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I know one day (or actually two) shouldn’t take away from four months of work, but the ACC embarrassed itself greatly in the last 48 hours. All season, we heard how the Big East might be the best conference ever, but ACC pundits, and the increasilngly questionable RPI had the Atlantic Coast Conference as the strongest in America.

Then the big dance came. According to the seeds, the ACC should have gone 6-1, with only Maryland losing. Instead, they went 3-4 and provided the tourney’s biggest upset, when #4 Wake was blown out by #13 Cleveland State.

Let’s look at some other conferences, and how they fared in the first round.

The Big East went 6-1.
The Big 12 went 6-0.
The Pac 10 went 5-1.
Heck, even the Big Ten went 4-3, and the Big Ten is awful.
At least there’s the SEC who went 1-2.

I know every ACC fan reading this will disagree, but I think years from now when we look back on the last 20 years of ACC basketball, we’ll realize the conference isn’t nearly as tough from top to bottom as people say. Especially come tournament time, the ACC (led by Carolina and Duke) looks more like the old Big Eight football conference of Oklahoma and Nebraska.

For 20 years now, other than a two year run from Maryland and one isolated Georgia Tech trip to the championship game, this conference, except those wearing blue on Tobacco Road, has done nothing. Unless Maryland pulls off an upset today, 2009 will be more of the same.