10 Things You (Probably) Don’t Know About The ACC Tournament, Part Two
By David Glenn
As the 2022 ACC Tournament continues here on semifinal Friday, we present five more things you (probably) didn’t know about the crown jewel event of ACC basketball.
(For the other five items on this top-10 list, please visit our Thursday post)
- 23-Year Duke/UNC Run (1997-2019)
This is perhaps the most stunning tidbit in ACC Tournament history. Between 1996 and 2021, a 25-year stretch that ended very recently, if you saw an ACC championship game, there was a 100% CHANCE that you were watching Duke, North Carolina or both teams.
Put differently, 23 consecutive ACC title games (1997-2019; the tournament wasn’t completed in 2020 because of COVID) included the Blue Devils, the Tar Heels, or both. Amazingly, the majority of that streak occurred while the conference had 12 or 15 members, rather than when it was a seven- or eight-team league, when it theoretically may have been easier to dominate.
In 1996, Wake Forest beat Georgia Tech for the ACC championship. In 2021, Georgia Tech defeated Florida State and cut down the nets. In between, for almost a quarter-century, every title tilt was colored by some version of Carolina blue and/or royal blue. Amazing.
Included in this streak was the most dominant stretch by any program in ACC history. Led by coach Mike Krzyzewski, Duke captured 10 of the 13 ACC Tournaments (77%) from 1999-2011. While it was not part of this particular Duke-Carolina magic, the second-most dominant stretch in ACC history was orchestrated by UNC coach Dean Smith, whose teams won nine of the 16 ACC Tournaments (56%) from 1967-82.
Expanding on the theme just a bit, 29 straight ACC championship games (1991-2019) included at least one North Carolina-based team. The bookends surrounding that streak were Georgia Tech titles, with the Yellow Jackets beating Virginia in 1990 and FSU in 2021 in the finals.
Overall, through 67 ACC Tournaments, Carolina and Duke have met in the championship game 11 times, with the Tar Heels winning six: 1967 (UNC), 1969 (UNC), 1979 (UNC), 1988 (Duke), 1989 (UNC), 1991 (UNC), 1992 (Duke), 1998 (UNC), 1999 (Duke), 2001 (Duke) and 2011 (Duke).
- Cinderella Rarely Wins
Everyone loves a good Cinderella story, in college basketball or otherwise. However, the ACC Tournament, much like the NCAA Tournament, rarely requires grabbing the proverbial glass slipper from that dusty old box in the attic.
Top-four seeds captured 61 of the first 67 ACC Tournaments (91%). Similarly, in the 42 years the NCAA Tournament has had a seeded field, 38 national champions were top-four seeds (90%).
The Big Dance’s four exceptions remain famous decades later. Villanova (a #8 seed in 1985) remains the lowest-seeded team ever to win the NCAA title. Coach Jim Valvano’s “Cardiac Pack” (1983) and Kansas’ “Danny (Manning) and the Miracles” (1988) were #6 seeds. The only relatively recent example is Connecticut, a #7 seed in 2014.
The lowest-seeded teams ever to win the ACC Tournament came from the #6 line. That’s been done five times, by five different schools, most recently in 2004. Here’s the list, with the team’s head coaches at the time: 1976 Virginia (Terry Holland), 1980 Duke (Bill Foster), 1987 NC State (Valvano), 1993 Georgia Tech (Bobby Cremins) and 2004 Maryland (Gary Williams).
Only three teams, 1976 UVa (4-8), 1987 NCSU (6-8) and 2004 Maryland (7-9), catapulted themselves all the way from a sub-.500 league record during the regular season to cutting down the nets at the ACC Tournament.
- Bubble Dreams Can Come True
Seemingly every year, for at least the last four decades, one or more ACC squads have been seen as NCAA Tournament “bubble teams” as the ACC Tournament unfolds. Following this extremely unusual 2021-22 regular season (https://chapelboro.com/town-square/holding-court-a-bad-regular-season-for-acc-hoops), three to five ACC teams, especially Wake Forest, Virginia Tech and Virginia, have been discussed in those terms all week in Brooklyn.
So, besides the ACC champion receiving the league’s automatic bid, have there been actual examples of teams using the ACC Tournament to clinch a spot in the Big Dance?
There are no official records on such things, and the NCAA selection committee typically doesn’t answer those sorts of specific questions, so what’s left is educated speculation.
Going back to 1985, the first year of the 64-team (now 68-team) NCAA Tournament, there are at least five ACC teams that arguably went from the wrong side to the right side of the bubble just in time for Selection Sunday.
The most clear-cut example was NC State in 1987; even after winning the ACC Tournament, the Wolfpack was just a #11 seed. (The final at-large selections typically receive #12 seeds.) Oddly, State has not won a single ACC Tournament in the 35 years since that landmark success story.
Four ACC teams earned at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament and double-digit (meaning very low) seeds soon after posting multiple victories, including one over a nationally ranked opponent, at the ACC Tournament: 2005 NC State (#10 seed), 2009 Maryland (#10 seed), 2010 Georgia Tech (#10 seed) and 2014 NC State (#12 seed).
- Nothing Trivial About MVPs
On average, about once every three years, the ACC Player of the Year goes on to win the Everett Case Award as the ACC Tournament MVP. Counting this year, when Wake Forest’s Alondes Williams obviously won’t be a candidate because of the Demon Deacons’ second-round defeat, this has happened 23 times in 68 events.
Four UNC players have completed this difficult double: Lennie Rosenbluth (1957), Larry Miller (1967 and 1968), Antawn Jamison (1998) and Tyler Hansbrough (2008). The most recent ACC example came in 2019, from Duke freshman Zion Williamson.
On average, about once every four years, a player who didn’t make any of the All-ACC teams that year emerges soon after those honors are announced to capture the ACC Tournament MVP honor. This occurred more frequently before 1990, when the all-conference teams were expanded from 10 (first- and second-team All-ACC) to 15 players (including third-team All-ACC). Overall, it happened in 16 of the first 67 events held prior to this year.
Seven UNC players have accomplished this feat: Phil Ford (1975), John Kuester (1977), Dudley Bradley (1979), Sam Perkins (1981), JR Reid (1989), Jerry Stackhouse (1994) and Joel Berry II (2016). Ford, Perkins, and Stackhouse did so as freshmen, Berry as a sophomore, Reid as a junior, and Kuester and Bradley as seniors. Ford, Perkins, Stackhouse and Berry all earned All-ACC honors later in their careers, of course, and Reid did so earlier in his career.
Finally, since freshmen became eligible in men’s basketball in 1972-73, only six have won the ACC Tournament MVP honor, and three of those examples came before the turn of the century.
Here’s the full list: Ford (1975), Perkins (1981), Stackhouse (1994), Duke’s Jason Williams (2000), UNC’s Brandan Wright (2007) and Williamson (2019). Perkins, Wright and Williamson also won the league’s Freshman of the Year honor, which was first awarded in 1976 (the year after Ford’s stellar rookie campaign), in those same seasons. Williams was the runner-up to UNC’s Joseph Forte in 2000. Stackhouse happened to be a freshman in the same season as Maryland’s Joe Smith (who won the 1994 FOY honor) and Wake Forest’s Tim Duncan.
- Cheerleaders, Dance Teams, Mascots
Yes, there are NCAA rules about virtually anything and everything you can imagine, and this fun-filled category is no exception.
Just as there are only so many tickets to sell at the ACC Tournament, only so many media credentials and seats on press row, etc., there’s only so much room on the baseline, too. That’s where cheerleaders and dance team members end up competing for space with television cables, security guards, towel boys/girls, band members, cameramen, videographers, photographers and sometimes even journalists, depending on the arena’s floor layout.
(Side note: Notre Dame point guard Matt Farrell knocked a nearby colleague’s entire cup full of tea onto my $2,000 laptop computer, #RIP, when I was in a baseline seat a few years ago. For the record, he was on the receiving end of a hard foul, so it definitely wasn’t his fault. Nevertheless, that became one of the more complicated expense reports of my 35-year career.)
Anyway, the NCAA rules boil down to a baker’s dozen-style approach. Each school is permitted to bring only 12 performers and one mascot to the ACC Tournament (and other postseason events). The dozen can be any combination of cheerleaders and/or dance team members, and any combination of females/males, at the discretion of each university.
At some schools, there may be as many as 50 cheerleaders and dance team members who perform at home games during the regular season. Miami, for example, has a coed cheerleading team with 12-15 members, a female-only cheerleading squad with 15-18 members, and a dance team (the “Sunsations”) with 18-20 participants.
How do they possibly decide which of those 50 talented young people get those 12 slots?
March Madness, indeed.
Next Time: Reflections on Selection Sunday.
David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.
The founding editor and long-time owner of the ACC Sports Journal and ACCSports.com, he also has contributed to the Durham Herald-Sun, ESPN Radio, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Raycom Sports, SiriusXM and most recently The Athletic. From 1999-2020, he also hosted the David Glenn Show, which became the largest sports radio program in the history of the Carolinas, syndicated in more than 300 North Carolina cities and towns, plus parts of South Carolina and Virginia.
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