If the ACC and Pac-12 want respect in March, they need to earn it in the regular season.
Each of the past two years, surprise runs in the men’s NCAA tournament have brought about March conversations around how to evaluate the strength of conferences. The Pac-12 was much maligned in 2020–21 when a UCLA team that finished 13–6 in conference play was sent to the First Four, then showed out in the Big Dance with three Elite Eight teams. And in ’21–22, jokes about a one-bid ACC were all the rage until the league sent three to the Elite Eight and two to the Final Four. In both years, the Big Ten produced nine NCAA tournament bids, yet across the two tournaments sent just one total team to the Elite Eight (Michigan in ’21).
This dichotomy prompted rather inflammatory comments from Jim Boeheim at ACC media day in October, when he claimed the ACC was the best conference in the nation a season ago because of the league’s 14–5 NCAA tournament record and said the Big Ten “sucked” in the Big Dance.
