball.

Oh you still have the Dukies as an Elite 8, Final Four caliber squad in Coach Mike Krzyzewski's final season, even with the speed bumps as Monday night's 69-68 loss to Virginia impeding the process.

Right now, the ACC is not getting much respect from bracketlogists, with the Devils the only ACC lock and a maximum of 5 teams in the tournament projection list.

And even that is somewhat tainted

Of the conference teams mentioned as tournament worthy, Notre Dame, Miami, North Carolina, Duke and Wake Forest, only Wake (8) is projected as a single seeded selection.

That could all change in the next few weeks as team make their late season push to become tournament worthy.

But right now, the ACC looks more like a mid-major conference than a Power 5 grouping, with parity, but not quality trending.

And this is from a conference which in the last seven years has produced two national champions and 4 teams participating in the title game.

Or from a conference which three years ago turned out three No. 1 seeds (Duke, North Carolina and Virginia).

There are lots of areas to focus upon when looking for reasons for what is clearly a downward trend.

Maybe the ACC needs new coaching blood.

North Carolina's Roy Williams retired after last season and Coach K is leaving after this season, but there is still a plethora of blue (and old) blood such as Syracuse's Jim Boeheim (77 years old), Florida State's Leonard Hamilton (73) and Miami's Jim Larranaga (72).

Krzyzewski, who would like to end his reign with a Final Four championship festival in New Orleans in April, is taking a wait and see attitude.

"This has been a championship-level conference,'' he said. ""We'll see how it works out this year. But I don't have any bad feelings about the future in our conference.''

Various reasons for failure, or lack of great success have been given.

Injuries are always factored in the equation

Lack of experience with an influx of e new faces because of transfer portal movement is another.

Notre Dame's Mike Brey, a coaching veteran who has seen his team rise to the top with a win over Kentucky and fall off the table with a road loss at Boston College concedes only one factor--it's not easy to win at the ACC level.

"I know we've gotten a little bit of a knock,'' said Brey, whose Irish team is back in serious contention for an NCAA bid. ""Are we a one-bid league this year? Am I in the America East (Brey was the head coach at Delaware early in his career). I've heard so much about our league being down that I'm like,"Am I back in the America East' C'mon ,now, I know the outside, Well, they don't have one seeds. All I know is the 15 guys coaching in this league, we know how hard it is.''

.The problem is that no pattern has emerged long enough to get the ACC back to the elite level.

Miami won early in the season at Duke, but has lost four of it's last seven games.

North Carolina hasn't beaten a quality opponent all season and its losses to Miami, Wake Forest and Duke have been double digit defeats.

Virginia has come back with wins over Miami and Duke (as well as Big East top tier team Providence) and may be peaking at the right time.

FSU has never really gotten untracked, but has the talent level to put together a late-season surge.

Wake Forest is a victory away from 20 wins, which is significant for a program which hasn't won an NCAA tournament game in 12 years.

All of it leaves ACC fans in a true state of March Madness, asking both What's Next and is that all there is to a season which has failed to energize many followers.