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ACC basketball has lived a charmed life for many decades, so what happened this season and specifically on Thursday was a shock to the college basketball world.
The ACC already struggled to get its typical allotment of teams into the NCAA Tournament. A measly 4 teams found their way into the field on Selection Sunday, and it easily could’ve been 3 had North Carolina not squeezed in as one of the First Four teams.
Four days later, on the first full day of the tournament, things managed to get worse for a league that was bashed all season for being Duke and everybody else. First, it was Louisville getting bounced by Creighton, as the many who criticized the selection committee for giving the Cardinals an 8-seed were quieted. Suddenly, the ACC was down to 3 teams in the tournament after Louisville’s loss, and then, well, it got worse later Thursday afternoon.
That’s when Clemson didn’t act like the 5-seed it was. The Tigers put up a paltry 13 points and trailed 12-seed McNeese 31-13 at halftime. No, it wasn’t a football score involving Dabo Swinney’s team. It was basketball, and even worse, an NCAA Tournament game that Clemson was failing miserably in. According to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, it was the worst performance by an ACC team in the first half of an NCAA Tournament game in a generation, slightly better than Wake Forest’s 10 points against Butler in the 2001 tournament.
Thamel’s source was ESPNStatsInfo.
Clemson made a furious rally late to try to avoid the upset, but it came up short in a 69-67 loss that bumped the ACC’s NCAA list down to 2 — Duke and North Carolina, the standard bearers for a conference rich in basketball tradition.
But not this season.
Naturally, there was intense reaction on social media, as fans took shots at an ACC that right now is a shell of its former self. Here is a sampling:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
