Despite ACC Surge, Big Ten Drought May Be At an End

Near the end of the first half of Michigan State's loss to North Carolina Tuesday night, head coach Tom Izzo plopped into his chair on the sideline and buried his head in his hands. Either his playbook was written on the inside of his palms, or, as, North Carolina's fastbreak offense ran another lap around the track, he realized he simply didn't have to see anymore of what is by now a familiar story.

For the third straight time in a third straight marquee matchup in the past 12 months, the Tar Heels turned the game into a horse race. That is, a horse race with only one team in a saddle.

So, somewhere around the end of the first half, when the Heels went into the locker room with a 16-point edge, Izzo probably knew exactly how it would play out and didn't much care to see the finish.

When it comes to the ACC-Big Ten challenge, we know exactly how you feel, Tom.

If there's been any real challenge in the ACC-Big Ten tilt over the last three years, it's been for fans across the nation to come up with new one-liners to razz the Big Ten. Despite the Midwestern league's excellent overall record in the previous decade, including eight Final Four berths and a national title, the high-profile challenge has been a yearly rite of frustration for the league and potshots from opposing fans.

In 10 meetings, the Big Ten has yet to win a challenge, but the individual results have been much closer than the egg on the overall scoreboard. Five Challenges have been decided by a single game. Last year's event was even closer than most. Four games were decided by two points or less, games the leagues split two apiece. The games the Big Ten lost were both winnable, as Illinois opted for a game of hot potato rather than getting a shot of in the final dozen seconds against Clemson and Iowa missed the front end of a 1-and-1 with 1.4 seconds left against Boston College.

Still, for two leagues that have been almost equally excellent in March, you'd expect the coin to come up Big Ten just once. Or heck, in 10 tries, you might expect it to land on its side once before coming up ACC every time.

Of all the things close counts in, conference rivalries certainly isn't one of them.

So, it seemed like something of destiny Tuesday night as the ACC crept back into the challenge Tuesday night, taking three of the five contests including the marquee matchup of the event as North Carolina dusted Michigan State 89-82, and the last televised game, Virginia Tech over Iowa.If there's any such thing as momentum in a contest of 11 teams that would rather run a week suicides than share the same locker room, it swungly firmly in favor of the ACC.

But before anyone starts honing their Big Ten jabs, the league may finally go where no Big Ten has gone before.

Of Wednesday night's games, three seem to be of the type your mother-in-law could pick. Duke, fresh off a win over Connecticut in Madison Square Garden, should handle Wisconsin, though the Badgers are playing at home and have outperformed expectations thus far (even taking down an ACC foe, Maryland, in the process). Clemson, who toppled then-No. 11 Butler over the weekend, should be able to beat Illinois, owner of a puzzling two-game losing skid, at Littlejohn. And Michigan, despite a two-game losing streak of its own, should have little problem at home against a rebuilding Boston College.

Minnesota should be favored to beat Miami, even on the road and in the wake of a confusing loss to Portland and a second to Texas A&M. The Hurricanes are undefeated, but the most fearsome opponent they've faced is UNC–Wilmington, a middling 3-4 team. Win here and the Big Ten likely knots the score going into the bottom of the ninth.

All of which means it's up to Ohio State, the school responsible for two high profile national championship losses in football that turned the tide of public opinion against the leagues gridders, to upstage Florida State.

It also happens to be the only game between ranked teams of the night, so kudos to ESPN's schedulers.

But for Florida State, success may only be jersey deep.

The only team the Seminoles have beaten whose RPI doesn't look like a batting average is Marquette, and that win came by a point and might oversell the Seminoles slightly. Most of the Marquette roster could fall in the work line behind Sleepy, Doc and Sneezy and not seem out of place.

Florida State's offense, according to Ken Pomeroy's statistics, is 208 in efficiency, averaging less than a point per possession, adjusted for tempo. To find a similarly challenged team, you'd have to drop all the way to No. 54 in the ratings for Montana.

In their lone loss, Florida stifled the FSU offense, holding the Seminoles to an abysmal 72.9 efficiency rating.

Florida State has also been one of the nation's most turnover prone teams in the nation, meaning Ohio State will likely end up with more possessions, in a home game, with perhaps a bit of history on the line.

And that's before discussing Evan Turner, who will almost certainly be the best player on the floor. The Buckeyes have gone as their one-man matchup problem has gone. Thus far, he's averaging just under 20 points and seven rebounds, and seven assists a game. He's even minimized turnovers, which were a problem in previous years. This season, he has a 1.54 assist to turnover-ratio, marred only by his 10-turnover struggle in the Buckeyes' lone loss to North Carolina, a team not exactly known for its perimeter pressure.

If Turner can minimize his turnovers against the Seminoles, who have thus far been proficient at creating them, then the Big Ten might be headed for a historic night, no matter how remote that possibility seemed during North Carolina's run past Michigan State.

That, Tom Izzo, would be an ending you don't want to miss.