But then, how do a bunch of random games in November and December determine which conferences are strong? Especially when players are completely new, and coaches are still trying to figure out what rotations work best for their team.
I know what you’re thinking: A single elimination tournament where luck and matchups are probably just as important as the overall strength of the two teams isn’t a great metric of which conferences are strong. Doesn’t quite sound like a down year to me. If you throw in Wake and UVA in the NIT, the conference is 12-2 in the 2022 postseason. Even with VT losing their first game, the ACC is 8-2 in the NCAA Tournament this season. The ACC’s third place team Miami went on to stomp #2 Auburn by 18 points and Duke just took care of business. Our third-place team, UNC, was apparently barely going to make the tournament for much of the final week of the season and went on to upset #1 seed Baylor (and they honestly slaughtered them until the refs ejected Manek). Our second-place team, Notre Dame, was a last four team in, which still didn’t stop them from winning two games (including upsetting Alabama) before they came about a minute away from knocking out #3 Texas Tech. The committee also thought the Mountain West was a 4-bid conference, and they lost all 4 teams before the sun even went down on the first day of the tournament. Had Virginia Tech not gone on a run in the ACC Tournament, the ACC would have ended up being a 4-bid conference. Not to be outdone, the mighty Big-10, which got an absurd 9 bids for the second year in a row, lost all but Purdue and Michigan after one weekend. The SEC had one of the worst tournaments of all time, losing five of their six teams in the first weekend, including 2 two seeds (Auburn, Kentucky) and a three seed (Tennessee). The great SEC and Big-10 conferences, who were often propped up as the best conferences in college basketball this season, completely flopped. Let’s take a quick look at the NCAA tournament records by some of the conferences this season: In fact, the terrible ACC is currently tied with the Big-12 for the most teams in the Sweet Sixteen with Duke, UNC, and Miami all advancing.
We are through the first weekend of the 2022 NCAA Tournament, and guess what? It turns out, maybe the ACC wasn’t the pathetic, dead, historically bad conference that we’ve been told it was for the last five months.