ACC and Big 12 disagreements…

Last two days, we're at the Greensboro Coliseum ACC Tournament rounds one and two. It's quarterfinal Thursday today. This would have been a great day to be at the Greensboro Coliseum instead of at PNC Arena because it's a great day to be at PNC Arena because the Hurricanes are gonna play the Philadelphia Flyers tonight.

A friend of mine who is not only one of the best basketball writers, also works for Fox Sports, writes a dozen brackets for them and the Big Ten Network, but fancies himself a pretty good hockey fan, Mike DeCorcio of the Sporting News. It is very possible, sir, that your Penguins and our Hurricanes could clash in the opening round of the playoffs. It is, and of course you would be doomed. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. They are struggling a little bit right now. I think it'll be good for them just to get in. I don't know what the plan is there any longer. I know that under the earlier front office group what the plan was and now they seem to be trying to walk on both sides of the road and it just isn't working right now. They still have Sidney Crosby, right?

They do. They still have Sidney and Gino and Tanger and that's nice. The irony of the way, you know, this is the way that the modern sports fan thinks is that there's a ton of criticism in Pittsburgh for retaining those three players rather than breaking up the group and they got all of them at less than market value and they're the three best players on the team, but the fans are still mad about that.

So that's always a good sign. Well, the fans are longing for the glory days and, yeah, look, they still have great players. Mike Sullivan is still the coach. I don't care if Carolina's 4-0 against Pittsburgh this year or not.

That'll be a difficult series when we get to it. So North Carolina made about a little bit less than 50% of their three-point shots. It obviously looked better. Carolina, still, what do they have to do in your eyes? Is tonight enough if they were to beat Virginia for the second time in two weeks?

I say no. I say that, well, I wrote after the Duke game that I thought at that point that they had to win the league championship and get an automatic bid. At that point, what's happened since, Wisconsin losing last night certainly helped them. Some of the other things that could help them, but they still really wouldn't have an NCAA tournament resume if they went all the way through this and didn't win it. I think one of the really wild things, and I don't know that this is a decisive factor, but if they beat Virginia today, there's a good chance that they'll gain a quad-one win and lose a quad-one win in the same two hours.

Can you imagine that? That's the kind of, I'm sure it's not funny to Tar Heels fans, but it is kind of funny about how that can work. And it very well could happen if that, and I was mentioning that to another post, and he said he could see a scenario where he could see a scenario where Carolina's up 15, and they're thinking like, okay, let's get this down a little bit so we don't melt Virginia off the quad-one circumstance.

You can massage it to that extent. Mike DeCorsi of the Sporting News is joining us here. Here's my overall thought is, and I will admit to trying to maybe do some mental gymnastics to make it seem better for North Carolina, who, I will admit, has not played their best against the good teams this year. But they haven't been blown out by any of them, and they don't have any bad losses, really.

I don't believe they have a bad loss. But I really think that we get lost in the quad in that conversation, and the ACC suffers not just because it wasn't great this year, nobody's saying that it was anything other than, you know, below their normal standards, but the bottom of the league was so bad that every time you played them, you lost ground, no matter what you did. And why should North Carolina be penalized? Because, you know, your win over Syracuse is against the team that's 1-30 in the net. I mean, so I think everybody's numbers, especially those in the middle that would have been sometimes quad-one or quad-two games, those become quad-two or quad-three, I think everybody kind of suffered because the bottom was so bad. But, see, I don't think that's what the problem is for Carolina's resume. Carolina is not getting knocked out by people who are doing brackets like me because they have too many quad-fours or whatever. They're getting knocked out because they've had, and I don't have the net team sheet in front of me, but the last time I looked, they were 1-9 against quad-one.

Yeah, they are. So they've had nine opportunities to say, yes, we are a tournament team. And they said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no. I mean, that's not what they are looking for. They're looking for teams that at least say yes more or less half the time. And so that's the Tar Heels problem is that they haven't played well enough against NCAA tournament opposition. So, but my counter to that is simply that in the Big 10 or in the Big 12, almost all of your conference games are quad-one opportunities. And because of the bottom of the league, or at least quad-two opportunities, and because of the bottom of the league, a lot of ACC games were quad-four games. Louisville on your floor is a quad-four games, Louisville on your floor is a quad-four game, right? And so that's where they were like, if the bottom of the league wasn't as bad, I think the, and for where they are on the seed line, you know, if they were even on the seed line, I don't know if it's about quad-one as much as it's about the combination of quad-one and quad-two. Because if you're a team that's 40th in the country, you probably don't have a lot of quad-one wins, but you might have a lot of quad-twos, and there just weren't that many opportunities at those. No, I think you'll look and see that a team like Pitt, for instance, is I think in the fifties and they've got, I think, four quad-one wins.

They do. And Purdue, excuse me, Penn State, right around where the Panthers are. I think they have five.

Right around the forties, Iowa is ballpark 38 or so, and they've got seven, I think, the last time I looked. So I don't think that's the problem. Again, that's the argument that Utah State is making with their meager resume, one quad-one win and great metrics, but nothing else to back it. They're like, well, we didn't get any opportunities. But I just told you, the biggest problem that Carolina has is they got 10 and they succeeded 10% of the time. Okay, Mike Tocorski of the Sporting News here. Well, maybe we should have the fight.

No. Here, the Big Ten, or rather, the Big 12. Kansas State has had 16. West Virginia's had 18.

Baylor's had 20. And I realize I'm not comparing North Carolina to them as a team. I am simply saying that all of every team in the Big 12 is, it's inherent in the league because of the way the league is stacked this year, that they're going to get so many more opportunities. I think the ACC's numbers would look better had, instead of having a team in the 300s, three in the 200s, and two more in the 100s or something like that, if we had what would normally be the bottom of the league, in which case you'd have the worst team would be like 125, and then the other five bad teams would be between 70 and 100. But that's not the way the league looks this year.

Right. And think about how bad the league is. Think about how bad it is and how bad Florida State was and how bad Louisville was and Notre Dame. And think about how bad they were that they weren't even playing against like 2009 Carolina or 2015 Duke. They couldn't catch any breath against this Duke team, which I think is getting really good, but it wasn't in January. Right. Or this Carolina team, which is one and nine against high level opposition.

Or this Miami team that has lost some significant gains. This is not, this is the bottom of your league that can't beat literally almost anybody, including the top of this league, that even that top is not as strong as it has been. Right. But my point is that the bottom of the league doesn't mean that the middle of the league is bad.

I don't think it's bad. Well, I mean, well, I understand, but the metrics say it's like, I don't think Syracuse is bad. Right. I think, I don't think there are, I don't know what Syracuse is in the net this morning, but the last I looked, they were 131. I don't think there are 130 teams in the country better than Syracuse. Well, I think that's fair.

I look, I'm not defending. But my overall point is that the teams at the bottom make the teams in the middle look worse than they are. And then the teams who are at the top and there is not a national championship contender in this entire league. I will be stunned even if a team makes the elite eight from the ACC. I do think that there are a bunch of teams that can win twice when they get into the field, which I will not be surprised. I won't even be surprised if three of them are from the state of North Carolina that win twice if and when they get into March. But I don't think there's anybody that's going to win a third game. I really don't. Miami has, to me, has the best chance and I don't think they play good enough defense.

But I'm just saying that the middle of the league isn't as bad as the numbers reflect, which reflects poorly on the rest of the league. Do you like state? I do. I think I like them better than they do at times. I think they're capable of playing better than they have on too many, too many is a strong word, on more occasions than helps them. I think they are a better team than I have them seeded. And where I have them seeded at number eight, I get yelled at by coaches all over the place.

What have they done? Well, yeah, but look, I mean, they've done enough and look at them. I mean, with those guards and post play they're getting now, they are a dangerous team. And as a matter of fact, I wouldn't want them, if I were a one seed, I wouldn't want them in my eight, nine game. I'd rather have them playing as a 10 or a seven or whatever.

I wouldn't want them in my eight, nine game. I wouldn't want to have to deal with those guys in the second round if I were, whether it's UCLA or Kansas or Houston or whomever. Mike, of course, you have the sporting news.

I actually referenced something that you either said in a conversation to me or wrote. And by the way, I do want to point out that your piece on sportingnews.com about the 1983 Wolfpack championship team, everybody should go check that out. And I said this, I retweeted it yesterday, go at TSN Mike and go check out Mike's piece on the 83 title team, that you got a little emotional when you wrote, but you wrote, you either said or wrote a few years back that it's unfair. So the way they seed the field, they bracket the field where those eight, nine, sometimes those eight, nine games with teams that maybe just didn't do enough, but you know, have great personnel.

It's almost unfair to a top seed. Was it the Kentucky Wichita state? Yeah. One versus eight that, that brought that out. Yeah. 2014 when, when Wichita went undefeated in the regular season, I almost thought that they did it on purpose.

Like you think you're a one seed. Okay. Prove it here. Nine pros or whatever it was, I guess it was about four or five.

Here you go. Now deal with this. And, and they, and they, and they actually dealt with it. They just didn't get the last basket. It was one of the great games we've had an NCAA tournament over the last 10 years or so we've had some great games, but that was that ranked with all of them. They went back and forth down the last five or six minutes trading baskets and it was just phenomenal. So they got themselves a great game, but I thought honestly that that game should have been a sweet 16 or elite eight game that it was that good.

Anyway, I think that they have to be careful with that. I, I, for me almost want to put teams that aren't as good in the eight, nine game as the ones in the 10 and 11 range. You know, I want to put the teams in there that have proven that they belong in the tournament, but they can't beat anybody that, that matters.

That's what I want in that game. And I know they don't do it that way, but if I were in charge, that's how I would be tempted to play it because you want, you know, you want the teams at the top of the bracket to last as long as possible. That's what, that's what they earned to an extent. That's what they, they play into. I mean, if you think about it, oftentimes with upsets teams that are seeded two, three, four, end up with easier second round games than the teams that are the overall number one.