ACC Tournament Preview: Still Crazy After All These Years

Before March was mad, the ACC was already basketball crazy.

Since 1955, the granddaddy of all conference tournaments has put one heck of an exclamation point on the end of the season, the twist ending to an Oscar-worthy film. Even in an era when six bids out of the league are as routine as Billy Packer ripping apart mid-majors or Mike Krzyewski having a colorful conversation with the referees, the ACC tournament still matters.

And in 2009, the ACC tournament has a to-do list the size of Barack Obama's.

There's the matter of which local team gets to play in Greensboro in the first round and which team has to grab a tiny bag of peanuts and fly coach. There's a beefy bubble group that might've been sneaking a little Boli from A-Rod (After all, it includes Maryland, which beat No. 1 North Carolina, Boston College, which beat Duke and North Carolin, and with a faint hope, Miami, which handed out an Old Testament sort of thumping to Wake Forest). Then there's seeding, and a whole summer's worth of bragging rights on Tobacco Road.

And as always, it's something of a Final Four preview. Since 1982, the ACC has claimed eight NCAA titles and put 24 teams into the Final Four. Since 1986, either Duke or North Carolina has been in every Final Four except six and both teams advanced to the last weekend in 1991. History is an even more positive guide with the AP's No. 1-ranked team heading into the tournament. In 10 instances, nine have advanced to the Final Four.

So what are the storylines heading into the four-day showdown in Atlanta? Grab a hot dog from the Varsity and kick back:

The Dance Card

Locks: North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, Clemson, Florida State
Working On Its Moves: Boston College
Just Outside the Bubble: Maryland, Miami, Virginia Tech

Matchups
Thursday: No. 8 Virginia Tech vs. No. 9 Miami, No. 5 Clemson vs. No. 12 Georgia Tech, No. 7 Maryland vs. No. 10 N.C. State, No. 6 Boston College vs. No. 11 Virginia
Friday: No. 1 North Carolina vs. Virginia Tech/Miami, No. 4 Florida State vs. Clemson/Georgia Tech, No. 2 Wake Forest vs. Maryland/N.C. State, No. 3 Duke vs. Boston College/Virginia


The Storylines

Who Gets Greensboro?

The NCAA's pod system will result in two of North Carolina, Duke and Wake Forest getting a chance to play its opening weekend game within driving distance of its campus. And we mean Tiger Woods' driving distance. Each of the three schools can make it to Greensboro in under an hour. And Duke and North Carolina playing in the NCAA tournament have a record Goliath would find intimidating. At the moment, North Carolina is all but a lock for one of the berths. Duke probably holds the inside track to the second, but if Wake Forest outperforms the Blue Devils, expect Dino Gaudio's team to make the short drive up I-85.

How Healthy Is Ty Lawson?

He's the reigning ACC player of the year, but right now Lawson's claim to fame is having the most famous toe in sports since, well, Toe Blake. Head coach Roy Williams was uncertain about his star point guard's status in Monday's teleconference.

"They say it's something that takes quite a while to go away," the coach said. "Hopefully [three days off before the ACC tournament] will be really good for him. ... He was in quite a bit of pain when happened Friday. He was sore, but not severe pain on Saturday. [Sunday] night after the game, he was in quite a bit of pain again."

With Lawson, North Carolina should be the favorite to cut down the nets. Without him, Williams might as well dust off that Kansas sticker.

Can Anyone Play Their Way In?

There are three 7-9 teams in the ACC trying to play their way into the tournament. "Nobody," Williams said Monday, "wants to play any of them." Each will likely need at least two wins in the event to spend Sunday in a way that doesn't seem like they're waiting on the dentist. Miami, who may have the ACC's most dangerous shooter in Jack McClinton faces a Virginia Tech team stinging from last year's near miss in an elimination game in the opener. Maryland, which toppled North Carolina and put together a nice run at the end of the season before falling flat on its face against Virginia, has to beat N.C. State in the opener and then beat a Wake Forest team that just defeated the Terps in College Park, Md., to get back in the field of 65. Anyone else needs to win the whole darn thing.

Who's For Real?

Other than North Carolina are any of the ACC's elite built to last in the NCAA tournament? The Blue Devils have looked like a new team since inserting Elliot Williams into the staring lineup and sliding Jon Scheyer over to the point in place of Greg Paulus (who replaced Nolan Smith). But the NTSB is still waiting on all the data from their last two opening weekend March crashes. They should get Boston College in the second round, which will be an early barometer of this team's improvement. Duke collapsed against the Eagles earlier this year. Meanwhile Wake Forest has been as erratic as any elite team in the nation, beating North Carolina and Duke only to lose to Virginia Tech and get senselessly drubbed by Miami. Jeff Teague and Al-Farouq Aminu are elite talents, with James Johnson close behind, but so too were Josh Howard, Chris Paul, Tim Duncan, Randolph Childress, Rodney Rogers and a host of other Demon Deacons who didn't get the job done in March. Certainly Dave Odom-era results, and even Skip Prosser's finishes have no bearing on this team, but the Deacons do feel a little like a snake-bitten program. They haven't been to a Final Four since 1962, an epoch in Big Four terms. And while Clemson has outgrown its pattern of strong non-conference records followed by ACC collapses, the Tigers have yet to break through in the NCAA tournament. A first-ever ACC title might be the perfect confidence boost. But lest that 0-55 streak get the Tigers down, look at it this way, you now have a skid that outpaces the 54-game losing streak in Chapel Hill.