Importance of the ACC Tournament

[QueenOfSpades]

People like to claim that the ACC Tournament doesn't mean anything, but last year it eliminated us from National Seed contention. We went in as the #2 team in the ACC with an RPI of #10 . We were at least in the conversation until we lost the first two games.

Why is this year so important? Because we are all but guaranteed to be on the same side as Florida State since Louisville has such a huge lead. We have to erase FSU's 2-1 advantage.

Here is how it would look today:

Bracket A
1. Louisville 4. Clemson 5. North Carolina Play-in game: 8. Wake Forest vs. 9. Georgia Tech

Bracket B
2. Miami 3. Florida State 6. Notre Dame Play-in game: 7. NC State vs. 10. Virginia

 

[BWCD]

In order to have a shot at a top-8 seed now, we pretty much need to win out the rest of our schedule (which is do-able), and march thru our side of the ACC Tourney. We might be OK to drop one (just one) to GT, but that's about it. We certainly cannot afford a letdown to the likes of NYIT, FAU, or B-C.

The ACC Tourney does indeed matter, but it "doesn't matter" in terms of who wins the championship, because normally by the time our title game is played on Sunday...the postseason field/hosts have been almost 100% set...unless there's some team who comes out of nowhere to win a conference's auto bid. So, for us to use the ACC Tourney to positively effect our postseason positioning, we need to just run train on everyone in our pool. Getting to the final, much less winning/losing it, won't do much just because of the timing of the committee, and how early they have everything set on Sunday.

 

[MovingZen]

I realize this isn't profound, but they just gotta keep winning at this point.