ACC Standings Update and Weekend Schedule (February 20, 2021)

Here's your weekly ACC standings update and game schedule for the upcoming weekend.

Author:
Isaac Schade
Feb 19, 2021 8:00 AM EST

We are now just three weekends from Selection Sunday. That means are just two weeks left in the regular season for the major conferences followed by a week of conference tournaments (for those conferences that decide to move forward with their tournaments).

At this point, the ACC is still planning to hold their tournament.

Unfortunately, conference matchups continue to postponed or outright canceled. The number of conference games played by the 15 teams in the league therefore continues to grow in disparity. Louisville has played just nine conference games while Miami has played 14.

As far as NCAA Tournament fortunes, Virginia, Florida State, Virginia Tech, Louisville, and Clemson appear to be safely in the field while North Carolina and other teams still have some work left to do. Of course, given the uncertainty of this season, the Selection Committee will have an ever tougher time than normal sorting through the resumes of the teams vying for the 36 at-large bids. That means the bubble is a complete shifting target.

In order for the Tar Heels to be safely in the field, they need to continue to win games; and preferably games of the ACC variety. The issue is that their ACC games continue to get "postponed" (which really likely means "canceled" at this point). As of this writing, Carolina only has four remaining conference games actually scheduled: Louisville, Florida State, and Duke at home, plus Syracuse on the road.

If those four games are played, that would give Carolina 16 conference games, meaning four games are yet to be played. However, given the Northesatern game this week, it leaves the Tar Heels with only three possible games without going over the allowable threshold of regular season matchups.

It remains to be seen whether UNC will be able to make up any of those ACC games.

Carolina is currently tied with Clemson for fifth place in the conference at 7-5. However, in terms of conference tournament seeding the Tar Heels would be sixth due to their head-to-head loss to the Tigers.

A win over Louisville on Saturday would allow the Tar Heels to leap the Cardinals and Tigers for fourth place in the league. How so?

Clemson is idle this weekend (game at Pittsburgh postponed) so the Tar Heel win would break the current tie
Louisville would drop to 6-4 (60.0 percent)
Carolina would jump to 8-5 (61.5 percent)

12 of the 15 ACC teams will be in action this weekend, all of which will be on Saturday. Here's the schedule: