I actually had to go look at the rankings myself because I didn't believe my colleague Craig Meyer when he told me the ACC had only one team ranked in the men's basketball AP top 25.
I thought there was no way, but then I looked it up and, well, yes way, absolutely yes way, that is the case.
Duke is ranked No. 9 and the next ACC team listed is Notre Dame, but the Irish are 7th in the "others receiving votes" category. Seventh. In other words, as of right now, the ACC has only one of the nation's top 30 basketball teams — a number that doesn't even seen possible but is.
Ordinarily I would hammer the ACC for this kind of incompetence, but there are enough other people out there doing that so I will let that go for today. This was supposed to be the ultimate basketball league when it grabbed Pitt, Syracuse, Louisville and Notre Dame from the Big East. But instead of those programs helping it rise, they have only contributed to its downfall.
This is actually great news for Pitt, though, as it means the Panthers have plenty of opportunity to make a move. If the league was as strong as it has been in the past and if the programs were as strong as they traditionally have been, the mountain for the Panthers to climb would be almost insurmountable.
It used to look almost like a death march to try and get from say 14 or 15 in the league to even 7 or 8. That was what spurred a lot of pessimism about the program — well, that and the fact that the Panthers have been awful for a few years.
It wasn't just that they were awful, it was also that they had a logjam of top basketball programs to deal with ahead of them and that meant they would either have to get extremely lucky with a recruiting class or two or have the rest of the league come back to them.
No way that was going to happen because the programs in the league were way too strong to allow that to happen — or so we were told. I have news for you: They are doing exactly that. They are all sliding back to the Panthers, which means the road to get back near the top is a lot shorter and has significantly less roadblocks.
Consider:
Duke is still Duke, and I would imagine the Blue Devils will still be really good for the long haul. They have a legendary coach retiring, though, and regardless of how groomed his successor is, it is very difficult to duplicate that legend's success.
North Carolina has slipped mightily and Hubert Davis is finding out just how tough it can be to replace a legend. Syracuse has a legend, but he is at the end of the road and his recruiting has clearly slipped in recent years. Louisville has been scandal ridden, resulting in an uncertain future for a bad team in search of a new coach. Florida State's Leonard Hamilton is an incredible coach, but even though he looks like he is about 45, he is 73 and nearing the end. What he has done at a school that isn't easy to win in basketball has been remarkable and will be hard to dupilcate.
Virginia is in a down year, but the Cavaliers under Tony Bennett are probably the only sure bet to maintain a high level of basketball excellence for the long haul. He is the best coach in the league and one of the best in the country, and the Cavaliers are the only program whose future seems to be stable.
Wake Forest seems to be on the rise and Notre Dame is Notre Dame, but the rest of the conference screams mediocrity and some of those programs would love to get to the level of mediocrity.
All of it has created a vacuum for any team capable of building itself up and finding some level of consistency. Jeff Capel has been at Pitt four years and hasn't made much progress, but this year he has at least shown that he has the Panthers headed in the right direction. They have been a bottom feeder for most of the last six seasons, but they have a chance to finish as high as even 9th this year. At that point, if he can add a few pieces, the road into the top five in the conference isn't that far.
Obviously, it all hinges on Capel's ability to keep building his program and keep finding gems in recruiting, but moving up in the ACC is not nearly as daunting of a task as it was just a few years ago. It used to mean a team would have to jump over a lot of really good programs just to get to the point where it could try and fight the blue bloods and teams with Hall of Fame coaches.
In of about two months, the league will have one Hall of Fame coach left — Boeheim — three others who might get there — Bennett, Hamilton and Mike Brey — and a lot of programs whose future is very unstable and uncertain. Capel needs to take advantage of this time of ACC futility and bring the Panthers back to relevance — both in the conference and nationally.
Paul Zeise: pzeise@post-gazette.com or Twitter @paulzeise
